ARTS Pick: The Big Read
Amy Tan weaves together tales of family, memory, struggle, fate, and ultimately self-discovery in this year’s Big Read, The Joy Luck Club.
Culture
Film Review: Amour
A loving married couple, Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) and Georges, (Jean-Louis Trintignant), both retired music teachers in their 80s, find their marriage taking a markedly different turn when Anne suffers a stroke. At first, Anne is able to retain something of her former self. She’s confined to a wheelchair, but has control of one side of her body.
R.I.P. Bruce Willis
Let’s begin with an end. The end of Bruce Willis, that is. I went to see A Good Day to Die Hard,the fifth Die Hard, last week at the Regal Stonefield 14 theater. (Side rant: The Stonefield theater is great; Stonefield’s layout isn’t.
ARTS Pick: Ashley McMillen
Local singer/songwriter Ashley McMillen is proving that inspiration combined with perspiration breeds success.
March First Fridays Exhibits
First Fridays is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many Downtown art galleries and additional exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions. Listings are compiled in collaboration with Piedmont Council for the Arts. To list an exhibit, please send information two weeks before opening to arts@c-ville.com. First Fridays exhibitions: March 1 Angelo 220 E. […]
Noises on: Live Arts’ Julie Hamberg throws the switch on The Vibrator Play
Early February. Three and a half weeks before the opening of Live Arts’ new main stage production, In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), and a major scenic element for the climax of the play was not coming together well at all. The design called for the climactic sequence to be played in front […]
Thurston Moore keeps thrashing in his latest project, Chelsea Light Moving
Wasted on the young Art rock legends Sonic Youth tentatively called it quits in 2011, but the band’s key members have remained characteristically busy with the usual slew of side projects and collaborations. Guitarist/singer Thurston Moore’s newest group, Chelsea Light Moving, is backed by a band of his protégés and collaborators, including Keith Wood of […]
Fast forward: Second Street Gallery celebrates 40 years of contemporary art for the people
“Perhaps we aren’t being controversial enough,” Steve Taylor, the director of Second Street Gallery, joked during a recent interview after explaining that no one had walked out of a show in a huff recently. Beneath the joke lay the inherent tension in Taylor’s job: Second Street’s mission for the past 40 years has been to […]
Worst. Oscars. Ever.
Each year we think the Oscars can’t possibly be worse than the year before. And then each year, it’s so much worse than the year before (except last year; nothing will ever out-worse Billy Crystal and his non-eyebrows). Straight up: I will pay for the next Academy Awards ceremony if they bring back Franco and […]
ARTS Preview: Horsefang
Saturday night’s line-up at the Tea Bazaar is an unusual but promising mix. After several years of dormancy, Horsefang have returned, and their dusty, instrumental doom-metal riffs seem as vital as ever. They’re joined by Mike Gangloff, whose career oscillates between two unlikely poles: the rural twang of Appalachian traditionalism and the mind-expanding drones of […]