“Chaplin or Keaton?” is one of those eternal questions, like “Star Wars or Star Trek?” “The Beatles or the Stones?” There’s no correct answer, but the side you pick can reveal fundamental aspects of your character. Charlie Chaplin is far more famous today, with his “Tramp” character’s iconic bowler hat, mustache, and cane making him [...]
One of Charlottesville’s most anticipated springtime events began today with the hanging of the LOOK3 TREES exhibit. The installation has kicked off Charlottesville’s LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph since it began in 2007. “It’s really our coming out party,” said LOOK3’s managing director, Andrew Owen. LOOK3 attracts an estimated attendance of 25,000 artists and observers [...]
Now that The Great Gatsby is out, there’s just one relevant question: To whom is this film targeted? It can’t be people who read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel when it was first released. They’re dead. Is it for recent high school graduates? The millennials, who are plugged into everything all the time and don’t seem to have the attention span for Fitzgerald? Or is it for hip-hop lovers?
05/23/2013 7:30 pm - 10:30 pm Maggie Edwards Durty Nelly’s, Charlottesville VA
Hollywood is content to blow shit up in the months before May and after August in a way it never used to be, but the dog days are still the time* to find the most literal bang for your dinero. Here’s what the studios are pushing, and what we think. The Great Gatsby Does [...]
I discovered that there was no department anywhere dealing with the fact that we’re being visited, and that there ought to be some sort of diplomatic outreach. CSETI is our global attempt, and now we have several thousand teams who are learning these protocols that are very controversial...
For the past 14 years, Light House Studio has offered filmmaking workshops for local students, providing a hands-on education that rivals many college-level programs. I was a student at Light House in its first class during the summer of 1999, and was crowded into a studio space in the basement [...]
Street art, anonymous messages and cryptic interactions are all clues in the reality game documented in the indie pop-psych documentary The Institute.
It may seem strange to suggest that a movie about the survival of the human race doesn’t have high stakes, but Oblivion, a movie about the survival of the human race, doesn’t feel as if it has high stakes. What Oblivion does have is a unified vision, excellent production design, camera work and [...]
Thankfully, 42 isn’t sanctimonious and Jackie isn’t sage-like. From the movie’s perspective, he’s just a boring guy who wants to play baseball. Jackie also knows that he has to be the coolest head on the field; Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) tells him as much.
Wonderful, Glorious attempts to continue this trend, but isn’t quite as successful. “Accident Prone”’s down-tempo guitars and Everett’s sedated, melodic vocals are beautifully unusual, and the way he channels Johnny Cash’s mumbling vocal on the dreamy guitar-driven ballad “On the Ropes,” is [...]
Melodic moments Ivan & Alyosha All the Times We Had/Dualtone Music Group It is fitting that this Seattle-based indie pop rock band is named after characters in a Dostoevsky novel where moral dilemmas, God, and free will are among the topics of debate because similar content is found in [...]
Forget that this story recalls not only Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but also Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters and John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There?—better known to most people as Howard Hawks’ The Thing from Another World or John Carpenter’s The Thing. Because, really, this story is [...]
At Admission’s center is Tina Fey, who stretches beyond playing the straight man and being the butt of every other character’s jokes.
When Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe visited Charlottesville last Wednesday, he meandered up and down the Downtown Mall with Delegate David Toscano, discussing the economy and promising to prioritize small businesses if elected. McAuliffe said he’s running on a platform of [...]
Magically funny: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone exceeds low expectations The advertisements for The Incredible Burt Wonderstone make it seem like it will be the least funny, most egregious, and patience-trying movie of Steve Carell’s career. A movie comedy about Las Vegas performers and street [...]
“It would be easy enough just to sit down and watch TV every night, but instead we work together on cool shit,” Dave Gibson said.
Behind the curtain: Oz the Great and Powerful is a playful take on the wizard’s rise In this day and age, when everything in life—movies, television, sporting events, you name it—seems rooted in money, a prequel to The Wizard of Oz feels like, perhaps, the most cynical of moneymaking schemes. [...]
There’s a story about “Jack and the Beanstalk” in which Jack trades a cow for some magic beans. He gets the beans wet, they grow into a beanstalk that reaches into the sky, and Jack and a rabbit battle a giant with a speech impediment who wants to grind their bones to make bread.
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 [...]
The use of tablets and laptops in middle and high schools has created controversy in Charlottesville city schools, but St. Anne’s-Belfield School French teacher Karine Boulle has reason to rave about iPads. After 17 sessions of intense writing, translating, and coding, Boulle’s class of eighth [...]
The trailers for Side Effects, director Steven Soderbergh’s new thriller, make it look like an indictment of all things pharmaceutical.
A New Yorker who studied drama at the NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Joe Jordan relocated to Charlottesville last year, after becoming increasingly upset about gentrification in New York. “I’m O.K. being an outsider,” he said. “But not in my own neighborhood.”