What if Dr. Frankenstein’s kid didn’t want to continue the family business? That’s the question posed in Young Frankenstein, the stage adaptation of the campy Mel Brooks classic film of the same name. Join Frederick “Fronk-en-steen” and his trusty assistant “Eye-gore,” who convinces the scientist to go a little mad and create the famed monster. Hilarity ensues, complete with cartoonish violence, risqué humor and a memorable rendition of “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”
The trope of “John Shaft is a dirty old man” is barely enough material to build a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, let alone an entire movie. Yet here we are, the fifth entry in a once-breakthrough series (the third to be titled simply Shaft), and the most we can muster is a sometimes tolerable
When it comes to creating a feature-length movie on the silver screen, animation studios like Pixar deploy millions of dollars and hundreds of people to make the magic happen. Well buckle up, Hollywood, because one local teen did it right from his basement studio in Louisa. Fourteen-year-old
Thomas Dean takes unusual pleasure in digging through crates of junky records. It’s partly the aroma of acidic paper inserts mingling with that of musty cardboard sleeves. It’s partly weirdo cover art, bonkers band names, and eyebrow-raising (or head-shaking) album titles. But mostly, it’s the
More excellence: When Richelle Claiborne first staged Black Music Excellence Through the Ages in March she told C-VILLE, “It’s not the history of black music. It’s my history through black music—how all these different genres have impacted and affected me, or represented me, is the thread that
Blues class: Lorie Strother and Stephen Levine make up Dr. Levine and the Dreaded BluesLady, a Charlottesville-based duo with serious blues skills that’s been known to break out into an R&B or classic rock tune from time to time. Strother’s experience shines in her charismatic stage
Craig Leon Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 2: The Canon (RVNG Intl.) Craig Leon produced the classic debuts of the Ramones and Blondie before covering some classical stuff himself (key title: Bach to Moog). On his ’80s new age albums Nommos and Visiting, Leon imagined the vernacular
Far afield: Folk singer-songwriter Damien Jurado began his solo career in 1995, self-releasing cassettes and performing intimate acoustic shows around his hometown of Seattle. Aptly described as experimental, Jurado’s work includes forays into found and field recordings—in 2000 he released a
Happy at home: A rhythm guitar-centric band with a monster sax player that formed through late-night sessions at the University of Virginia might sound like a familiar backstory, but this six-piece rock act founded in 2013 relies on original, epic jams to cut its own swath through the East
Wild sax: Musical wilderness is the running theme as the Telemetry Music Series highlights free jazz with the “ferocious, sorcerous, and way out there” improv of Charlotte, North Carolina’s Ghost Trees sharing the bill with Space-Saver’s drum and sax-tinged combos of doom metal/acid
Nomadic harmony: Izzy Heltai’s indie-folk tells emotionally captivating stories that leave enough room for the listener to relate. His sparse piano and strong vocals are simple and soaring, invoking his nomadic lifestyle—Heltai has been traveling across the country, living out of his car to
![Karen Blair (“Blue Iris”) is one of five area artists exhibiting beside two works by abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell in Second Street Gallery’s “Lady Painters: Inspired by Joan Mitchell,” on view until July 19. [Second Street]](https://www.c-ville.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Blair-Blue-Iris-2016-mixed-media-on-canvas-43-x-43-320x170.jpg)
Three years after starting her tenure as Second Street Gallery’s executive director and chief curator, Kristen Chiacchia says she feels at home. For the next month, when she enters the gallery, among the works greeting her are a watercolor and oil painting by celebrated mid-century abstract
The conclusion of the X-Men franchise was never going to be great, but it didn’t have to be this bad. Back when the first film came out in 2000, the idea of a series of sustained and even quality films based on comic books had not solidified—Superman, Batman, and Blade all started strong but
Seventeen syllables. Seventeen syllables to say whatever you want, to say as much, or as little, as you’d like. Hell, you don’t even have to use all 17 syllables if you don’t need or want to, says poet and artist Raven Mack. That’s just the typical form of a Japanese haiku in the Western world:
Firmly entrenched: After huge success with 2015’s thematically cryptic Blurryface, Twenty One Pilots entered into a period of “going dark” for a year, which singer Tyler Joseph says was needed to bring authenticity back to the music and battle some unspecified personal demons. When the duo
Anything but tired: Very loud Bay Area doom metal trio Sleep attained underground legend status with a monolithic late-’90s riff monster called Dopesmoker. The long-awaited 2018 follow-up, The Sciences, brought new commercial success and a bit more sonic variation without sacrificing the band’s
No happy accidents: Dr. Bernie Beitman’s 2016 book, Connecting With Coincidence, throws science at the notion that surprise happenings in our lives are not entirely by chance. Dr. Coincidence’s Song and Dance Show takes that thinking to the stage, where personal stories of serendipity come
Boogarins Sombrou Dúvida (LAB 344) Brazilian band Boogarins is back with more heady psychedelia, adding a little bap to the mix this time. If the Google translations are on point, Dinho Almeida is repeatedly counseling us to eschew tradition, explore life, embrace fear, etc. Ironically, his
Madeline Michel sits on one of the couches lining her classroom, balancing a sparkly gold laptop on her knees as she tells two students about being summoned to the Monticello High School principal’s office. Principal Rick Vrhovac called her in for a “meeting,” she says, her voice slightly
On view at McGuffey Art Center this month is “Women’s Work,” an exhibition featuring 18 artists who belong to the Feminist Union of Charlottesville Creatives, or F.U.C.C. Sculptor Lily Erb and painter Sam Gray founded the group in 2017 with the “hope to create space and opportunities for female
When word came out in early 2015 that Harper Lee was set to publish a sequel to the 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird, author Casey Cep was one of a number of reporters who traveled to Lee’s hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, to cover the book’s release. Despite Lee’s enormous