Old Crow Medicine Show Remedy/ATO Records Remedy is the latest proof that Old Crow Medicine show is incapable of doing anything poorly. Whether it’s a raucous, hoedown-style piece of country like “8 Dogs, 8 Banjos,” or whether it’s the old time bluegrass feel and R-rated sensibility of a track like “Brushy Mountain Conjugal Trailer,” you […]
A lack of new ideas and a surplus of sincerity are not typically good qualities in a comedy. Just think of how forced and unearned the last 20 minutes of any Happy Madison movie are: “I know I’m a slob who screwed everything up while being distractingly racist and homophobic along the way. But I […]
Linkin Park The Hunting Party/Warner Bros. Somewhere along the way, the band Linkin Park became viewed as a formulaic one-trick pony. Pair up Chester Bennington’s throat- scraping screeches with raucous guitars and drums, occasional scratches and raps from Mike Shinoda, repeat, and call it good. And while this might have been true at the start, […]
Let’s answer your most pressing question about Obvious Child: Yes, Paul Simon’s song “Obvious Child” appears in the movie. Twice. Unless you’ve been avoiding press about movies since January, you know Obvious Child is a romantic comedy in which the main character, Donna (Jenny Slate), has an [...]
The most beguiling thing about Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida is its look. Its cinematography, by Ryszard Lenczewksi and Lukasz Zal, is so beautiful that it’s easy to forget you’re watching a challenging drama about faith, love, loss, and the ravages of war on identity. Each shot is so artfully [...]
The flat screen is unassuming—a 60″ monitor mounted to the wall in UVA’s Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library. Surrounded by chairs and headphones, The Niche currently plays a loop of video from the stop-motion animation program “Stop & Go: Made from Scratch.” Sounds benign, but associate [...]
It’s going to be an exciting summer at Light House Studio. The local youth filmmaking nonprofit’s website redesign is up and running, and they have a new location for their summer workshops while the City Center for Contemporary Arts—also home to Live Arts and Second Street Gallery—undergoes [...]
It’s not unreasonable to imagine that Tom Cruise, perhaps the last of the old school movie stars, had lost it. He hasn’t had a bona fide hit since 2011 with Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol, and as good as some of that movie is, it certainly coasts on the strength of being part of a big [...]
Sometimes it’s nice to see a nice movie. “Nice” is a bad word—it’s usually reserved for people who are inoffensive but undatable or your grandmother’s ruminations on her flower garden—but occasionally the word just works. “Nice” is a good description of Chef, writer-director Jon Favreau’s [...]
John Johnson doesn’t spook easy. An avid fan of all things macabre, the film director built his career on mauled bodies, zombies, spine-tingling hauntings, and heinous murders. But the pending release of his latest work has him shivering. “The day Plan 9 gets released to general audiences I [...]
Carrie Elkin & Danny Schmidt For Keeps/Red House Records Whether performing individually or as a duo, Carrie Elkin and Danny Schmidt have proven themselves to be two of Austin’s most engaging singer-songwriters in recent years. For Keeps only furthers this opinion. Whether marrying dusty [...]
George Carlin used to a do a bit about his favorite movies: westerns in which a bunch of cowboys face off with a bunch of Native Americans. “You know what the big scene is going to be, right? It’s going to be the attack the Indians finally make on the cowboys. You wait for it […]
Needtobreathe Rivers in the Wasteland/Atlantic Records This Southern rock trio has made an album filled with hope and energy—seemingly with the intention of easing the weight of life’s challenges. Rock and soul numbers like “State I’m In” and “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” corner the market on [...]
It’s mid-May: The crushing tide of summer movies is just around the corner. Gear up. Actually, we don’t really have a summer movie season anymore. Of all the traditions Star Wars ushered in—it was released on May 25, 1977, just in time for Memorial Day—summer release dates have largely gone [...]
By this point, we’ve all seen the ads for Neighbors. Family vs. frat. Thirtysomethings vs. drunk 20somethings. Seth Rogen and gross-out humor. Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Plus, the last movie Rogen starred in, This is the End, is so bad that any reasonable adult could be forgiven for [...]
For many people, the radio is a convenient distraction that adds some color to daily routines. But for the students at Tandem Friends School, it’s their voice. Teaming with WNRN and Music Resource Center in the Radio Resource Project, the teens write, produce, and host a complete radio show, [...]
It took two years to get Bob Dylan organized, but a small software company nestled in Nelson County has finally done it. Bluewall Media recently helped Dylan and his staff archive and digitalize more than 60 years worth of his iconic music, photographs, written documents, video, and film [...]
Sam Cregger Tell Me Something Different/Self-released The sophomore full-length album from local artist Sam Cregger is a real treat. Tracks like “Still Love” pit unending love against a backdrop of ambling Americana music that features some languid accordion to set the mood, while the simple, [...]
How cool can a church get before it starts to ruffle some feathers? Christ Episcopal Church, which operates The Garage, an outdoor concert venue/art gallery (a super-cool combo if ever there was one), is pushing the boundaries of non-secular hip yet again by bringing back its Makers Series. The [...]
One of these days someone is going to have to write a movie that explores—purposely—the irony of making a film that uses cutting edge technology to tell an anti-technology story. Transcendence is not that movie. Its storyline, character arcs, and politics are so hopelessly muddled, it’s unclear [...]
Just seconds into my conversation with Todd Snider, he’s telling me about some LSD that was “going around the neighborhood” a few months back. The next moment, he’s on to a story about dodging fruit hurled by Jimmy Buffett. He then deadpans that if young musicians come to him asking for career [...]
Three years before the Ramones launched their iconic schtick, a trio of brothers started the first American proto-punk band in Detroit. They wrote short, fast songs with driving rhythms and lyrics about politics, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, and of course, existential crises. Their pure [...]
The Wood and the Wild The Wood and the Wild/self-released Singer-songwriter Jon Perry is spot-on when he refers to this debut recording as “supernatural cinematic folk.” Part concept record, part proverbial soundtrack to your life, the album manages to amble along with a sense of purpose. The [...]