Professional rock climber Mark Synnott has spent a large portion of his life hanging by callused fingertips from some of the most remote cliffs and rock faces in the world. Off the Map features Synnott in the North Face Speaker Series telling personal stories about reaching incredible peaks, from glassy ice walls in the arctic […]
The Head and the Heart Let’s Be Still/Sub Pop The latest record from this folk/pop/rock band is a beauty. Thought-provoking, well- crafted with great melodies and variety, Let’s Be Still is easy to enjoy. “Another Story” is pleasing piano rock given greater power in lines like “tell you one thing/ain’t gonna change much/the sun still […]
Following a screening of The Counselor, one critic said: “It’s nasty film. Very well made…if that’s what you’re into.” Judging just from The Counselor’s plot (going into business with Mexican cartels), who wrote it (Cormac McCarthy), and its location (the Texas/Mexico border), there should be no mystery as to what you’re in for. But there […]
In the 1930s and 40s, Universal Studios produced a series of horror films which remain some of the best and most popular examples of the genre. Tod Browning’s Dracula and James Whale’s Frankenstein became the iconic depictions of those characters in the popular imagination, from Dracula’s [...]
Amos Lee Mountains of Sorrow, Rivers of Song/Blue Note Records Amos Lee knows what an Americana record ought to sound like and Mountains of Sorrow, Rivers of Song is it. This exploration of the simultaneously universal and individual nature of life is put together in dazzling fashion. The track [...]
The early reviews for Machete Kills have largely been unkind, and the big gripe appears to be that Machete Kills is too long, too repetitive, and too super violent. How many of these critics have seen a Robert Rodriguez movie before? I think that if you choose to see a Rodriguez film—whether [...]
Over the last 17 years, Jon Foreman has cemented his status as one of his generation’s most insightful lyricists and dynamic rock singers. He has released four solo EPs, two albums with the rockgrass band Fiction Family—his side project with Nickel Creek’s Sean Watkins—and has achieved [...]
Hip-hop documentaries can give the street genre a bad rap, too often overlooking its positive influence. The five-part Global Hip-Hop Film Series covers everything from hip-hop’s growing influence on Turkish kids to the history of one of its founding groups, The Sugar Hill Gang, and features [...]
Lee Koch Whole Heart/Self-released Whole Heart is likable for a variety of reasons. Most of it has a calm folk vibe, and there is something refreshing about the way Koch gives equal weight to relationships with lovers, strangers, and God. The Americana track “Journey to Unfold” is noteworthy [...]
Sarah Jarosz Build Me Up from Bones/Universal While listening to the third album from singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz, Build Me Up from Bones, it is hard to believe she is only 22 years old. The prodigious mandolin, banjo, and guitar player has a gorgeous voice, an uncommon way with words that [...]
Calling a movie Newton’s Laws of Motion would probably have the potential audience running for the hills. Imagine it: Director and co-writer Alfonso Cuarón undertakes such an ambitious project, a movie set in Earth’s orbit with characters under constant threat of danger, but no one goes to see [...]
‘‘From WHYY in Philadelphia, I’m Terry Gross with ‘Fresh Air.’” Every NPR junkie knows this intro, and the anticipatory thrill as the warm, steady voice of Terry Gross floats through the radio speakers to set up the backstory of “Fresh Air’s” current interview guest. For almost 40 years, Gross [...]
Let’s not mince words. It was a lackluster summer, movie-wise. For every decent surprise (Fast & Furious 6, which was better than it had any right to be; The Spectacular Now, which is a bittersweet rumination on growing up), there was a major letdown. Take Elysium. The Matt Damon-starring, [...]
Sarah Neufeld Hero Brother/Constellation With Hero Brother, Arcade Fire violinist and composer Sarah Neufeld has created a strikingly beautiful release. Ethereal and elegiac, this instrumental masterpiece transports you to another world and conveys its mysterious story in a unique way to each [...]
When I think of Luc Besson or watch one of his movies, the thing I feel most is ambivalence. It’s refreshing to watch a guy use real violence in movies that are supposed to be comedies—violence isn’t all that funny, even when it’s played for laughs. A great example of horrific violence used for [...]
When we last left Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel), in the boringly-yet-appropriately titled The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), he was installed as the leader of the Necromongers, a race of humanoids bent on turning everyone in the universe into Scientologists. Whatever else happened in The [...]
Sorry, peeps. The World’s End just isn’t as good as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, the other features in the Simon Pegg-Nick Frost-Edgar Wright canon. Luckily, The World’s End is still a lot of fun, and Pegg and Frost prove once again to be captivating screen presences and fully committed, [...]
The Civil Wars The Civil Wars/Columbia Records After going on hiatus last year due to “internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition,” Joy Williams and John Paul White have a new album that begs the question: How could something so beautiful have come from two people who don’t [...]
Led by teen singing sensation Alex Chilton and studio mastermind Chris Bell, the band name Big Star and the album title #1 Record were picked in jest, but the choice became increasingly ironic as the band failed to find any commercial or popular success. Though critics adored them, the group [...]
When we last left Mindy/Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) and Dave/Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), one was fatherless and the other had blown up Chris/Red Mist’s father with a bazooka. It was some truly primal shit, made all the more bizarre by the fact that Hit Girl’s dad, Big Daddy (Nicolas [...]
It’s a good thing the heart of Lee Daniels’ The Butler is Forest Whitaker, because the movie has a great story to tell but gets in its own way. Whitaker keeps the movie centered amid the barrage of huge star cameos, corny dialogue, and choppy storytelling—plot threads come and go, unresolved—as [...]
Embrace the last of the lazy August days with the Summer Camp Series at the Packard Campus Theater in Culpeper. Ten movies, including two double features, will celebrate all things campy throughout the latter half of the month. From summer sleep-away comedies to sci-fi schmaltz, you can get [...]
We’re the Millers has the kind of story that can be hammered out in about 15 minutes, if its writers follow the “Save the Cat” formula. (Read this outline before you see it and you’ll actually see the story beats play out when you watch the movie.) The central plot—a pot dealer recruits three [...]