Last week, a new provincial budget was announced that could put thousands of jobs in Nova Scotia’s film industry in jeopardy. Counter-arguments have been made, logic and reason have been championed, meetings have been had and demonstrations have been staged. Still, our Liberal government has even more bad news: they don’t care what anyone thinks […]
Michael Lake
Posted inArts + Music
#NSFilmJobs in limbo
“The Liberal government must already regret its cryptic messaging,” says filmmaker Thom Fitzgerald, referring to a potential cut to the Nova Scotia Film Industry Tax Credit that has many people in a huff. “A petition in protest of it got 10,000 signatures in one day. They’ve instantly turned Trailer Park Boys fans against them. No […]
Posted inArts + Music
Review: When The Saints
Sarah Mian’s debut novel, When the Saints, is a sly and funny book about a scrappy family living through some trying times. Tabby Saint is the tough and admirably resourceful protagonist who returns to her home of Solace River, Nova Scotia, after being more or less abandoned years earlier as a child. She returns to […]
Posted inArts + Music
Variety is the spice of writing
Friday the 13th just got lucky for Halifax’s literati. Irish-Canadian writer, Emma Donoghue, author of Slammerkin, The Sealed Letter and most famously, Room, is in town to take part in Saint Mary’s annual Cyril Byrne Lecture. Donoghue, who has been publishing books since the 1990s, became a household name in 2010 when Room was released […]
Posted inArts + Music
TOP 15 BOOKS OF 2014
picks by Lindsay Raining Bird All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews (Knopf) This Giller Prize nominated novel from heavy hitter Miriam Toews is about Elfrieda—a talented concert pianist who desperately wants to die—and her younger sister Yolandi who can’t stop trying to convince her to live. Spanning their childhood and Elf’s most recent suicide […]
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The Blue Tattoo
Local writer Steven Laffoley’s seventh book, and first novel, focuses on the days leading up to the disaster and gruesome events that followed the Halifax Explosion. The bulk of the book focuses on the damages caused by the explosion, including an unnecessarily lengthy 80-plus-page section describing the bloodshed and destruction in gory detail. Most of […]
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Mayssa’s own way
Those unfamiliar with Mayssa Karaa will likely have heard her haunting Arabic cover of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” featured in last year’s American Hustle, a film boasting one of the best soundtracks of 2013. This weekend she will be the special guest at the closing ceremonies of the 13th Annual Lebanese Festival in Halifax. Born […]
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Bend the River’s edge
The music of Bend the River immediately conjures up a feeling of another time and place. What precise era it evokes is fleeting, but there’s an undeniable sense of the past seeping through. Even a video for the new song “Assassins” features clips from the 1926 silent film Menilmontant. “Through the slow remorse of time, […]
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Panti Bliss’ politics in drag
Anybody who follows Dan Savage, or happens to read Irish news, has probably heard of a recent controversy surrounding Dublin drag queen Panti Bliss. Back in January, Rory O’Neill, the man behind the drag alter ego, was on an Irish talk show when some people took offense to him calling out a few Irish public […]
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Richard Ford tough
Reading Richard Ford is no small comfort. His writing is a mixture of minute details infused with big ideas, and his characters, particularly Frank Bascombe, who has graced the pages of three of his novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day, exist in readers’ minds as sharply and vividly as any flesh-possessing person. For local […]
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Get schooled on the dance floor
Beginning this week, Halifax will be home to a rather unconventional lecture series. On the last Thursday of each month, a community organizer is invited to give a public lecture followed by a dance party. The new Queer Possibilities lecture series “aims to expand the geographies of queerness in the city of Halifax” and “emphasize […]
Posted inArts + Music
Confessions of subtle racism
Anybody who visits Halifax MP Megan Leslie’s office from now until April will encounter the work of textile artist Tamara Huxtable. Much of Huxtable’s art is text-based, with words and phrases embroidered onto unframed pieces of fabric. “This medium just happened to align harmoniously with the ideas about identity and eventually race politics that I […]
