The Lego Movie is not a thing that should work at all—when’s The Hula-Hoop Movie due? How about Tiddlywinks: The Musical? However, this particular production comes from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the minds behind Clone High and the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs series, which means it’s equal parts clever, hilarious and full […]
Tara Thorne
Posted inArts + Music
The Monuments Men
Look, most people who write about movies do it because they love art. But real talk: George Clooney’s The Monuments Men, based on a true story of a mostly American team sent to rescue famous stolen paintings and sculpture from the Nazis, spends much of its running time trying to justify its existence, because seriously? […]
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Old man Wintersleep
Minutes before Paul Murphy calls, his old friend Jud Haynes has made public the link to The Dependent Years. It’s an online archive of posters, press and presence (plus audio and video) featuring the bands of the Dependent Music collective, where Murphy’s band Wintersleep got its start in the early ’00s alongside Brian Borcherdt, Contrived, […]
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Ostrea Lake
“They think it’s the place in Germany,” says Elias Abi Daoud, leader of Ostrea Lake, of when people say his band’s name aloud. Really it’s the road he grew up on in the decidedly more rural Musquodoboit Harbour, between Porters Lake and Lake Charlotte. But his baritone ukulele-based, harmony-grazed pastoral folk songs do have their […]
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I, Frankenstein
Aaron Eckhart is one of those guys Hollywood doesn’t know what to do with, the kind of person often attached to the sentence “A fine actor, but….” He’s handsome but not quirky, not quite Clooney-level charismatic but leaps and bounds above a Bradley Cooper. Somebody took a chance on making him an action hero and […]
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Timber Timbre
Timber Timbre’s music is the kind of moody indie-rock often called “gloomy,” “atmospheric,” “evil,” even, kind of stuff that blows across the streets of New Orleans, scores haunted houses and churches the world over. But the band’s fifth album, Hot Dreams (out April 1), was created in a pair of unlikely places–written in sunny California, […]
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Kathleen Edwards
Kathleen Edwards is on a break. After more than a decade of worldwide touring, four full-lengths, 11 Juno nominations, one Polaris Prize gala hosting gig and a pair of Letterman appearances, she’s back in her hometown of Ottawa with a new house and a new dog and no new songs. “I’ve been in that constant […]
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August: Osage County
Every generation gets the Julia Roberts it deserves—in the ’90s it was the big-haired, commitment-phobic Julia, who defected to Ireland for two goddamn years and came back still a star. (That would never happen now. None of it.) In the ’00s it was Capital-A Actor Julia, working with Soderbergh and Nichols and winning awards. Here […]
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Her
Woe is the sad sack with too much technology on his hands! In the distant-ish future—considering all the high-waisted pants and mustaches, it seems the hipsters have won—Joaquin Phoenix is a guy named Theodore going through a divorce and finding himself very far away from humans. (In Spike Jonze’s LA, everyone seems to be far […]
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Nebraska
There’s always time for a simple story, well told. Alexander Payne grew up in Nebraska, and this is less a love letter than an old photo album. Bruce Dern is Woody Grant, who has dementia and believes he’s won a million dollars in a Publishers Clearing House-style scam. He can no longer drive so he’s […]
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The Wolf of Wall Street
It’s the 1980s and Jordan Belfort is a self-made millionaire New York stock guy—you know, the ones who ruined the world recently. He loves sex workers, illegal drugs, throwing money around and having zero inner life or outside interests. The perfect person to play him is someone who has lived like this, so move outta […]
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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) is a quiet, careful man who works in the negative assets department of Life magazine, down in the basement. He supports his mother (Shirley MacLaine), picks up the slack from his free-spirit sister (Kathryn Hahn) and balances his chequebook by hand. He’s in love with a girl at work (Kristen Wiig). […]