The dark, cold months of January and February are traditionally slow ones for the Canadian movie business. There may be the odd series that shoots right through to March, but it’s rare that an American production will shoot anywhere in Canada right now. Filmmakers would rather not come up here when it’s cold, especially if […]
Arts + Music
Live theatre, art exhibits, comedy, literary, spoken word – The Coast guide to Halifax and Dartmouth, NS . The downtown, local arts scene – plays, writers, actors, artists and performers. Painting, sculpture, photography, stand-up, stage.
Posted inArts + Music
Knowing your history
I’m a sucker for magazine special issues, so the January/February edition of The Atlantic had my attention from the first line of the editorial. “With this issue The Atlantic Monthly begins a year-long celebration of our upcoming 150th anniversary,” the editors write. “Fifteen decades is a long time; only a handful of publications anywhere have […]
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Sticking with the Policy
Having returned from a short three-date Maritimes stint with friends Wintersleep, rock group Folds of Policy are heading back to the studio with the intentions of finishing work on their sophomore effort, tentatively titled Trouble on the Wall. Bassist Charlie Coolen says while there are no huge, conscious format changes from Stay in Your Homes’ […]
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High fidelity
Gyms make a racket. Whirring machines, feet pounding, weights clanging and thudding on the floor, fans overhead. Few people notice unless they’re the few without the popular aural accessory, the digital music player. “I usually like to listen to more exciting music, stuff that pumps you up,” says Matt Conway, a 19-year-old kinesiology student at […]
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The thrill of the Hunt
The Halifax hard rock scene just got better. After a line-up shuffle, various part-time jobs to pay for recording and years of songwriting, the members of Big Game Hunt are set to unleash their debut of accomplished, riff-filled stoner rock, The Gods Drink Whiskey, on an unsuspecting public this Friday night. “The boy bands when […]
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Reviews of TransAmerica and The New World
Do moviegoers still like movies, or do they just like going to them? I had a curious experience at The New World the other night. The theatre was full almost to capacity. Then, about an hour into the movie, people started filing out. A new group would make their exit every five minutes or so. […]
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Lost in translation?
Hollywood does not handle ordinary realities like weddings and relationships very well, so I worried about TransAmerica’s treatment of transsexuals long before the movie arrived in Halifax. In the mid-1990s The Crying Game, To Wong Foo and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert used transgendered people as main characters, but they were either tragic plot devices […]
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It takes a hero
Our experience with Reader’s Digest extends mostly to dentist waiting rooms and airplanes, though we often marvel at how some version of RD is printed in a couple hundred countries. But an eagle-eyed reader pointed us to the January 2006 issue, featuring dreamy diver Alexandre Despatie, and its rather earnest feature on reader-voted Heroes of […]
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North by no way
After a single year of promoting under the clever spoof label NXNE, the North by North End festival, featuring local bands playing in north end Halifax venues, will be legally forced to modify its marketing strategy for 2006. The huge North by Northeast festival — held annually in Toronto — smacked the organizers of the […]
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Mock star
After years of couch surfing, Michael Mabbott is giving up his apartment in Vancouver and moving to Toronto. The Alberta-born writer-director put the move off, but he needs to be there for his career, especially as his first feature film is being released in theatres across Canada—the country-rock mockumentary The Life and Hard Times of […]
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Flightplan
In March of 2004, the four members of Halifax rock combo In-Flight Safety flew across this vast country of ours, fully expecting to capture their hopes and dreams on tape. Spending four weeks in a Vancouver recording studio with a renowned producer at the helm, the band had no idea that this month-long endeavour would […]
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The quiet one
“I’m growing a bit concerned as I’m still waiting for the records to arrive from Nashville,” says Richard Lann, over a bottle of pulp-free orange juice at Uncommon Grounds. “I wish that they were being made over in Dartmouth so I could just pick them up.” While these wrinkly details are being ironed out, Lann […]