So, crybaby, can’t score tickets to your fav-ourite band’s sold-out show? The big night’s approaching and you’re empty handed and broken hearted? Chin up, kid—you don’t have to miss out, you just have to get creative. Some tried and true methods include buying tickets on eBay (or from dodgy-looking men near the venue); being the […]
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
Corpse Bride
Necrophilia is the unspoken threat in Just Like Heaven and Corpse Bride. Both are highly accessible. But where Just Like Heaven is soap opera treacle, only the Tim Burton film has the courage to address the lure of dead things as a rejection of established civility. Yeah, Burton went there already with Winona Ryder’s Lydia […]
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D’oh! Where’s my deer?
You might not notice anything out of place among the Mutations in the Garden of Delight. In fact, unless you look at the map for the Port Authority and NSCAD University’s new outdoor sculpture park at the entrance to Halifax Harbourwalk, you wouldn’t know that something is terribly amiss. At some point during the night […]
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Cowboy Show
Dustin Harvey used to be such a trusting young man. One year ago, he happily promoted his new stage production Winding Up Godot, a parody of the classic Waiting for Godot starring wind-up toys. Unfortunately, the estate of Samuel Beckett found out about Harvey’s little spoof (possibly from a Coast article) and threatened to sue […]
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Writing the streets
It’s a well-documented fact: Canada is an enormous land mass. You can make this country your home and still never, in your lifetime, experience isolation in the flat prairies, vertigo peering up at the Rockies, or rapture from the alien glow of the Northern Lights. This sense of mystery, which in its darker moments can […]
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Sleater-Kinney saves the world
I’ve just caught shit from the drummer of Sleater-Kinney. In asking Janet Weiss about the state of women in music, I should have known better and she lets me know it. “How do you feel about men in music?” Weiss fires back. “I feel like you’re putting me in the ghetto just asking that question. […]
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The outsiders
“I was up at 3am one morning and was really bored so I just decided to send some of our songs to Jeffery at Art & Crafts,” says Adam Nimmo, drummer for The Most Serene Republic. “He got back to me the next day and was really excited about what he heard. The rest, as […]
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Anniversary horribilis
There are plenty of things to hate about the glossy publication that comes inside the massive Sunday edition of the New York Times. For starters, it’s attached to the Times, which any Coast reader knows is leading the corporate right-wing media conspiracy. (Pity those conservatives who think the Times is the official newsletter of the […]
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Coast to coast
Toronto-based band The Coast will be bringing it to our streets for the first time this weekend. Formerly known as The July 26th Movement, the group recently switched identities following some uncertainty. “Ben likes to say that, first and foremost, The July 26th Movement wouldn’t fit on the drums. But our old name was a […]
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Screen test
Whole New Thing Co-written by and co-starring Cape Breton’s prodigal son Daniel MacIvor, Whole New Thing is about a sexual awakening of a teenage boy (Aaron Webber, making his screen debut). After he experiences his first wet dream, he writes a 1,000-page book about it (complete with illustrations), so his worried hippie mom (Rebecca Jenkins, […]
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The Exorcism of Emily Rose
The fight between religion and science in The Exorcism of Emily Rose is mirrored in the movie’s own struggle for respectability. Not content to be “just” a horror movie, the “Based on a True Story” credit is an attempt to legitimize it with a seriousness it doesn’t contain. The effect of applying horror tropes to […]
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Festival express
In 1981, the world of film festivals was very different. Sundance wasn’t even known by the title of Robert Redford’s most famous role. It was The Utah/US Film Festival, just moved from Salt Lake to Park City. The Toronto International Film Festival was five years old, also under its former name, The Festival of Festivals, […]
