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 […]
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
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 […]
Posted inArts + Music
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 […]
Posted inArts + Music
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, […]
Posted inArts + Music
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 […]
Posted inArts + Music
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, […]
Posted inArts + Music
Nothing personal
Add one more talented singer-songwriter to the list of those who call Halifax home. After more than a decade in the local music scene, Norma MacDonald finally releases her first debut solo album, Nothing Is Where It Was, this Saturday at Stage Nine. “I feel like I’m starting something completely new,” the 30-year-old MacDonald says. […]
Posted inArts + Music
Girl Talk
A young girl—still a virgin—is called a slut simply because she lives in a group home. At the age of 10, another girl overhears her principal whisper “slut” as she walks by in a pair of short shorts. Yet another makes the mistake of kissing a boy and ends up being shunned by her classmates […]
Posted inArts + Music
Recording soundtracks
Film is a naturally collaborative medium, and much of the best in music is as well. To bring filmmaking bigwigs and music honchos together is such a natural marriage, it’s sort of surprising no one thought of it before. This year’s Atlantic Film Festival dates, September 15 to 24, overlap with the Nova Scotia Music […]
Posted inArts + Music
Poetry in Motion
November 11, 2004. A couple thousand people come together for a Remembrance Day ceremony at Sullivan’s Pond in Dartmouth. Paul McNeill and Catherine Cooper are among the families and neighbours who have devoted the day to appreciating the men and women who sacrificed everything for their country’s future; or, more precisely, us. After all the […]
Posted inArts + Music
On the line
When Halifax filmmaker Steven James May set out to document the lives of three women working in the phone sex industry, he knew that he would dealing with some touchy subject matter. Sure enough, in the weeks leading up to his film’s premier at the Atlantic Film Festival on September 22, he was busy working […]
Posted inArts + Music
On the line
Laura Linney is the perfect amount of famous. Consider the case of Kinsey, the 2004 biopic of controversial sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, for which Linney received her second Academy Award nomination. She gained 25 pounds to play the doctor’s wife. When Renee Zellweger ate herself to a healthy weight for both Bridget Jones films, the […]