It’s Saturday night at Stage Nine. Sharp Like Knives are set to play their CD release show. The place is packed, almost too packed for skinny, mop-haired and bespectacled frontman Paul Hammond. “This is almost overwhelming,” Hammond says, looking around at the nearly shoulder-to-shoulder audience threatening to swallow him up. “I didn’t think there’d be […]
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.
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Count on Crowe
Ani Difranco started her independent record label, Righteous Babe Records, after moving to New York and realizing the record industry wasn’t interested in embracing what she had to offer. Now with a staff of eight, and offices on two continents, the label has become more of a philosophy than a means to an end. Providing […]
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Murderball
The assumptions of fear and pity that keep people from documentaries about the disabled are shattered in the opening minutes of Murderball. Quadriplegic rugby players are introduced against the sledgehammer-to-the-face ferocity of Ministry’s “Thieves.” Rage sidesteps maudlin outsider perspective, readying viewers to accept the subjects as human. At its most basic, Murderball is an Inspirational […]
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Free Form’s function
“Hold on, let me give a quick hurray — we just found out we’re not lost,” says Ryan Wylie, turning away from his cell phone to cheer on his fellow passengers. Navigation woes are inevitable as the co-founder of the Free Form Film Festival travels across North America in a convoy of three vehicles—two vans […]
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When the levee breaks
The Wall Street Journal pointed out this week that three years ago, Louisiana newspaper The Times-Picayune ran an in-depth five-part series warning of the hurricane danger to that part of the southern United States. It discussed, at great length, concerns about being surrounded on all sides by water as the ground continued to sink, how […]
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Shocking MIANS nominees
The Music Industry Association of Nova Scotia has announced the nominees for its annual awards ceremony to be held September 25 at The Marquee Club. MIANS will host the event at the end of Nova Scotia Music Week, which is slated to take place September 21-25. Joel Plaskett and Matt Mays earned the highest number […]
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Great escape
Douglas Coupland’s Souvenir of Canada books prove our country’s fascination with our own iconography. From stubby beer bottles to Nanaimo bars, Coupland’s photographic dissection of Canadian culture is one of the most amusing visual interpretations of our home and native land. Artist Leah Modigliani grabs hold of Coup-land’s magnifying glass and looks much deeper. Although […]
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Inside the Fringes
Challenging the very definition of the term fringe, this year’s Atlantic Fringe Festival includes three established companies: Angels and Heroes, Foghorn and Exodus Theatres. Alongside Angels and Heroes’s raunchy Hard-On House (a take-off on George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House) and Foghorn’s emotionally raw I Stand Before You Naked by Joyce Carol Oates, Exodus’s production of […]
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The anniversary party
If ever she once was, Lia Rinaldo is no longer bothered by a new film festival in Montreal. “It became quite clear that we were pursuing different things,” says Rinaldo, the Atlantic Film Festival’s director, of the new event that overlaps with AFF’s 25th anniversary. “So, we haven’t kept in regular contact, as one would […]
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Making Noise
When asked who their influences are, the two members of Special Noise mention North of America first. Then Slight Return, Thrush Hermit, the Super Friendz and Burdocks—all Halifax bands the duo has seen live. Greg Napier, the group’s drummer, and Jef Simmons, who sings and plays guitar, sit around a table at the North End […]
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The smooth talker
Massari, AKA Sari Abboud, lives the life of a smooth talker. His words are like the fine-tailored white suit he wears on the cover of his debut CD—silky and sleek. A request for background information turns into a calling card for a burgeoning Don Juan at a singles’ bar. When asked how old he is, […]
