Sandra Bullock is Mary, an obnoxiously juvenile crossword creator, hot for golden-boy cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper), obsessively stalking him across America. It’s remarkable enough that All About Steve is centered on a character so profoundly unwatchable—Mary’s know-it-all nattering borders on being sadistically anti-social, as if it’s a dare for the other characters to punch her […]
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Judge’s Extract a great leveller
Mike Judge’s cinematic legacy is secure with his searing satire Office Space. Remarkable for uncovering the backwards cult of personalities within confined work spaces, begetting a rabid cult following and pre-dating Ricky Gervais’ The Office by a couple of years, Judge is now a vaunted chronicler of those poor souls who must co-exist amongst the […]
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York Redoubt
If York Redoubt’s main vision was to make noise, they’ve succeeded. But there’s more than just noise here: heavy distortion and feedback play into a math-rock, post-punk aesthetic. Recorded partly in an abandoned schoolhouse, warping floorboards and haunted basements seem completely in line with the music. Arty, weighty but still accessible, the different elements of […]
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09.09.09
It’s the big Number Nine. And yes, it’s another Beatles review. The Beatles: Rock Band (Harmonix) is now available in stores, as well as the remastered editions of the band’s studio albums on CD, both individual albums and in two box sets. There are no digital downloads available yet, but MSNBC is speculating that there […]
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Vote for the winner of the Echo songwriting prize online
The SOCAN Echo songwriting prize has assembled a mini playlist of five songs they they have determined to be “some of the most innovative, creative and artistic songs created in the past year by independent songwriters in Canada.” Halifax hero Joel Plaskett made the list with “Through and Through and Through.” Have a listen at www.echoprize.ca, vote and know that a single mouse click can help a Canadian artist win a $5,000 cash prize. Productive!
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Alpha Dogg
If you happen to walk past the Metro Centre and have a Woodstock seizure at the scent emerging, don’t fret, the hippies didn’t win. It’s merely Snoop Dogg taking his patented mid-set chronic break. Tickets are $44.50 to $54.50 (gin and juice sold separately). Many are unaware that Snoop Dogg’s real name is Cordazar Calvin […]
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Arctic Monkeys
I wish I hadn’t read that Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) produced this album. It’s all I can hear. Every little hook, the guitar tone, even the nonchalance of the singing. Homme might as well have moved to Sheffield long enough to adopt the accent and started a new band. Actually…what has Queens […]
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Black Diamond Bay
When a friend first played me The Dears in the summer of 2000, I liked them but wanted everything to sound more like Radiohead’s OK Computer. This is the album I should have had that summer, which is not to say it’s dated, but rather a little bit Dears, a little bit haunting, a little […]
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Franchise reaches its Final Destination
The Final Destination can only rank as a complete imaginative failure. Selling bland fatalism to kids, it’s the work of crooks. The original movie had the best premise of any slasher film: Making the killer death itself, while teenagers question the uncertainty of their own mortality. Rather than expand the mythos, the sequels (and this […]
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Show round up! Beenie Man, Busta and Rourke
The “Return of the Legends” tour brings Beenie Man (with Redflame and Lindo P) to the Paragon on Wednesday, September 16 (VIP $44.50, advance $32.50, door $40, tickets at ticketpro.ca), and just a mere three days later you can witness the glory of Busta Rhymes (and company) on at the Cunard Centre on Saturday, September […]
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Film Fest following
Among movie folk, there’s a ritual: Sit down with the Atlantic Film Festival catalogue and/or website, and plot out every moviegoing second (from September 17 to 26), considering travel time, crowd sizes and the chance of films actually coming back. We hoard non-perishables and determine which lanyard ribbon brings out the colour in our Vitamin […]
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Taking Woodstock fails to connect
When you’re living with the repercussions of baby boomer excess, it’s pretty hard to get excited for their halcyon nostalgia, which makes Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock hard to connect to in a meaningful way. If you are about to shoulder a generation’s enormous health care costs as they wither, do you really want to revel […]
