Larissa Ong

Leisure

SW ArtsFest (e)merges this weekend

Hot on the heels of last Saturday’s Art All Night event is SW ArtsFest––yet another opportunity to soak up visual and performing arts offerings in the District. With six different... Read more

By October 2, 2014

Leisure

Exceptional American art at Phillips

It’s fitting that America’s first modern art museum, The Phillips Collection, should exhibit Made in the USA, a rich anthology spanning the enormous breadth of American modern art collected by... Read more

By March 27, 2014

Leisure

A sad, honest look at the promised land

You wouldn’t be wrong to immediately associate the film Bethlehem with the birthplace of Jesus Christ. But Bethlehem’s namesake is instead the site of violence—cold, calculated and endemic violence that... Read more

By March 6, 2014

Leisure

Al-Mansour triumphs with first film shot in Saudi Arabia

On paper, Wadjda is your typical Saudi preteen girl. She also possesses more spunk and spice than the entire cast of Mean Girls combined. This may be surprising given Wadjda’s context, but viewers cannot help but feel an inner glow every time the film’s titular character out-sasses the boys.

By September 19, 2013

Leisure

GU Hispanic Theater students take the quixotic route

Mischief and trickery may be the staples of any Cervantes play, but the amusing antics involved are always grounded by heavier social commentary. Organized by director and novelist Professor Barbara Mujica’s Hispanic Theater class, two of the Spanish playwright’s lesser known one-act plays, El retablo de las maravillas and La cueva de Salamanca, explore this dichotomy between comedy and something a little darker.

By April 25, 2013

Leisure

Company You Keep: Not what it seems

Terrorists aren’t oceans away; they are in our midst. The radical freedom fighters that were born out of ‘60s rebellion are on full display in The Company You Keep, an enthralling though not quite fully satisfying reminder that this term, which was still used only once in the film, is but a name for ideological fierceness and misguided passions that have a role in this country’s history as much as that of any foreign land.

By April 17, 2013

Leisure

Examining intimacy with “Let’s Not Ever Be Strangers Again”

I have never witnessed a performance art show, since it’s a relatively nascent artistic phenomenon to gain attention from the general population. The closest I ever got was visiting the Curator’s Office, a gallery near Logan Circle, to examine the extraordinary documentation of D.C. native and performance artist Kathryn Cornelius’s edgy experiment, performed in summer 2012. “Let’s Not Ever Be Strangers Again” details 34-year-old Cornelius’s experience of getting married to seven different people in seven hours, and promptly divorcing each one merely an hour after the wedding vows. All in a day’s work.

By April 11, 2013