Shira Hecht
Critical Voices: TV on the Radio, “Dear Science”
It is always astonishing when a band consistently improves in leaps and bounds with each and every release. One starts to wonder why we even bother to listen to the drivel that comes from other artists, rather than just wait for the next, exponentially improved release from one of these meteoric bands.
By Shira Hecht September 25, 2008
Traveling through history with colors and shapes
“The significance of a project such as this rests, I think, on its educational value.” So Jacob Lawrence wrote in the outline for his Migration Series before he started work on it in 1940. His goal, he wrote, was for Americans, black and otherwise, to learn something about the historical movement known as The Great Migration, when blacks from the South moved North in great numbers during the years following World War I. The Phillip’s current exhibition of the series he eventually painted underscores the difference between art and education, between portraying information and conveying feeling, between a timeline and a story. Even if he set out to educate, Lawrence also produced amazing works of art.
By Shira Hecht August 22, 2008
Popped Culture: I can has meme?
I absolutely love lolcats.
My brother once told me that they are the worst thing ever to befall the internet, and our disputes on the subject have done almost as much damage to our relationship as the time I broke his K’NEX tower when he was 8.
Lolcats, for the unfamiliar, are an internet phenomenon that consists of pictures of cats with captions in a big ugly font, posted on icanhascheezburger.com.
By Shira Hecht April 17, 2008
Come Hear the Music Play
In the last of the New South rehearsal rooms—past the 40 or so students practicing an Indian dance in a line; in the next, some 20 boys and girls watched another student show them where to put their hands to waltz—Lucy Obus (COL ‘11) slipped in her socks while strutting towards a collection of chairs and falls hard on her side. “Whoops!” she called before scrambling to her feet—“I’m ok! Let’s do this!” Mady Greene (COL ’10), started the song for the 15th time, the girls straddled their chairs, and dance rehearsals for Cabaret continued.
By Shira Hecht April 10, 2008
Popped Culture: Nerds strike back
The geeks are rallying.
/Film, a geeky movie website, led a boycott of the insignificant spoof Superhero Movie to protest the cutting down of a film called, of all things, Fanboys. The feature film version of this story about Star Wars obsessives was shortened by the studio, and the geeks at /Film were not ok with that. Their boycott sort of worked—Miramax will release the complete Fanboys on DVD—but it just underscores the distinct force that the geek contingent has become.
By Shira Hecht April 3, 2008
Don’t be so p-noid, son
The very first shot of Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park imparts that delicious feeling of being in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing. The credits roll demurely next to a Portland bridge, cars whoosh by, light plays on the water and the trees, glitchy electronic atmospheric music drowns out any natural sounds. Like many shots in the carefully constructed movie, every second feels perfect—crafted, like a painting. Every color, every trick of the light feels true and drastic.
By Shira Hecht March 27, 2008
Popped Culture: Backlash to the backlash
Vampire Weekend released their first CD at the end of January, and depending on who you are (and how much time you spend on the internet), you either hate them in spite of the hype, or like them despite the backlash. The band hasn’t been around that long and has already zoomed through the cycle of taste—blog buzz, great reviews, trickle into the mainstream, SNL performance, saturation (they play it at MUG!)—at warp speed.
By Shira Hecht March 13, 2008
Sex, drugs and Charlie
The idea behind Charlie Bartlett—a Ferris Bueller for the ‘00 decade!—is interesting enough, but the filmmakers wanted more. So they threw too many ideas at the wall to see which ones would stick, but most don’t. Although inventive and occasionally charming, the movie is too scattered and uneven to be satisfying.
By Shira Hecht February 28, 2008
Obsession doesn’t culminate in face paint
I have never been to a Georgetown basketball game. Okay, you can stop throwing things at me now. I watch them on TV sometimes, and I stay vaguely aware of how we’re doing, much as I stay vaguely aware of how much money is on my GoCard. I don’t have season tickets, and I don’t want to go through the hassle of finding a ticket, getting up early, and taking some sort of bus to the Verizon Center. I relish brunches in a mostly empty Leo’s, and the quiet feel of the campus when all the action is elsewhere. I haven’t lost my voice yet, and I have never scrubbed blue facepaint out of my hair (or at least, never for basketball reasons.)
By Shira Hecht February 21, 2008
Popped Culture: a bi-weekly column on entertainment
The writers’ strike is over, and thank God, because the strike made the entertainment world profoundly boring. In addition to the obvious problem—the lack of newly written words for actors to say—there was the problem that the strike itself, for all its worthwhile rationales and my love of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), was really boring to hear about. As NBC’s wacko chairman, Ben Silverman, explained, “Sadly, it feels like the nerdiest, ugliest, meanest kids in the high school are trying to cancel the prom.”
By Shira Hecht February 21, 2008