Leisure

Reviews and think pieces on music, movies, art, and theater.

Leisure

Scratch that Itch

Bruce Norris’s The Pain and the Itch is a tricky piece of dramatic machinery. Its structure is carefully convoluted, painstakingly difficult, and yet, by the end, complete and exact.

By March 25, 2010

Leisure

Raise a brow for D.C. artists

According to the mission statement of Georgetown University Art Aficionados, “creativity is and remains Georgetown University’s Achilles heel.”

By March 25, 2010

Leisure

Lez’hur Ledger: Adventure to the land before time

A Neanderthal woman struggles under the weight of the antelope slung over her shoulder, carrying it laboriously back to her family’s shelter.

By March 25, 2010

Leisure

Critical Voices: MGMT, Congratulations

From its scratch-off lowbrow album art to its panned leak of “Flash Delirium,” critics and bloggers were eager to make scant predications about MGMT’s follow-up to 2008’s smash hit Oracular Spectacular.

By March 25, 2010

Leisure

Critical Voices: Fang Island, Fang Island

According to Jason Bartell, one of Brooklyn-based Fang Island’s guitarists, the group’s goal is to “make music for people who like music.”

By March 25, 2010

Leisure

Rub Some Dirt On It: This is your brain on hookah

Smoking is a fairly prevalent vice at Georgetown. We have all walked past that guy in the GERMS shirt smoking on the Village C Patio, and there is nothing new about having to pass through the eternal smoke cloud in front of Lauinger in order to get some studying done.

By March 25, 2010

Leisure

Bottoms Up: Booze in your back pocket

In the Prohibition era, knocking one back—or two, or three, for that matter—was about more than just getting sloshed on a Saturday night.

By March 25, 2010

Leisure

Director Bong Joon-ho on Mother and incest

South Korean director Bong Joon-ho has been making critically-lauded films for over a decade, striking international box office gold in 2006 with The Host, the highest grossing South Korean film of all time. Through a translator, Bong discussed Western cinema, the role of sex in film, and the importance of actors’ input with the Voice’s Mark Stern.

By March 18, 2010

Leisure

Lewis’s Big Short takes on Wall St.

In financial parlance, to short something is to bet that it will fail. If I were to short your grades this semester, for example, I would be gambling that you’ll sleep through one final and bomb the rest.

By March 18, 2010

Leisure

Another overpriced café

As a lowly, jobless college student whose parents don’t respond to my weekly pleas for cash as promptly as I’d like them to, the thought of lunch at a Georgetown café makes me think about my starving wallet rather than my grumbling stomach.

By March 18, 2010

Leisure

D.C.’s “other” venues

Even though the first official day of spring isn’t until Saturday, this rash of warm weather we’re experiencing is a sure sign that the season is here.

By March 18, 2010

Leisure

Critical Voices: Daughters, Daughters

Coherence is a trait that most musicians strive for in their songwriting. Rhode Island band Daughters, however, originally took a different approach, seeking instead to create disjointed structures and illogical rhythms.

By March 18, 2010

Leisure

Yr Blues: The age of Aziz

It’s still pretty early in 2010 to start making bold assertions about any purported albums of the year, so brace yourself for this one: Aziz Ansari has already released the best comedy album of 2010 with Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening.

By March 18, 2010

Leisure

Suffer for fashion: Fashion tip-off

March Madness is finally here. Tonight, as Georgetown squares off against the Ohio University Bobcats in its first game of the tournament, fans in living rooms and common rooms across campus will don their game-day t-shirts and glue themselves to glowing television, hoping for NCAA glory.

By March 18, 2010

Leisure

Crêpe balls of fire

Whether or not Georgetown needs a new crêpe place is debatable. When a lust for thin pancakes and gooey filling strikes, we already have two strong choices: Snap for quick and affordable fixes and Café Bonaparte for classier meals.

By March 4, 2010

Leisure

TAB The Band proves Hoyas can rock too

Amerie, Rites of Spring lead singer Guy Picciotto, and those two dudes from Vertical Horizon: the number of notable music artists that have recently come out of Georgetown can be counted on one hand.

By March 4, 2010

Leisure

Credit where credit’s due

The theater went dark and the credits began to roll. A tight, intense close-up of a hand-stitched notebook bulging with margin-to-margin scrawl appeared on the screen.

By March 4, 2010

Leisure

It’s alive … and it’s really bad

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I’m convinced the zombie apocalypse has already happened.

By March 4, 2010

Leisure

Critical Voices: Titus Andronicus, The Monitor

Sounding like Bright Eyes after an eight ball of speed, New Jersey’s own Titus Andronicus return on March 9 with its sophomore effort, The Monitor.

By March 4, 2010

Leisure

Critical Voices: Joanna Newsom, Have One on Me

Joanna Newsom’s 2006 album, Ys, is one of my favorite releases of all-time.

By March 4, 2010