Leisure

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

Leisure

Hot wax and vinyl: Record Store Day

Valentine’s Day is a manufactured holiday created by the Hallmark Corporation. The “Christmas Season” pushes further into November every year. Arbor Day exists solely at the behest of a mysterious multinational pine tree conglomerate.

By April 15, 2010

Leisure

Let’s tame! That! Shrew!

There’s little subtlety to be found in The Taming of the Shrew, Mask and Bauble’s last production of the semester, which opens in Poulton Hall on Thursday night.

By April 15, 2010

Leisure

Critical Voices: Method Man, Ghostface Killah, and Raekwon, Wu-Massacre

At first glance, it’s tough to tell whether Wu-Massacre is a triumph or a half-baked disappointment.

By April 15, 2010

Leisure

Critical Voices: The Tallest Man on Earth, The Wild Hunt

Listening to The Wild Hunt, the sophomore release from indie-folk artist Kristian Matsson’s solo project The Tallest Man on Earth, is puzzling.

By April 15, 2010

Leisure

Bottoms Up: Bud Light’s slogan In-ability

“Drinkability” is dead. All I can say is, it’s about time. You know what I’m talking about—at least you do if you’ve watched TV or opened a magazine in the past three years.

By April 15, 2010

Leisure

Rub Some Dirt on It: Rethinking the “T” out of G.T.L.

With the weather in D.C. finally beginning to warm up, many of us will be bringing our books and our bikinis to the front lawn to sunbathe and study.

By April 15, 2010

Leisure

Mmm Mmm: Mediterranean meat on M Street

Ed Witt is not an ordinary chef. He is a tattooed, bald force of nature that just so happens to wear a chef’s apron. Yet he does not inspire images of fire and brimstone—his soft, drawling voice and laid-back attitude exist at odds with his shaved head and body ink.

By April 8, 2010

Leisure

Traverse-ing 18th Century lust and innuendo

The Georgetown University Theater and Performance Studies Program’s latest production, the D.C. premiere of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Grace of Mary Traverse, is not for the faint of heart.

By April 8, 2010

Leisure

Hey girl, I like your Tattoo

If you want to understand the title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, don’t blink. Lisbeth Salander, the movie’s inked-up heroine, does have a massive, detailed tattoo of a dragon encompassing her entire back and a good chunk of her leg, but during the film’s two and a half hours, it gets no mention and only passing screen time.

By April 8, 2010

Leisure

Critical Voices: Das Racist, Shut Up, Dude

When “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” blew up on the music blogosphere last summer, it provoked a firestorm of controversy—depending on who you asked, it was either insipid, repetitive drivel or witty, inventive joke rap.

By April 8, 2010

Leisure

Critical Voices: Jónsi, Go

Sigur Ros’s Jónsi Þór Birgisson, a fairy-like, grandeur-loving vocalist with a keen sense of drama, teamed up with his boyfriend Alex last year to release an ambient album called Riceboy Sleeps.

By April 8, 2010

Leisure

Suffer for Fashion: April is the smelliest month

While the warm weather arriving on the Hilltop might bring out the best in Georgetown’s landscaping, rising temperatures often bring out the worst in what Georgetown students wear.

By April 8, 2010

Leisure

Yr Blues: I like playing outside too

This past weekend, emboldened by some incredible weather, I did something that I hadn’t done in a very long time: I brought an acoustic guitar outdoors.

By April 8, 2010

Leisure

You rotten, dirty Motherfu—

The rural South Korean town in Joon-ho Bong’s Mother is a dark, ominous place for the film’s setting. The weather is always rainy or overcast, the town’s hills are covered with tombstones and soggy debris, the residents constantly lurking in alleyways or suspiciously peering out windows. It’s a town full of secrets, but Bong doesn’t distract us with superfluous details.

By March 25, 2010

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