Leisure

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

Leisure

Artists in ‘Dialogue’ speak up

The National Museum of African Art is easy to miss. Tucked behind the Smithsonian Castle, the low-profile museum is often overlooked by sightseers jonesing instead for T-Rexes, airplanes, and presidential... Read more

By February 19, 2009

Leisure

Ring around Smithsonian

“Spectacular Saturn: Images from the Cassini-Huygens Mission” offers a mesmerizing photographic retreat within the typically flashy and crowded National Air and Space Museum. Quite literally tucked away at the end... Read more

By February 19, 2009

Leisure

Black Friday

As television ratings for the four major networks slip further and further into the boob tube abyss, certain things about the TV industry have been operating differently than in the... Read more

By February 19, 2009

Leisure

All my loving

Time for a pop quiz: Which band released 12 studio albums in eight years, sold a total of 545 million records two years after breaking up in 1970, but have... Read more

By February 19, 2009

Leisure

Critical Voices: Asobi Seksu

After the critical success of their 2006 breakthrough , Citrus, Asobi Seksu have tweaked their lush, layered formula on Hush. Much of this new album indulges a colder, more reserved... Read more

By February 19, 2009

Leisure

Critical Voices: M.Ward

M. Ward’s latest release Hold Time is as much an album about loneliness and tragedy as one about religious hope and love. Throughout the album, the crooner’s tender, country voice... Read more

By February 19, 2009

Leisure

Critical Voices: Morrissey

The best time to listen to Morrissey is the morning after you were much drunker than everyone else you went out with the night before. You don’t know the details... Read more

By February 19, 2009

Leisure

Sweet Coraline, 3D never looked so good

In an industry where bad romantic comedies and gratuitous horror flicks can be filmed in as few as six weeks, it’s comforting to know that it took six months to... Read more

By February 12, 2009

Leisure

A short exposure to big ideas

  Just as a writer will use the short story format to address a topic too narrow to fill an entire novel, directors use the “short subject” as a medium... Read more

By February 12, 2009

Leisure

The south marches on Wisconsin

Francis “Fritz” Brogan, the co-owner of Kitchen2404 in Glover Park, is a tall, imposing guy who is never one to sit still. He’s also a Hoya, having graduated from the... Read more

By February 12, 2009

Leisure

Foreign films come home

This weekend the “Global Glimpses” film festival, only in its second year of operation, will screen all five foreign films nominated this year for an Academy Award. The festival aims... Read more

By February 12, 2009

Leisure

Aphrodisiacs

In Act II of Macbeth, a porter, who had been “carousing till the second cock,” tells MacDuff that drink “provokes the desire, but takes away the performance,” a phenomenon known... Read more

By February 12, 2009

Leisure

Naked heart

If PDA and public nudity are not on your agenda for Valentine’s Day, maybe they should be. Whether you’re flying solo this year or still chugging along with last year’s... Read more

By February 12, 2009

Leisure

Cheap date: Valentine’s Day on the hilltop

For an ant mound populated by 12,000 20-somethings, Georgetown has a startling lack of PDA. Maybe that’s a good thing (do you really want to see the kids from model... Read more

By February 12, 2009

Leisure

Critical Voices: Dark Was The Night

4AD’s decision to greenlight Dark Was the Night, curated by the National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner, must have been all too easy: great lineup, 32 exclusive tracks, and a great... Read more

By February 12, 2009

Leisure

Critical Voices: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

It’s no secret that I’m predisposed to the dreamy synth-pop pining of loves lost and romantic weekend getaways. The mellowed indie-pop of Hefner and Jets to Brazil raised me to... Read more

By February 12, 2009

Leisure

What’s a girl to do?

In “What’s a Girl to Do When It’s Time to Put Down the Drink?,” which opened Wednesday night at the H Street Playhouse, sole actress Tara Handron openly explores the... Read more

By February 12, 2009

Leisure

The heart and fist of a revolutionary

The two-part film Che, an epic biography of Cuban Revolutionary leader Che Guevara, falls short of its expected epic proportions—though it is arguably better for it. In a decisive rebellion... Read more

By February 5, 2009

Leisure

So you want to catch an Albanian sex trafficker?

At one point in Taken, when told by an old-friend-turned-cynical-police-chief that he’ll never find his daughter, Brian Mills (Liam Neeson) threatens that he will stop at nothing to save her,... Read more

By February 5, 2009

Leisure

A gallery of Vices

The National Portrait Gallery is an odd museum among D.C.’s many Smithsonian gems. For a hall full of paintings, it isn’t particularly concerned with any particular Art Historical ideas, and... Read more

By February 5, 2009