Leisure

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

Leisure

Beyond the chili bowl: U St.

If you’re looking for a fresh spot for dinner or drinks, leave pricey M Street behind and take a spin further down the alphabet to U Street, a neighborhood that’s up and coming so fast you want to make sure you get to it before it loses its edge.

By February 28, 2008

Leisure

DVD killed the video stars

Be Kind, Rewind, French director Michel Gondry’s most recent film, is average as a comedy, continuing the trend started by Gondry’s last offering, the disappointing The Science of Sleep. Despite falling far short of the visual inventiveness and splendor of the acclaimed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), though, Be Kind provides keen insight into the nature of filmmaking and the importance of community.

By February 28, 2008

Leisure

Forte: Emo rebirth

This illusion of commonality emerges whenever we identify with an artist’s body of work, and often spurs an unrealistic set of expectations. As Lacey puts it: “When you do an interview or meet a fan, the only reference they have of you is an album. So it’s almost that they want or expect you to be that [way] when we were really those people for four or five months.” This idea carries over into the long-term as well—we expect artists to stay the same and feel cheated when they don’t fulfill our preconceptions (insert references to Bob Dylan, Black Flag and more).

By February 28, 2008

Leisure

Effective cinema: the movies of your dreams

Some pieces in “The Cinema Effect” challenge our notion that moving pictures on a screen require a story, while others indulge it magnificently. One of the most impressive exhibitions currently in D.C., “The Cinema Effect” delivers a well-conceived blend of pieces to create an alternate, dream-like world.

By February 28, 2008

Leisure

Major Barbara’s battle

The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of “Major Barbara” is an incredibly crisp, engaging example of what the greater Washington D.C. theatre scene has to offer. Director Ethan McSweeny’s interpretation stays true to George Bernard Shaw’s impeccable original text and conveys the author’s pertinent social commentary and finely-tuned wit.

By February 28, 2008

Leisure

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 February 28, 2008

Leisure

Culottes for you lots: Classy classics

I thought Amy Adams looked absolutely magnificent on Oscar night. She had the whole vampy Jessica Rabbit thing going on while maintaining the poise and grace of one of Hollywood’s early leading ladies. But Kimora Lee Simmons, who was playing fashion critic for E!, disagreed.

By February 28, 2008

Leisure

Critical Voices: Cadence Weapon, Afterparty Babies

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Afterparty Babies, Cadence Weapon’s second LP, is how calculated it seems. Surely, countless hours go into crafting any good hip-hop album these days, but the effort put into Afterparty Babies extends beyond time spent in the studio or obsessively rewriting lyrics. Like the best rappers, Cadence Weapon seems fully aware of his audience, goals and idiosyncrasies; unlike the best-known rappers, he’s confident rather than megalomaniacal.

By February 28, 2008

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Critical Voices: Stephen Malkmus, Real Emotional Trash

Stephen Malkmus’ Real Emotional Trash is his first solo release that sounds as willfully sprawling as his best work with his old band. Backed once again by the Jicks, Malkmus has abandoned the clever, artsy pop of his last few releases, opting instead for a heavy jam-fest. Finally achieving the mix of hooks and guitar freakouts that fans have been awaiting through his four releases since the dissolution of Pavement, Real Emotional Trash is his best solo album to date.

By February 28, 2008

Leisure

Living purgatory In Bruges

The opening shots of In Bruges—sweeping views of the eponymous Belgian town’s brick houses, lush countryside and cobblestone streets, accompanied by streams of obscenities by Colin Farrell—set the tone for a smart black comedy filled with comedic juxtapositions.

By February 21, 2008

Leisure

Black Comedy: wit in the dark

Mask and Bauble’s “Black Comedy,” written by Peter Shaffer and directed by Hunter Styles (COL ’08), is a bright, raucous show filled with bubbly British accents and witty jokes that bring the complexities of sexuality to light.

By February 21, 2008

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Critical Voices: Beach House, Devotion

Baltimore’s Beach House, the name of dreampop duo Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand, garnered critical acclaim with their self-titled debut in 2006. Its sound was strikingly original in the increasingly homogenous indie rock world—the songs, comprised of distant organs and slide-guitars over drum machine beats and accompanied by Legrand’s stunning voice, moved forward at a snail’s pace while remaining fascinating. Devotion is an excellent follow-up to that album, a set of eleven love songs that subtly update the group’s sound for the better.

By February 21, 2008

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Critical Voices: Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears, Flight of the Knife

A year after releasing his well-received solo debut, The Shredding Tears, Bryan Scary is set to unleash his second album, Flight Of The Knife. Scary’s touring band, The Shredding Tears, joined him in the studio to help create an electric follow-up.

By February 21, 2008

Leisure

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 February 21, 2008

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Catch Oscar!

The Oscars are here, and be glad you live in D.C. this movie season, because there are quite a few places to gorge on quality films of all sorts. Just be ready to rail against the academy when they invariably pick the wrong one.

By the February 21, 2008

Leisure

Forte: An open letter to Apple

The bottom line is that between the iPod, iTunes and the Apple image, you’ve made being alone awfully convenient, even attractive. If the streak continues, maybe we can expect streaming concert footage on iTunes and albums made entirely with GarageBand.

By February 14, 2008

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SBF, seeking love and redemption

“In the Blood,” staged by the Black Theater Ensemble and written by Susan-Lori Parks, is a dark tale of a woman whose poverty and sexual prowess have given her five bastard children and a life of perpetual social exclusion. The story is loosely based on Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”—although the only vestiges of that archetypal classic are Hester La Negrita (the heroine) and an abundance of A’s (the only letter that Hester can read or write).

By February 14, 2008

Leisure

Culottes for you lots: Pretty in pink

When it comes to dressing up for the holidays, Valentine’s Day is notoriously short-changed. We get to wear pretty hats for Easter and little black dresses for New Years, but the idea of dressing up for Valentine’s Day seems, to many, a decidedly tacky thing to do. Mention anything about a Valentine’s Day outfit, and two visions come to mind: the middle-aged elementary school teacher in a voluminous cardigan covered in sequin hearts, and her polar opposite, the lingerie model in a trashy see-through teddy and crotchless panties. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

By February 14, 2008

Leisure

Finding Love, Etcetera

This Valentine’s Day, why not expand your cultural horizons? The Davis Center is putting on “Love, Etcetera,” a stupendous dance show by the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange based on the work of those two classic romantic Wills, Shakespeare and Nelson. A surprising pairing, but as Artistic Director Peter DiMuro explains, “their works are about human foibles, and they’re great storytellers.”

By February 14, 2008

Leisure

Recognize! what what?

Recognize!, the National Portrait Gallery’s new exhibit about hip-hop culture, is slightly self-admonishing, born of a desire to recognize the movement’s work as “museum-worthy.” Doing a bit of sampling of its own, the Portrait Gallery chose a photographer, a painter, a poet, a video artist and two graffiti artists to showcase different aspects of hip-hop. Forgoing its usual strategy of sticking to retrospectives, the Smithsonian museum has produced an awkward first foray into current culture. Although the exhibit feels disjointed and insufficient at times, most of its pieces are unique and worth seeing.

By February 14, 2008