Leisure

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

Leisure

Cabaret: what good is sitting alone in your room?

Before the audience of Mask and Bauble’s spring musical, Cabaret, is ushered to its seats, it is afforded a brief glimpse into a dimly lit dressing room. The room, populated by ladies in bustiers and hotpants and men in lipstick, is just a tantalizing taste of the raucous, racy experience ahead. While not without its serious plot points, the show is worth seeing for the erotic musical numbers alone, which almost make the storyline incidental.

By April 17, 2008

Leisure

Smart People, stupid movie

Smart People really should have been called “Arrogant and Socially Inept People”—all of the characters have chips on their shoulders proportionate to the sizes of their IQs. Characters in a film like this one should fall into one of two types: either delightfully dysfunctional (see: Little Miss Sunshine) or delightfully malicious (see: The Squid and the Whale). The problem with Smart People is that writer Mark Poirier (COL ’91) can’t seem to decide which type he wants his characters to be, so their constantly bizzare behavior comes off as disingenuous. And because its characters are at the heart of the film, Smart People falls flat.

By April 17, 2008

Leisure

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 April 17, 2008

Leisure

Critical Voices: Subtle, ExitingARM

ExitingARM as whole, though, represents a gamble on Subtle’s part. They’ve seemingly restrained their sound to rope in more listeners, at the expense of some of their more substantive content. Not that I can blame Doseone (see: Subtle album sales), but I get the sense that ultimately no one’s happy here: the songs aren’t poppy enough for mass appeal and will likely disappoint former enthusiasts.

By April 17, 2008

Leisure

Culottes for you lots: Your closet’s secret stash

There are so many mornings when I wake up, open my closet and listlessly browse its contents only to come to the despairing conclusion that I have nothing to wear. This is particularly frustrating because I feel like I’m always shopping, and my new clothes are constantly evaporating into thin air, when I know that they’re really hanging there, pitifully staring at me after ownership has stripped them of their exciting potential. Once in a while, however, I’ll remember the secret stash that I have, that everyone has, lying fallow among the hangers.

By April 10, 2008

Leisure

Separated, under the same moon

If you can ignore the clichés that push along the plot of Under the Same Moon (La misma luna), you’ll find a sometimes-adventurous movie about the challenge of crossing the U.S.-Mexican border. Yet each time Under the Same Moon hints at character development or a unique perspective on immigration, an overdone, blurry camera shot— signifying a lost little boy’s sense of confusion—ruins any semblance of originality.

By April 10, 2008

Leisure

Some Powerful Stuff

The premise of “Stuff Happens” is terrifying: a dramatic reenactment of the build-up to the Iraq War, it could easily have turned into an overdone farce. Instead, the play is more of a thought-provoking documentary than a satire, weaving together detailed research with remarkably unbiased and restrained speculation about what happens behind closed doors. “Stuff Happens” is a powerful and intricately choreographed commentary that is still shocking despite the topic’s familiarity.

By April 10, 2008

Leisure

Forte: The power of music blogs

Turns out the internet isn’t killing the music industry after all. According to a recent study by NYU’s Vasant Dhar and Elaine Chang, the level of blog activity preceding an album’s release strongly correlates with its subsequent sales. Dhar and Chang tracked online buzz for 108 albums during an eight-week period (four weeks before and after release dates), using Amazon.com CD sales as their fiscal reference point. Interestingly, blogging beat out other relevant sources of “chatter”—consumer reviews, online and mainstream media reviews, and (amusingly enough) the bands’ friend count on MySpace—in its predictive power for commercial success.

By April 10, 2008

Leisure

A 3rd Person Singular view of couples, abstracted

“The great thing about couples is they arrange themselves in these weird positions,” Amy Sillman explains in an exhibition publication about her series of paintings, Third Person Singular. At Sillman’s new show at the Hirshhorn Museum, you can see that she’s on to something: the entrance wall is covered with black-and-white sketches of various pairs lazily sprawled over each other on a couch, rigidly sitting straight up with arms awkwardly around each other’s backs, or curving their legs to play footsie at a dinner party. The heart of Sillman’s work, though, is the abstracted bursts of garish color that develop from these primary studies of geometric relationships between bodies.

By April 10, 2008

Leisure

2amys: When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie

Another review of 2amys, one of D.C.’s tastiest gourmet pizza purveyors, may seem like a waste of valuable newsprint. After all, the District’s young and beautiful made it a tried and true favorite, and it was voted “Best Pizza” by the Washington Post in 2006. Let’s remember, though, that it’s 2008, and the restaurant hasn’t won that illustrious title in two years. In fact, 2amys has recently fallen slightly out of favor with critics, and its hipster clientele has largely been replaced with young parents toting unruly tots who probably couldn’t appreciate a good sfogliatelle if it fell into their diapered laps.

By April 10, 2008

Leisure

Scorsese Shines a Light on the Stones

In November 1969, the Rolling Stones introduced themselves as the “World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band” during their massive “1969 American Tour.” Nearly forty years later, it’s hard to strip the perennial rockers of this sobriquet. In Shine A Light, famed director Martin Scorsese blends footage from the Stones’ 2006 shows at New York’s Beacon Theater with archived interviews and recordings that pay tribute to the band’s longevity. The result is a dazzling rockumentary fueled by electric performances, which solidly refute Hollywood’s claim that this is no country for old men.

By April 10, 2008

Leisure

Critical Voices: M83, Saturdays = Youth

M83’s latest album, Saturdays = Youth, is sole band member Anthony Gonzalez’s paean to the music of his childhood. Marked by the electronic drum kicks and synth-heavy ballads popularized by Kate Bush and the Cocteau Twins, the album is so steeped in ‘80s production values that it’s tempting to dismiss it as a genre exercise with no enduring value. But the style works, and Saturdays = Youth’s best moments stack up well against M83’s back catalogue, even if it runs out of steam before its finish.

By April 10, 2008

Leisure

Subverting America

The advertisements for the Corcoran Gallery’s new exhibition, American Evolution, juxtapose two iconic images—Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington and Andy Warhol’s silkscreen of Chairman Mao—in an irreverent, catchy pairing. So I expected the exhibition to be a series of attempted “evolutionary” links between American works of art, but the Zedong-Washington alliance is actually the only one of its kind there. American Evolution might have used the iconic images to lure tourists into its convenient location across the street from the White House, but its real message is to be that the visual history of American myths created by our art are often accepted as reality—a reality which sometimes needs to be challenged.

By April 3, 2008

Leisure

Salt Water Moon: a night in Irish Newfoundland

Everything about “Salt Water Moon” is minimalistic: the two-actor cast, the one-night-only timeframe and the plot’s straightforward love story. The no frills approach works; it strips the play down to its core, honing in on an intricate relationship between two people, and gives them the space and time to develop all the facets of their characters. “Salt Water Moon” depends completely on the performances of the two leads, who manage to create a quaint and hopeful tale of love, set during harsh times.

By April 3, 2008

Leisure

Critical Voices: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Pershing

On Pershing, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin are peddling something you’ve heard before. The band’s second album is filled with the kind of amiable indie pop—replete with soft drums and guitar hooks—that sounds good on playlists for parties where you’re not friends with everyone coming. This kind of music is certainly available elsewhere, but the band does their work competently.

By April 3, 2008

Leisure

Running for love, perhaps weight-loss

If you were one of the skeptics expecting David Schwimmer to sink rather than swim in his directing debut, keep holding your breath, because the jury is still out. Schwimmer’s film, Run, Fat Boy, Run, was released in London last September, where it received stellar reviews and was king of the UK box office for four consecutive weeks. Americans, however, have been less generous to Fat Boy, which brought in a mere $2.3 million in its opening weekend, proving that the majority of American moviegoers continue to resist the type of dry humor that dominates the film. It’s a shame, because the movie is far wittier than traditional American slapstick comedies and makes for a hilarious and entertaining, if predictable, watch.

By April 3, 2008

Leisure

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 April 3, 2008

Leisure

Modern Art from D to D

“Degas to Diebenkorn: The Phillips Collects,” is a monument to the many-headed beast that is Modern art. The exhibit, which is open until May 25th at the Phillips Collection, is a stunning tour through the museum’s acquisitions from the past decade. The incredible variety of media, movements and artists seems daunting at first, but the entire experience has an unexpected cohesion and leaves the visitor with a better understanding of Modern art.

By March 27, 2008

Leisure

Penang: Malay-okay

Chain ethnic restaurants like Panda Express and Star of India usually serve up cringe-worthy cuisine with less than stellar service. Luckily, Penang in Dupont Circle is a chain franchise with a refined take on Malaysian cuisine.

By March 27, 2008

Leisure

Critical Voices: R.E.M., Accelerate

Disappointed by the widespread critical contempt for 2005’s subdued Around the Sun, R.E.M. spoke of a return to their jangle-punk roots before heading into the studio to record a comeback. Blazing by in under 35 minutes, the up-tempo rock of Accelerate is R.E.M.’s best release since original drummer Bill Berry’s departure in 1997.

By March 27, 2008