Leisure

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



Leisure

East meets West

Alvin Lau, a performance poet armed with a B.A. in poetry from Columbia College Chicago and a love of hip hop, is sure to pop-lock his way into your heart with an earnest energy to match his moves.

Leisure

A man to man with Girl Talk

Known for mash-ups that combine small parts of many popular songs, Gregg Gillis is a rising star in the world of dance music. He’s also coming to Georgetown Saturday night, and we caught up with him for a quick interview in advance of the show.

Leisure

Post-punk isolation, insight

Post-punk outfit Joy Division has risen to near-legendary status in the twenty-seven years since lead singer Ian Curtis committed suicide. It’s easy to view the band’s work through Curtis’ death, which often overshadows the music. Although it’s less a movie about Joy Division than a documentary of Ian Curtis’ short life, Control refuses to indulge in melodrama, forcing viewers to confront the abject tragedy of his suicide.

Leisure

Art Brut talks to the kids!

English foursome Art Brut play stupidly fun rock and roll for the intelligent—but fun—music fan. The band’s 2005 debut Bang Bang Rock & Roll garnered critical praise at home and across the pond for its faux-metal guitar heroics and churning punk rhythms. This year’s It’s a Bit Complicated refines the debut’s pop formula while retaining its dry wit. The Voice spoke with lead singer Eddie Argos in anticipation of his band’s concert with the Hold Steady on November 20th at the 9:30 Club.

Leisure

Goes Down Easy: A Bi-Weekly Column on Drinking

It’s cold outside, and I’m sick. I don’t favor medicine as a solution for illness since it just weakens the immune system, but I am determined to beat this microorganism into the ground somehow.

Leisure

Wristcutters: A Love Story

I really wanted to love Wristcutters. It’s populated with actors I adore, and the idea seemed charming. If they could make it work, it would be so beautiful. It is beautiful, and the actors really are that cool. But I had to settle for, “I liked it a lot, most of the way through.” I hate artistic disappointment.

Leisure

Good eats pho cheap

Hiding behind a gas station, just a 10-minute walk from the Rosslyn Metro Station, is Vietnamese cuisine’s gift to the poor college student: Pho 75.

Leisure

Critical Voices: Daft Punk, Alive 2007

Daft Punk manages to be all things to two people: the drunken partygoer and the electronic music aesthete. Providing aural brain teasers for the latter and a chance to discover new rump-shakers for the former requires some serious Venn diagram technique. Alive 2007, a live album recorded in Paris last June, is a worthy addition to that sweet overlap.

Leisure

Deadbeats

Girl Talk is coming to Georgetown. No, not female chatter, but the “mash-up” artist the University will host on November 17. Girl Talk intertwines syncopated hip-hop passages and indie-rock morsels... Read more

Leisure

Trees and Ghosts ghastly, fun

To really enjoy Trees and Ghosts, you have to come into it with an open mind and absolutely no irony. Check your cynicism at the door; even the in-flight entertainment (no, really—they have a video with flight attendants and everything) is over the top.

Leisure

Fabulation nothing short of fabulous

For about an hour after “Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine” (it makes sense in the context of one of the play’s best moments, but damned if I’m actually going to write it out each time), I walked around in a kind of shocked appreciation, the stupor of being in the presence of something fleetingly, unevenly true. The production, under Isiah Wooden’s direction, has some problems, but the moments that work do so beautifully.

Leisure

Gone Baby Gone finds success

I went into Ben Affleck’s directorial debut Gone Baby Gone hoping that it wouldn’t be too terrible. I left the theater doubting everything I knew about the man.

Leisure

Gangster tears shit up

Already being hailed as the black Godfather and the Harlem Scarface, many critics have essentially taken for granted that American Gangster must be judged against the classics of its genre. I was less sure that it couldn’t be judged on its own merits, though, and I feared that stacking it up against The Godfather and other greats would inevitably make it seem disappointing in comparison. Surprisingly, despite its length and its failure to truly innovate, it holds its own among the heavyweights of the gangster film canon and is a contender for the best movie of 2007.

Leisure

Critical Voices: Jay-Z, American Gangster

Jay-Z has come out of retirement for a second time with American Gangster, an album inspired by the movie of the same name. And unlike on Kingdom Come, he has something to say this time. In fact, this is the first set of songs in which returns to his roots. By revisiting his life on the streets over a set of heavy, moody beats, American Gangster is Jay-Z’s grittiest album since his debut.

Leisure

Goes Down Easy: A Bi-Weekly Column on Drinking

Lotus Lounge, a newish nightclub downtown, recently invited me to check out a new promotion, “Choose the POTUS at Lotus.” The club has come up with a signature cocktail for every presidential candidate, ranging from the banal—a brown drink for recent drop-out Senator Sam Brownback, Tanqueray for Representative Tom Tancredo—to the weirdly inspired—Representative Dennis Kucinich’s drink is peach-flavored to commemorate the perennial candidate’s desire to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney.

Leisure

Chilling Halloween Highballs

So you’re throwing a Halloween party? Try some of these bloodcurdling cocktails for a killer bar selection—the usual Natty Light, Burnett’s and jungle juice trifecta is getting old anyway.

Leisure

The Horror!

With Halloween coming up, what better way to get ready than by watching some great horror movies? Here are some choices that will have you shaking in your boots:

Leisure

Vox on the Blocks

What do you call a cross between a human and a chimpanzee? A humanzee. A cross between a human and a 1983 Casio keyboard? Dan Deacon. Party with the man-machine himself in Hoya Court while chomping on subs.

Leisure

More Method Than Madness

The Director’s and Dramaturg’s notes on Hamlet talk of the pitfalls of reinterpreting Shakespeare for a modern audience. Gussy it up with modern twists and it becomes a gimmick; try to tie it to its original time period and it becomes an artifact. The goal is to “create a common space,” as dramaturg David Cumming (SFS ’08) puts it; to be “bridge-builders.”

Leisure

Bold impressions of the sea

Impressionists by the Sea is the latest much-anticipated exhibition to grace the walls of Dupont Circle’s Phillips Collection. Composed of selected pieces from The Collection and contributions from the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, the exhibition depicts the evolution of the northern French shore from wind-swept fishing villages and raw breakers to a Riviera-style parade of luxury.