Leisure

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



Leisure

Coat hangers & pacifiers

Shock Value: Fairly low. We recommend a picture of a baby with a nail through its head to boost the shock factor, making your message more pointed. Comments: Nervous system?... Read more

Leisure

Scientology and you, minus your money and soul

Sick of the same old boring God? Communion wafers just not as tasty as they used to be? Tired of having to mutilate your genitals? Maybe it’s time for a new religion. Or maybe it’s time to give Scientology a try. With the Founding Church of Scientology located in Dupont Circle, finding an illogical credo to blindly adhere to is as easy as ceasing to question your better judgement.

Leisure

Sleep with the Voice

Hi, we’re the Voice. You know, a lot of people think that once you get your own campuswide newsmagazine it’s really easy to get lucky. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the only one of us who’s getting any cookie at all is Dave Stroup, and that’s just ’’cause he’s a well-hung stud.

Leisure

Filmy buildup

While GUTV and cohorts have yet again collaborated to host the Third Annual Student Film Festival on campus, perhaps some would rather spend their lunch money on a more culturally diverse bunch of shorts-that’s short films for you uninformed folks.

This weekend Visions Cinema and Bistro Lounge will again be showing Oscar nominated short films from around the world.

Leisure

‘I am mad or else this is a dream’

William Shakespeare may not have written in the language college students are accustomed to hearing in a Chris Rock routine or an Adam Sandler movie, but that doesn’t make his theater any less raunchy, witty, or entertaining. The often base humor of Shakespeare’s comedies is theatrically exposed in Mask & Bauble’s new production of Twelfth Night, as the actors deftly go from playing dirty pranks to jousting, from singing Beatles songs to lamenting a count’s broken heart.

Leisure

‘Hail to’ new Radiohead album

Hail to the Thief, Radiohead’s new album is a record that incorporates its earlier guitar-rock into a sound that is increasingly experimental and unconventional. Probably. Like the group’s previous albums Kid A and Amnesiac, its newest offering is available weeks before it is scheduled for release.

Leisure

‘Irreversible’ unforgettable

The rape scene is reported to be ten minutes long, but no one ever checks their watch. Whatever the exact time is, it’s long enough. Alex (Monica Bellucci) walks through a Parisian underpass, red-lit like the road to hell. Two minutes later, she is sprawled face down against the gritty, concrete floor while a hand muffles her screaming, her crying.

Leisure

Point-counterpoint: Cursive live

All year you taunt me with your Brit pop and your jam bands. Yet by bringing you to see Cursive last Thursday, March 27, I have proved once and for all that my music is better than yours.

Let’s say you judged bands on toughness like sports teams. Openers No Knife get toughness points and the spirit award for coming out and putting on a great set even though lead singer Mitch Wilson was out of commission with a stomach ulcer.

Leisure

Point-counterpoint: Cursive live

I can’t believe you dragged me to that place again. I hate the Black Cat. Everyone there wears weird clothes and has multiple piercings, which I personally find unsanitary. I’ve put up with your crap music all year long. Built to Spill? More like Built to Crap on Your Face.

Leisure

Can’t kill the rooster

When I was abroad, a friend of mine lent me Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. And let me tell you, I couldn’t put it down! I was laughing out loud! Golly! But seriously, this stupid hyperbole actually applies to Sedaris. An essayist and humorist based in New York, Sedaris’ humor can make anyone laugh … and trust me, it’s funny as all hell.

Leisure

Richter exhibition off the scale

There is something about Gerhard Richter’s paintings which sets them apart from the works of most of the post-modernists and neo-expressionists he is typically associated with: they are pretty. Pretty in a way that transcends their typically grim spectra. Say what you will for the theoretical implications of his blurred portraits and crackling abstracts, they are first and foremost the work of a man with a hell of an eye.

Leisure

Kirchner show features bright colors, vivid figures

In the pages of this week’s New Yorker, a cartoon depicts a group of patrician-looking types chatting in front of a Calder-ish mobile and a squiggly-lined painting. “Jim’s a good old-fashioned modernist,” says one to the others.

“Good old-fashioned modernist” is an apt moniker for Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, co-founder of Die Br?cke and perhaps German Expressionism’s most remarkable artist.

Leisure

Shock and ‘AwNaw’

“Nappy don’t have nothing to do with hair,” said Scales, one member of the Kentucky hip-hop sextet Nappy Roots. “It’s about staying close to where we came from and building on that.”

The group, which will play at McDonough Arena on Saturday night, are the leaders of the new country-fried rap genre, a style of hip-hop that combines the funk of Outkast and the glossiness of Master P’s No Limit, first popularized by the now-forgotten Timbaland prot?g? Bubba Sparxxx.

Leisure

I saw you

Your hand brushed against mine during our introductory econ class. We both mumbled sorry, and I was too scared to ask for your number. Want to see if our supply and demand curves intersect?

You: tall, husky, belligerently drunk lacrosse player. Me: stunning, dark haired vixen wearing a green sweater and black skirt.

Leisure

Mo’ Career Fair

First Free Agents vacated the District. Then, after only three weeks but a lot of graffiti, the Playahaters left too. The only thing we’ve got now is Career Day, and while that may pale in comparison to the MBNA Career Center’s Eco-Tourism and Aqua Socks Info Session, at least D.

Leisure

‘Spider’ spins a stultifying story

There’s something wrong with Spider, not the least of which is his name. Dubbed so for his love of all things arachnid, Dennis “Spider” Cleg remembers building webs of natty string in his room. He also remembers his father doing something awful to his mother.

Leisure

Improvfest comes to campus, so get excited

Trying to write a review about an improv comedy press run is a sure set-up for failure. Unlike a theater production performance, there is no set script or directions for the performers. Rather, spontaneity and off-the-cuff humor is employed in lieu of choreographed, well-rehearsed scenes and dialogue.

Leisure

The Plan dismembers

With all four members of Dismemberment Plan sporting beards as they took they stage, lead singer and guitarist Travis Morrison was the only one who seemed particularly displeased with his. Just returned from a New Hampshire shanty where he had been writing songs for his solo career, Morrison maintained “Everyone’s ugly in New Hampshire,” during his between-song banter.

Leisure

Pimpin’ for the 9:30

I know it’ll be hard to pull yourself away from the television this weekend, what with televised Iraqi carpet bombing and the NCAA men’s basketball tournament to brighten our days. While the prospect of late nights with Lute Olsen and Wolf Blitzer will certainly be enticing, I recommend getting your ass off of the couch and heading down to the 9:30 Club on Friday and Saturday for a cheap pair of concerts that blow Saddam-watching out of the water.

Leisure

Nomadic Theatre sets ‘Angels’ ablaze

As the United States’ diplomacy grinds to a halt, historical relationships become the guiding force for the future. Likewise, in the search for progress, Angels in America II: Perestroika declares and wonders, “The great question before us is: are we doomed? ... will the past release us? ... can we change?” The play is Tony Kushner’s sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-and-Tony Award-winning Angels in America: The Millennium Approaches.