Leisure

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

Leisure

Critical Voices: Wooden Shjips, Back To Land

Although they call their latest album Back to Land, Wooden Shjips seems to be lost at sea. On their fourth LP, the band uses a mix of Doors-inspired organ and fuzz-out guitar riffs to create a collection of trance-like, five-minute trips. “Ghouls” features a repeating organ riff that sounds so classic, you might wonder if you’ve heard it somewhere else before.

By November 20, 2013

Leisure

Critical Voices: The Ripples, The First Few

On Saturday Nov. 23, The Ripples, a Georgetown student band, will drop a pebble in the vast lake of the music world, hoping to create waves that disrupt our collective conscience.

By November 20, 2013

Leisure

Dancing the Dream fails to keep emotional images en pointe

Rather than randomly hanging beautiful pictures of beautiful dancers, the National Portrait Gallery examines the history of dance as a visual art form in its exhibit Dancing the Dream, on display until July 14, 2014. The exhibit finds its strength in discussing the historical significance of dance on American cultural identity. At the same time, this focus on history becomes overly intellectual at the price of beauty, which is where the exhibit finds its weakness.

By November 14, 2013

Leisure

Eclectic plates meet antique porcelain

As you enter Rose’s Luxury, a gilded velvet curtain is drawn aside to create a partition closing off the outside world. The hostess station showcases both a laptop and a bright red 1950s-era dial phone, but somehow the two work together harmoniously. An old mirror reflects the people eating in the dining area.

By November 14, 2013

Leisure

Death, be not proud: The Book Thief illustrates Holocaust

Though Nazis burn thousands of novels in The Book Thief, Marcus Zusak’s tale itself is alive and well. An international bestseller for over two hundred weeks, the book sets a high bar for its cinematic interpretation. Director Brian Percival works through the plot of the novel well, but taming a 576-page tome about the power of the written word into a two-hour movie proves a difficult task at best.

By November 14, 2013

Leisure

Under the Covers: A View to Kill: Reading Bond

In a conversation about celebrity crushes this week, I guiltily admitted my lifelong infatuation with James Bond (Sean Connery being the pinnacle of all 007s, of course). While I’m a big fan of spy and political thriller movies, I hadn’t attempted the written versions of Bond’s glamorous trysts and travels. So I sat down with From Russia With Love, Ian Fleming’s seminal Bond classic. I expected a fun, quick read, but wasn’t expecting to get as swept up as I did. Just like the Bond films, the novel was fun, shallow, shiny and alluring, full of expensive alcohol, watches and cars, 60s misogyny and blatant sexuality, and scant political correctness—and, guiltily, I lapped it up.

By November 14, 2013

Leisure

Idiot Box: Let’s talk about sex, baby

It’s all in the title. Masters of Sex, a new series from Showtime that premiered in late September, is practically an invitation in itself. The ‘s’ sounds blend perfectly, rolling off your tongue as you say such an attention-grabbing phrase aloud. If you’re in a public place, heads might turn. Conscious of its obvious allure, however, the show does not rely on superficial appeal alone.

By November 14, 2013

Leisure

Critical Voices: Lady Gaga, Artpop

From her e.coli-flavored meat dress to her embryonic palanquin, Lady Gaga has always prided herself on big production and electrifying shock value. Her newest album, Artpop, is no exception.

By November 14, 2013

Leisure

Critical Voices: Eminem, The Marshal Mathers LP 2

Guess who’s back. Back again. Shady’s back, and there has been a lot of hype surrounding the release of his latest album, The Marshall Mathers LP 2. The first Marshall Mathers LP was one of Eminem’s most important and definitive releases, inflating apprehension and excitement in its shadow. Fortunately, the legend is back and even better than before. MMLP2 is cold hard proof—hell, Kendrick is even on the album.

By November 14, 2013

Leisure

Hamlet dubsteps with Ophelia in this modern Shakespeare

I’ll be the first to admit it: I had no idea what to expect when I learned the Theater and Performance Studies Department’s production of Hamlet was taking a modern guise. I’ve seen Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo and Juliet set in present day, so I know very well that Shakespearean lore is capable of transcending time and space. But to take perhaps the greatest story ever told and refashion it with iPads and grating dubstep? It’s a risk, but director Professor Derek Goldman and his cast pull it off spectacularly.

By November 6, 2013

Leisure

Hemsworth pounds out solid sequel in Thor: The Dark World

Following The Avengers, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has returned home to Asgard. Similar to their past films, Marvel’s newest movie, Thor: The Dark World, includes plenty of action, comedy, and just the right amount of romance to make it entertaining popcorn fodder.

By November 6, 2013

Leisure

Plate of the Union: Meat: The flavor of love

I’ve been thinking a lot about meat lately. Maybe because two of my housemates are vegetarian, I get a sort of odd little twinge of guilt when I’m browning the ground beef for my chili or frying up some particularly fragrant chicken dumplings. Yet meat has always been a part of my diet, a nicely regulated quadrangle on the food pyramid.

By and November 6, 2013

Leisure

Critical Voices: Cut Copy, Free Your Mind

Although festival season has come to a close, Cut Copy’s fourth full-length release, Free Your Mind, is worthy of nothing less than the floral crowns and tank tops that listeners will don come springtime. The band is back with the same heavy dose of nostalgia that they have toted throughout their career, only this time their sound has been molded into what could be a 50-minute live set for thousands of eager fans.

By November 6, 2013

Leisure

Critical Voices: Sky Ferreira, Night Time, My Time

Sky Ferreira was almost Edie Sedgwick. Like Edie, Ferreira teased with her work, which never quite made it to the public’s eye, until now. Ferreira has been building an underground cult image—it’s Edie all over again with the drug arrest. Yet the distinction between these two beautiful superstars arises with Night Time, My Time.

By November 6, 2013

Leisure

Star-crossed lovers get steampunk at Folger Theatre

As the star-crossed lovers brood on opposite ends of the balcony, their families march on stage to stand beneath them. A man in black emerges to narrate the prologue, gesturing to backlit scenes of Verona, before donning his hat, announcing himself the prince, and stepping back to let violent sword-fighting begin in the Folger Shakespeare Theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet, directed by Aaron Posner.

By October 31, 2013

Leisure

Big names Pop at Spagnuolo Gallery

Some of the biggest names in the pop art movement, including Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, settled into Georgetown’s Spagnuolo Art Gallery this weekend. Located in the lobby of Walsh, the gallery is showcasing these artists in its newest exhibit, Pop Art Prints. In addition to displaying some of the most iconic pop art imagery, the exhibit also features works that, as curator and Georgetown museum studies fellow Carolanne Bonanno points out, “...are a little more alternative, so that [students] could compare them to the larger names.”

By October 31, 2013

Leisure

Love thine enemy: War games blast off in Ender’s Game

“Ender Wiggin isn’t a killer. He just wins—thoroughly.” Director Gavin Hood brings these words to life in his adaptation of the classic science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card. Visually and viscerally, he succeeds in creating a brutal movie about morals and ethics. Ender’s Game tells the story of Ender Wiggin as he moves from an Earth-based military academy to an extraterrestrial base called Battle School, where children are trained to be the military geniuses of tomorrow. The movie takes place after the Formic Wars, an alien invasion that almost destroyed Earth.

By October 31, 2013

Leisure

Under the Covers: Giving voice to poetry

I attended a reading by prolific contemporary poets C.K. Williams and Stanley Plumly at the Folger Shakespeare Library this Monday, and I was scared. I know nothing about poetry, and, aside from the very little I read in high school English class, I have never branched into the genre. I, like some other nervous readers comfortable in their familiar prose, have avoided meter for far too long.

By October 31, 2013

Leisure

Idiot Box: Smells like teen spirit

I was an awkward teenager. That hardly makes me an anomaly, but the levels of angst accompanying that particular state of being reached the kind of heights that every misfit seems to think is unique to them. Of course, the irony is that this is a fairly universal condition among people navigating new identities and social strata, even as the hierarchies of high school appear to be carved in stone. Everything seems inflated beyond belief, every interaction a subject to be endlessly analyzed, and every embarrassment a potential reason to leave the country.

By October 31, 2013

Leisure

Critical Voices: Kelly Clarkson, Wrapped in Red

Ah, Kelly Clarkson. She stole the show with American Idol, stole our hearts with Breakaway, and stole our praise with Stronger. No? Hyperbole aside, Kelly Clarkson has been around for a while, and there is no denying she’s got a hell of a voice. But as the name may suggest, Wrapped in Red is her first Christmas-themed album, and that’s always a dangerous body of water to tread into.

By October 31, 2013