2012 Summer Film Preview

Typical sequels dominate the summer slate, but smaller festival favorites offer hope

0 Comments · Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The visions are as fresh as the day they entered my impressionable head. As a child weaned at the entertaining teat of 1980s blockbusters like Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, Ghostbusters and Back to the Future, I have a soft spot in my movie-snob heart for a good summer popcorn movie.

Movies

Marley (Review)

Reggae legend is straightforwardly rendered in this fascinating documentary

Jason Gargano

0 Comments · Thursday, May 3, 2012

Why does Bob Marley — the man and his music — still resonant more than 30 years after his death? That’s a question director Kevin MacDonald tries to unpack in this straightforwardly rendered, often fascinating documentary about the Reggae legend.

Movies

Damsels in Distress (Review)

Whit Stillman’s much-anticipated film arrives with the writer/director’s singular voice intact

Jason Gargano

0 Comments · Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Whit Stillman creates a place that seems hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world — cinematographer Doug Emmett notably bathes the proceedings in unnaturally bright light — a place that posits the major problem in contemporary social life as “the tendency to always seek someone cooler than yourself” without a whiff of irony.

Music

Enigmatic For the People

Annie Clark: Not your average ‘suburban-middle-class-American weirdo’

Jason Gargano

0 Comments · Tuesday, May 1, 2012

St. Vincent’s music is rife with contradictions. Take the first song on the outfit’s most recent album, last year’s Strange Mercy, which opens with this vague but provocative imagery, delivered by Annie Clark — the band’s 29-year-old creative ringleader.

Music

A Combo Platter

With Tramp, evolving singer/songwriter Sharon Van Etten opens up to collaboration

Jason Gargano

0 Comments · Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Sharon Van Etten began winning admirers with a pair of intimate, soul-bearing albums — 2009’s Because I Was In Love and 2010’s Epic — that explored love gone bad via a voice that was so big and expressive and sad-sounding that one feared for the woman from which it was emanating.

CityBeat Recommends

Film: The Hunter

Jason Gargano

0 Comments · Monday, April 16, 2012

Is there a more underappreciated American actor than Willem Dafoe? The 56-year-old Wisconsin native has been in more than 75 movies since his breakthrough roles in To Live and Die in LA and Platoon.

Sound Advice

Sleepy Sun with White Hills

April 18 • MOTR Pub

Jason Gargano

0 Comments · Friday, April 13, 2012

Sleepy Sun has evolved from precocious northern California Psychedelic upstarts to seasoned veterans in the time it takes some bands to inhale a single bong hit. Coalescing in 2008, the Santa Cruz, Calif., crew moved to their genre of choice’s creative and spiritual birthplace, San Francisco, and quickly dropped a pair of well-received albums.

Arts

Sandro Perri Q&A

Multitalented Toronto-based musician plays MusicNOW Thursday

by Jason Gargano

{CommentsCant} · Wednesday, March 28, 2012

An avalanche of adjectives comes to mind when listening to the music that has spilled from the boundless mind of Sandro Perri over the last dozen years. The multitalented Toronto native has immersed himself in everything from Jazz guitar to ambient-driven Electronic Dance music (under the moniker Polmo Polpo), has worked on film scores, collaborated with like-mindedly adventurous sonic sculptors o...

Movies

Lynne Ramsay Returns With Haunting Tale of Family Discord

Jason Gargano

0 Comments · Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay has a thing for misery. Her memorable 1999 feature-length debut, Ratcatcher, is set amid a Glasgow tenement block in 1973 and follows a 12-year-old boy who, after his friend’s accidental drowning, increasingly retreats into his own solitary world, a place where he befriends an abused girl and spends time in a half-built housing project adjacent to a sprawling wheat field.

Music

NOW … and Forever?

Bryce Dessner doubles down on his dedication to 7-year-old festival

Jason Gargano

0 Comments · Tuesday, March 27, 2012

MusicNOW is aptly named. Founded and still nurtured by local native Bryce Dessner, the festival has consistently delivered an eclectic mix of “contemporary music” since springing to life in 2006.