Posted on November 15, 2012
By Barry Hammond
Film
Recognize this line? “Long live the new flesh!” Take a trip back in time to 1983 with the Bizarro Metro series this Friday at the Garneau Theatre with the David Cronenberg classic Videodrome. It was the year when electric typewriters were still more prevalent than computers and the home video phenomenon was at its height. […]
Posted on October 16, 2012
By Barry Hammond
Film, Front Slider
Who’d have thought eating an olive could be so fraught with contradictory emotions? There’s a scene in a creepy new film called “Berberian Sound Studio” where actor Toby Jones is forced to eat an olive, pit and all, and his face conveys so many different thoughts, feelings, and possibilities that it has to rank as […]
Posted on October 4, 2012
By Barry Hammond
Film, Front Slider
If the idea of a Sunday “couples brunch” makes you want to kill yourself, then It’s a Disaster is for you. Even if it doesn’t, this darkly delicious black comedy has so much going for it that you won’t want to miss the brunch almost literally blowing up. The premise is simple: shortly after a […]
Posted on October 1, 2012
By Barry Hammond
Film, Front Slider
For those who know George Plimpton only as the plumy-voiced, New England accented socialite who appears in TV commercials, “Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself” will be a revelation. Screening at The Edmonton International Film Festival (EIFF) on Wednesday, Oct. 3, the film by writer/directors Tom Bean and Luke Poling takes a serious and in-depth […]
Posted on September 26, 2012
By Barry Hammond
Film, Front Slider, Music
When Ken Burns’ 10 part series on the history of jazz premiered in 2001, you can just imagine German filmmaker Stefan Immler watching the segments on New York, Chicago, St. Louis, or Kansas city in his new home-town and screaming, “Hey! What about Washington, D.C.?!” He’d have a point – and makes it beautifully in […]
Posted on September 19, 2012
By Barry Hammond
Film, Front Slider
Some films hang uneasily in the mind long after you watch them, tugging at your preconceptions and knee-jerk reactions and forcing you to re-evaluate them for months or even years afterwards. “The Redemption of General Butt Naked” is such a film. It opens Friday at Metro Cinema at the Garneau. As the title suggests, this […]
Posted on September 7, 2012
By Barry Hammond
Film, The Latest
If you like the idea of cast and crew working together to make a film unique in both story and performances, you’re not going to find one much better than “Your Sister’s Sister,” starting at the Metro Cinema this weekend. It’s that ensemble spirit, the honesty and sincerity of the performances, and the refusal of […]
Posted on August 24, 2012
By Barry Hammond
Culture, Film, Front Slider, Visual Arts
Paint. The thickness of it. The sensuousness of its colours. The textures of its application. The weights and balances, lines of force, harmonies and dissonances of its composition on a plane. The resonances of emotions and ideas it leaves hanging in the eye and the mind. These are the subjects – foreground and background – […]
Posted on August 21, 2012
By Barry Hammond
Front Slider, Music, Theatre
“It’s all backwards causality. Cyclical time. The past is the future. The present is now. The future is the past.” That’s how Rocco Hercules Somershire – the greatest rock musician in the greatest British rock band in the world – explains how The Saints of British Rock could meet Merlin the magician, who gave them […]
Posted on August 17, 2012
By Barry Hammond
Film, Front Slider
Watching the Argentinean-Canadian co-production, “A Place Called Los Pereyra” – opening at the Metro Cinema Aug. 18 – brings to mind a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, […]
Posted on August 13, 2012
By Barry Hammond
Front Slider, Music
Dr. John wears dragon socks inside of snakeskin shoes. Perfect. It’s the little details that help create some favourite memories of Edmonton Folk Music Festival, which wrapped up its 33rd edition at Gallagher Park on Sunday. In a workshop called “Treme” – after the New Orleans district hard hit by Hurricane Katrina – Dr. John […]
Posted on August 11, 2012
By Barry Hammond
Music
“Master Class” is definitely the correct name for the guitar session that took place at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival on Friday night. Martin Simpson, Oscar Lopez, David Lindley and Amos Garrett are what you’d call jaw-dropping good. Beyond technical mastery, these guys have pushed the boundaries of guitar across tuning, style, genre and ethnic […]
