The Rover | Page 108

Direct from Berlin, with Issues

DIE ROTEN PUNKTE, WILDSIDE

by Leila Amiri
15.01.2009

There’s a fine line between acting out, acting up and acting. Otto and Astrid Rot cross all the lines in a hilarious send up of punk rock and the Berlin avant garde. Die Roten Punkte opened the Wildside festival this week, a lineup of seven short plays drawn from the best of last summer’s Fringe [...]

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ART

Familiar Faces in a New Light

WARHOL LIVE, MMFA

by Jessica Murphy
14.01.2009

Sunday is the last chance to catch Warhol Live at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Even if you don’t appreciate the pop artist’s wall art, this exhibition is worth a visit. A collaboration between the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Andy Warhol Museum, it probes the role of [...]

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Suits and Girdles Sell America

DVD: MAD MEN

by Leonard Eichel
13.01.2009

THERE’S A BUG GOING AROUND the US television industry. Reality shows are still popular and cheap to produce, since any half-asleep writer can pen the two-page outline behind each episode. But the quality bug started by HBO has spread to a raft of other independent networks, notably Showtime and Bravo. AMC (formerly American Movie Classics), [...]

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BOOKS

Strength to Cry

THE WHITE SPACE BETWEEN, DISTANTLY RELATED TO FREUD, WHAT WORLD IS LEFT, TELL ME A STORY, TELL ME THE TRUTH

by B. A. Markus
11.01.2009

“MIGHT IT TAKE STRENGTH TO CRY, TO CONSIDER ALL THAT WAS AND WILL NEVER BE?” So muses the sixteen-year-old narrator of Monique Polak’s novel, What World is Left. Anneke is an inmate in Theresienstadt, the Nazis’ so-called model concentration camp. Of the four novels released this fall by Montreal writers on the theme of Holocaust survival, [...]

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BOOKS

The Healing Power of Story

THROUGH BLACK SPRUCE Joseph Boyden, Viking Canada

by Mélanie Grondin
10.01.2009

THROUGH BLACK SPRUCE SURVIVAL KIT: flannel pyjamas, fleecy slippers, a woollen blanket, a cat and a crackling fire to ward off cold weather from up north and cold characters from down south. It’s a cold not unlike “a living thing that chases … and wants to suck the life” from us.

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DANCE

Binoche In and Around Love

IN-I

by Alexandra Redgrave
09.01.2009

IT WAS HARD NOT TO GET CAUGHT UP in the breathless crush of the crowd at the North American premiere of In-I—the much-anticipated duet by famed British dancer Akram Khan and Academy Award-winning French actress Juliette Binoche. Critics, local celebrities and members of Montreal’s dance elite who assembled at Centre Pierre-Péladeau this week shared a [...]

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FILM

Christian Slater’s Quiet Victory

HE WAS A QUIET MAN

by Marianne Ackerman
08.01.2009

IF YOU THINK for a moment that the highly touted, expensively promoted, award-winning films are the best films being made, then you aren’t standing in line at festivals or taking chances on what’s left at the rental outlets by 11 p.m. Proof of this observation came to me recently in the form of a brilliant [...]

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MUSIC

Music Made for Memorable Nights

Los Manlicious (Universal Records Canada) HAWKSLEY WORKMAN

by Sebastian Buzzalino
07.01.2009

EVEN AFTER ELEVEN ALBUMS, including two this year, Hawskley Workman remains one of Canada’s most underrated musicians. As anyone who has seen him live can attest, he’s a thoroughly original performer, each touring show featuring new stage antics and fresh banter. Establishing, regardless of the venue, a comfortable rapport with his audience, Workman suggests being [...]

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BOOKS

Afghanistan’s Anguish

THE WASTED VIGIL Nadeem Aslam, Doubleday Canada

by Elaine Kalman Naves
06.01.2009

AN AGING ENGLISHMAN LIVES IN A ONCE-MAGICAL HOME, MOURNING HIS LOSSES. His wife. His daughter. His grandson. His left hand. It is the spring of 2004, in a village in eastern Afghanistan. Marcus Caldwell, son of Christian missionaries, met his future wife, a beautiful and intelligent Afghani girl named Qatrina, at their London medical school. [...]

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A Flashback that Straddles the Line

BEING ERICA, CBC

by Leonard Eichel
05.01.2009

What if you could go back in time and relive events in your past? Would you do things differently? And if you did, would it change the present? A new CBC series, Being Erica, taps into these universal questions, offering us all the chance to reflect on what we’ve done in our pasts and if [...]

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BOOKS

Jalousie et Jouissance

JOUR DE SOUFFRANCE par Catherine Millet, Flammarion

by Irina Egli
04.01.2009

APRÈS LE SUCCÈS international de La vie sexuelle de Catherine M., Catherine Millet en écrit la conclusion, tentant de répondre à la question : « Dans cette pratique de la liberté sexuelle à deux, que fait-on de la jalousie ? » Le livre n’offre aucune solution, mais une analyse rigoureuse et détaillée. Est-on dans le domaine de la littérature [...]

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BOOKS

One Beautiful, One Sordid

THE SECRET LEGACY, SHIN-CHI’S CANOE

by Rachna Vohra
03.01.2009

TWO HISTORIES: ONE BEAUTIFUL, ONE SORDID; both reminding us of the importance of teaching our children about our past and how far we’ve come, because of and in spite of it.

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The 12 Days…

Walking Words 2009

by Kate Orland Bere
01.01.2009

OVER THE COMING MONTHS, I will give myself the gift of an ongoing journey, one I know will inspire me and may, over time, inspire others. This gift is to walk or to traverse by other means the perimeter of the island of Montreal, and write about this odyssey in a blog. The idea being [...]

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The 12 Days…

Register, Please

by Joel Yanofsky
31.12.2008

I’M JEWISH, SO BEFORE I get around to the question of giving and receiving, you’ll excuse me for not fully understanding why people put themselves through this annual gift-giving meshugas in the first place. We have Chanukah, of course, but everyone knows Chanukah doesn’t count. It doesn’t even qualify as a real Jewish holiday since it isn’t sufficiently obsessed [...]

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The 12 Days…

Mind Travel

by Endre Farkas
30.12.2008

I AM NOT GREEDY. Unlike those who made these economic times what they are. I am aware and so would feel guilty asking for a lot of objets d’art. Therefore, I do not ask for much. I ask for only what is impossible. What is the point of asking for the possible? I want the [...]

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