BOOKS

Queer as Film

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Word is Out: A Queer Film Classic, by Greg Youmans, Arsenal Pulp Press

by Greg Youmans
16.04.2012

I just completed a book all about the groundbreaking 1977 gay and lesbian documentary film, Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives. The film more than warrants a book-length study. I should know because I still haven’t exhausted all the things I want to say about it. Although Word Is Out was not [...]

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THEATRE

Not a Gilded Cage

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Blackbird, Shadowbox Productions, at Les Ateliers Jean-Brillant until April 22

by Alex Woolcott
15.04.2012

Don’t make the mistake of going to see the latest incarnation of David Harrower’s play Blackbird expecting a raucous night at the theatre. Harrower’s play, most recently seen in French at Theatre Prospero, is a dark and demanding tragedy with a reputation for leaving audiences fighting for breath. In this new production the harsh subject matter is well served by its cast, but the power of the script is mitigated by a lack of sharp direction that keeps us squarely in acting school territory.

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BOOKS

Quiet Forest

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Mnemonic: A Book of Trees, Theresa Kishkan, Gooselane

by Alice Petersen
15.04.2012

Theresa Kishkan, poet, novelist, essayist and co-owner of Highground Press, has written a memoir based on trees she has known. The conceit is clever, and the result is a real sense of telling a life by fingering a grand rosary of tree species, recalling anything that goes. The book begins with a gesture to Dante’s dark wood, but Kishkan’s wood is of her own planting. In the Prelude, Kishkan asks whether she can write her life “by remembering the groves, imaginary or real, of my childhood, my girlhood, the painful years of young adulthood, of motherhood?”

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THEATRE

Strings Attached

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Penny Plain, by Ronnie Burkett, Place des Arts to April 21

by Kallee Lins
14.04.2012

Stock markets closing down, world-wide meat contamination, and the absence of life in No. 10 Downing Street set the stage for the end of the world. Penny Plain, blind but with unwavering commitment to the small joys of cultured living, decides to wait out in her armchair.

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THEATRE

Art mineur

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Les Peintres de charbon, Théâtre Jean-Duceppe

by Mélanie Grondin
12.04.2012

Que ce soit un urinoir signé ou des boîtes de conserve pleines de merde, presque tout peut être qualifié d’« art » de nos jours. Surtout si cet art est créé par un artiste reconnu ou qu’il est exposé dans un musée. En fait la question « qu’est-ce que l’art? » se pose-t-elle encore vraiment? La question ne serait-elle [...]

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MUSIC

A Look into the Future

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Kiwi crusader Bachelorette mounts a multi-genre one-woman show that is so much more

by Lora Mathis
11.04.2012

New Zealander Annabel Alpers, known as Bachelorette since she created the solo project in 2004, has a gift of blending genres. Her girl-group pop, psychedelic, folk and electronic songs caused her to be likened to a “lo-fi, one-woman version of Animal Collective” by Q Magazine in 2009.

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BOOKS

RU Experienced?

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Ru, by Kim Thuy (trans Sheila Fischman), Random House

by Heather Leighton
10.04.2012

Recipient of several literary prizes, including the Governor General’s Award for Literature, Ru is the autobiography of Kim Thuy. Under the name of Nguyen An Tinh, the author recounts her story: from her childhood in a palatial Saigon home, which her family is later forced to share with the invading Communist forces, to the squalor of the Malaysian refugee camp where she and her family fled before coming to Canada by boat. Starting out in Granby, Quebec, in the late 1970s, her parents work in menial jobs so that their children may one day live their “American” dream. As an adult, the protagonist returns to her native Vietnam where she is told that she is too fat to be Vietnamese and is mistaken for both an escort and a Japanese tourist.

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BOOKS

Don’t Speak

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Interview with Erin Moure, author of The Unmemntioable, House of Anansi

by Michael Lake
08.04.2012

Erín Moure is one of Canada’s most exciting and acclaimed poets and translators. Her multilingual books are a mélange of English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, and Galician. To read Mouré is to see the inner workings of somebody deeply imbedded in the social life of words; her process is to always investigate, challenge, and bring to the forefront. Regardless of what subjects find their way into her books, Mouré seems always to be writing about language.

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FILM

Stoner vs. Stickler

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Two oddball brothers make for one unexpectedly moving film in Jeff Who Lives at Home

by Shawn Stenhouse
03.04.2012

Ah, the Hollywood advertising machine, you never cease to amaze. This movie’s not marketable you say? Well then, dress it up as something completely different. Or give away the entire plot in the trailer. Either way, the customer leaves the theatre unhappy and the producers get their money, so why should they care?

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BOOKS

Virgin Territory

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The Virgin Cure, by Ami Mckay, Knopf Canada

by Martyn Bryant
02.04.2012

Ami Mckay took on the imaginative opportunity to recreate the world of her great-great-Grandmother in her latest novel The Virgin Cure. It’s New York City in the early 1870s and she works as a visiting doctor for the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children. Through her visits she meets the novel’s protagonist, whom she seeks to help, the lead narrator Moth.

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THEATRE

Corsets and Consolations

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Intimate Apparel, The Centaur, to April 29

by Anna Fuerstenberg
01.04.2012

Intimate Apparel at the Centaur is a truly well-crafted, well acted, and brilliantly directed. It is the story of a not too young woman who makes corsets for both upper-class women (Mrs. Van Buren) and women of the night (Mayme). Lucinda Davis shines as Esther, the creator of the intimate apparel, and in her portrayal she displays an astonishing and delightful range of emotion. She moves us when she vents her hatred for another woman’s good fortune at getting married at last, and she has us yearning with her when she touches, briefly, the forbidden shoulder of a Jewish fabric dealer who actually cares for her. Lucinda’s portrayal of the heroine is convincing and engaging. She has created a persona with whom one can empathize completely.

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MUSIC

Return to the Ballet

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The Rite of Spring, Les Grands Ballets, Théâtre Maisonneuve

by Lev Bratishenko
31.03.2012

Ding! Ding! Was not a sound that I expected to ever hear, but it happened last week when we reached the bottom of the caviar bucket. Without any opera business on the horizon, daddy was forced to improvise, and so we went to the ballet.

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FILM

Prizes and Pioneers

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Reviewing two FIFA films that put the "art" back in architecture

by Oksana Cueva
29.03.2012

This past weekend, FIFA’s 30th Anniversary edition came to a close, with the festival’s Grand Prize awarded to the film Opalka – One Life, One Oeuvre.  To the surprise of no one, Bone Wind Fire won in the category of Best Canadian Film for its vivid representations of Georgia O’Keffe, Frida Kahlo and Emily Carr…though [...]

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THEATRE

99% Clapping

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Interview with Occupy Theatre's Donovan King

by Alice Marx
27.03.2012

Just when you thought the Occupied snows of winter had melted, along come the green shoots of Occupied spring. Montreal’s ubiquitous actor/activist Donovan King and friends are putting together an evening of politically themed performance this Saturday night at Copacabana.

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VIDEO

Putting Kids to Work Since 1994

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My Quebec Roots contest

by Leila Marshy
26.03.2012

When I was a kid, having a parent from an unpronounceable country – in those days that just meant it was made up of letters not in the word order C-A-N-A-D-A – was like a sin worse than bad hair or fake runners. Yes. Unpardonable. Certainly, no one ever asked me to make a 2 to 3 minute short video about “my Quebec roots” and then, just to make it all surreal and completely unbelievable, offered me an iPad for my efforts.

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