TV

The Glam Side of Ostracism

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Glee, Fox TV

by Jay Mark Caplan
09.12.2009

The epic struggle between jocks and geeks has been raging in TV land for years. The premise might be battle-weary, but it’s not dead yet. This season’s standout hit is another high school comedy, the new Fox series, Glee. It’s funny, but there’s also a potent Broadway kicker: the geeks of Glee sing and dance.

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FILM

A Toxic Addiction

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H2Oil, Excentris

by James Gartler
08.12.2009

With the holiday season now officially upon us, it would be easy to overlook H2Oil for more festive cinematic fare. This startling investigation of the far-reaching impact of the Alberta Oil Sands project is likely to leave you feeling decidedly less-than-jolly … but it couldn’t have come at a more vital time.

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BOOKS

“Morning Like a Licked-Clean Plate”

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True Concessions, Craig Poile, Goose Lane

by Maxianne Berger
07.12.2009

Earlier this year I’d come across Craig Poile’s poem, “The Blanket,” in The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008, and liked it enough to mention it in my Rover review: “a love poem, with humour — “[b]ought from (and possibly made of) Canadian Tire[.]” This same strong poem serves as a fit finale to Poile’s [...]

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BOOKS

Oryx and Crake Reloaded

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The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood, McClelland & Stewart

by Mélanie Grondin
06.12.2009

When Margaret Atwood’s 2003 novel Oryx and Crake ended, the Crakers had encountered two men and a woman. Snowman, back from his foraging trip at RejoovenEsense, went after them. Though he caught up with them and observed them sitting around a campfire from behind a bush, we never found out who these people were, and [...]

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FILM

Coens Have A Heart

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A Serious Man, AMC Forum 22

by Thomas Jarvis
05.12.2009

For their new film, A Serious Man, the Coen brothers have turned for inspiration to their mid-western upbringing in a Jewish neighbourhood. This provides the platform for a film about the search for definite answers when there are none, and how to cope with uncertainty amid a quiet simple life.

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DVD

The Silence Of Discontinuity

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Summer Hours

by Carol Krenz
04.12.2009

Funny that Edvard Munch’s The Scream springs to mind under the caress of director Olivier Assayas’ gentle film, Summer Hours (L’heure d’été) – but, it does. Its ghostly alarm provokes a universal lament for the disposable society we have become. With each successive scene, the inaudible noise grows louder, finding no escape through mannerly tears [...]

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TV

Re-hashing Same Old Dystopia

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The Prisoner, AMC

by Christopher Zanti
03.12.2009

AMC is developing quite the little track record. I may not be up to date with Mad Men (although, I enjoyed the first season considerably), but I am convinced that Breaking Bad is easily the best show on television. And so, I was eagerly anticipating The Prisoner, a solid network’s reimagining of Patrick McGoohan’s landmark [...]

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THEATRE

Les écrits restent

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L’imposture, Théâtre du Nouveau Monde

by Mélanie Grondin
02.12.2009

Qui crée réellement un roman? La personne qui couche l’encre sur le papier, le narrateur dont on utilise la voix ou les personnes qui ont inspiré ledit roman? Et qu’est-ce qui est, objectivement parlant, plus important : le texte ou l’auteur dont la photo affuble la couverture?

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THEATRE

Justified Theatrics

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Sexy béton II: Justice, Segal Centre

by Anna Fuerstenberg
01.12.2009

Outrage is a very difficult emotion to sustain. Therefore I attended the second of Porte Parole’s one-act plays about the collapse of the Concorde Bridge in Laval with some trepidation. This play about the search for justice was a much more difficult one to mount. The extraordinary thing was that all the talk about lawyers [...]

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BOOKS

Dramatic Twists and Fraudulent Identities

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Still Life with June, Darren Greer, Cormorant Books

by Joni Dufour
30.11.2009

Narrated by the protagonist, Still Life with June is the story of a man who works at an addiction treatment centre. While he struggles with his identity and strives to make a life for himself amid existential crisis and a torturous past, he develops relationships with both a writer who wants him to spy for [...]

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BOOKS

The Hipless Boy: He’s Pretty Cool

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The Hipless Boy, Sully, Conundrum Press

by Joseph Elfassi
29.11.2009

The Hipless Boy is a sweet and charming collection of short stories set in Montréal. Its author, Sully (a semi-fictionalized Sherwin Tjia), presents himself as an ordinary guy, often impressed and amused by his less-than-ordinary friends, apparently a mélange of the author’s actual entourage.

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FESTIVAL CITY

Feeding Those Baroque Wolves

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Montreal Bach Festival

by Lev Bratishenko
28.11.2009

Bach is big. Musically, yeah? He’s gigantic that way. We don’t know exactly how big Bach the dude was, but the Montreal Bach Festival is definitely much smaller. Of course, it’s still something to be reckoned with (it is important to be clear when dealing with Germanic temperaments.)

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THEATRE

Revisiting Sweet Innocence

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HIPPIES & BOLSHEVIKS, Freestanding Space

by Anna Fuerstenberg
27.11.2009

I will say it again, the three flights of stairs to the Freestanding Space makes one think: “This had better be worth it.” Hippies and Bolsheviks by Amiel Gladstone so very clearly is.

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THEATRE

A Truly Bittersweet Suite Ending

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Criminal Genius, Risk Everything, Mainline Theatre.

by Anna Fuerstenberg
26.11.2009

The final two one-acts of George F. Walker’s Suburban Motel Suite, Criminal Genius and Risk Everything, have been launched. Genuinely satisfying as theatre, the two served to provide a workout for laugh muscles I haven’t used in years.

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THEATRE

Hairdressers, Generals And Gangster Memories

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Marie Brassard, Centaur Theatre

by Jim Burke
25.11.2009

For the last eight years, celebrated Quebecois performer Marie Brassard has been having a recurring dream in public. Her oft-performed dream-play Jimmy is about a gay hairdresser and the homophobic American general who fantasizes about him. Tonight, Montreal audiences will get their first chance to catch this remarkable solo piece in English when Brassard’s company, [...]

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