Arts 177 results

Reviews of fine art, classical and opera music, and all things cultured

4Score

Movie review: The Handmaiden is a mysterious seduction

Park Chan-wook's new movie is a tale of sex and betrayal that takes the erotic games of Dangerous Liaisons and transfers them to occupied Korea  
2.5Score

Movie review: The Dressmaker just doesn’t fit

This eccentric comedy/drama features Kate Winslet as a fashion designer who returns to her Australian home town to learn about her past — only to find the charms of Liam Hemsworth

Bob Dylan don’t need Nobel, or stinking badge

Comment: On Bob Dylan, Nobel laureate Looking back on a close encounter of the Dylan kind reveals a slightly rumpled honouree who has a hard time accepting praise, let alone the Nobel Prize *Caution: This article contains a top-100 list of Bob Dylan songs. By Rod Mickleburgh In the winter of 1990, I waited with a handful of reporters and photographers in a grand salon of the Palais-Royal in Paris for Bob Dylan. More than 25 years ahead of the Nobel Prize people, the French had decided that Dylan’s lyrical prowess was worthy of the country’s highest cultural honour, Commandeur dans l’ Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. T.S. Eliot was one of the first to receive the award in 1960. Borges followed in 1962. And now, following in the footsteps of Sean Connery (1987), it was Bob’s turn. Finally, the gilded, ceiling-high white doors opened, and there he was, ambling into the opulent room, followed by France’s flamboyant minister of culture at the time, Jack Lang. He was ...
2.5Score

Jack Reacher comes up short

Movie review: Jack Reacher Tom Cruise returns as the peripatetic vigilante in a straightforward, if preposterous, adventure whose simplicity reveals how unsuitable the actor is for the role  

Margie Gillis moves through it

Dance: Pearl - The Show, Queen Elizabeth Theatre Oct. 27, 28 The Canadian dance icon digs deep in a new show that pays tribute to the Pulitzer-winning author of The Good Earth, but that's just the beginning of Margie Gillis's bid to help us 'reincorporate' and find our inner Pearl By Katherine Monk (October 24, 2016) VANCOUVER – Dance icon Margie Gillis has many honours to pin on her lapels: Officer of the Order of Canada, Knight of the National Order of Quebec, Lifetime Achievement honoree at the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards and the first-ever winner of the Stella Adler Studio’s MAD Spirit Award. Yet, there’s one credit she’s particularly proud of, though it features no hardware, prize money or resume-worthy mention. “I was listed as one of the reasons why the Sun News Network failed,” says Gillis over a requisite latte in Vancouver Monday. In town for a two-night performance of Pearl, a “Broadway-style” production that celebrates the life ...

Penetrating Helen Gurley Brown

Books: Not Pretty Enough - The Unlikely Triumph of Helen Gurley Brown New biography of the woman who recreated Cosmopolitan as a vehicle of sexual empowerment reveals lifelong insecurities and a penchant for moisturizing with baking lard
4Score

Hell Or High Water captures an American collapse

Two brothers are out to rob all the branches of a predatory bank, with weary Texas Ranger Jeff Bridges on their trail, in this dusty evocation of the collapse of the Western dream
3Score

Movie review: In Order of Disappearance is Norwegian noir

In this bleakly comic thriller, a mild-mannered snowplow driver is driven to take revenge on the local drug gangs, resulting in much bloodthirsty misunderstanding
4Score

The rise and fall (and rise and fall) of Anthony Weiner

Movie Review: Weiner A tell-all documentary about the brilliant politician who became a talk-show joke takes us deep inside a political campaign that is slowly, inexorably falling apart
3Score

Lo And Behold: Werner Herzog looks at the Internet (and also at Werner Herzog)

Movie review: Lo and Behold A new documentary examines the web from a variety of offbeat angles, and decides that it represents the biggest innovation in human history since Werner Herzog movies