In the rare moments of self-reflection I eke out between bouts of screaming and flower arranging, I find myself puzzled by the fact that I continue to play video games. I generally take it for granted that, in any given week, I'm going to spend at least 10 or 12 hours chipping away at a set of ...
Skater culture has been popular for so many decades that it may seem passé in 2018. For the kids that are followed in the new film "Mid90s," Jonah Hill’s directorial debut, skating is a way of life at the heart of the cultural zeitgeist.Stevie (Sunny Suljic), Fuckshit (Olan Prenatt), ...
Over the past 50 years, Cecilia Vicuña has been fascinated by the quipu, an ancient Incan device used by the aboriginal people of the Andes to record both history and narratives, as well as the various transactions of everyday life. The centerpiece of Vicuña’s latest show, from Oct. 20 to Jan. ...
December is over a month away, but John Legend just gave music lovers an early Christmas gift. The talented singer celebrated another religious holiday (and earned an EGOT in the process) with his leading turn in NBC’s “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert” on Easter Sunday this year. He's ...
Over the past few decades, Boston has produced some stellar stand-up comics. Among others, comedians Gary Gulman,Marc Maron and Bill Burr all got their starts in the greater Boston area. There are still many opportunities to watch quality stand-up this year. Among these opportunities lies The Gas, a ...
The Romanovs are a mystery. After the Russian Revolution, the immediate members of the royal Romanov family were executed, while the rest of the extended family went into exile. Since then, many have claimed to be part of this royal lineage, with some even claiming to be direct heirs to the royal throne. ...
“American Horror Story” (2011–) has always had a taste for glamour, gore and grand performances. Since its first season, retroactively titled “Murder House,” creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk have developed a world where a common cast of actors play a variety of characters. Each season ...
Bridget Kathleen O’Leary (BKO): [The play] is set in 1964, right after the Civil Rights [Act of 1964] has passed ... It’s kind of looking at the external scar that [Violet] carries and what it is for [Flick] to travel through the world as a black man in the '60s ... It is of great cost to him to be a black man out in the world, and she is struggling to be a woman that does not believe she has external beauty. There is this really beautiful refrain in a couple of the songs that they both sing, where they say, "Look at me." "Really look at me" is what they ask of each other. It’s this idea of "can you see beyond the exterior to get to the heart of who I am."
Film has long been an artistic medium used to process historical events, both recent and distant. Sometimes films use historical events as a jumping off point or a backdrop for a mainly fictional story, like the way Oscar-nominated film "Dunkirk" (2017) uses World War II to tell stories ...
Content warning: This article discusses violence."The Hate U Give," a cinematic adaptation of Angie Thomas' bestselling novel of the same name, graphically addresses the Black Lives Matter movement through the eyes of a young black woman, Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg). A code-switching ...
On Sept. 18, singer, songwriter and producer Lana Del Rey played her most recent single, “Venice Bitch,” on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 show on Apple Music. The 10-minute song is the second release from her work with producer Jack Antonoff, whose past credits include Taylor Swift’s “1989” (2014) ...
Zachary Hertz (ZH): We’re listening to My Chemical Romance’s (MCR) “The Black Parade” (2006) with tech enthusiast and YouTube celeb Dylan Hong, for whom both mozzarella sticks and pop punk have been a staple since early childhood. We have sticks from Wegmans, a store which holds a special ...
Content warning: This article mentions rape and abuse. 2018 marks the tenth anniversary of the Boston Asian American Film Festival (BAAFF). As New England’s largest Asian-American film festival, the BAAFF is dedicated to celebrating the brilliance behind the making of Asian-American films in diverse ...
Content warning: This article discusses addiction.Addiction is the ultimate disruptor, ruining not only the lives of those who immediately suffer from it but everyone who encounters it, forever snarling life’s supposedly linear path. In “Beautiful Boy,” father David Sheff (Steve Carell) is left ...
It’s seven on a Saturday, and after two or three hours of trying, I’ve finally managed to get a good mope going. There’s no experience so aesthetically palpable as a real good mope -- lying back on the velvet fainting couch you lifted off the sidewalk, hand across your forehead, hastily cobbled-together ...
"It’s a 20-year-old album, what the f***? On one hand, it’s cool that it’s held up,” lead singer and guitarist of the Goo Goo Dolls Johnny Rzeznik said to a packed audience at the House of Blues on Wednesday night.“On the other hand, it’s like, ‘You’re old Johnny, what the f***?’ ...
The weekend of Oct. 5 was no ordinary weekend for Somerville. Over the course of three days, activists and musicians from around the world descended on Davis Square for the yearly HONK! festival, a lively combination of music and activism.Since HONK!’s inception 12 years ago, the event has provided ...
Content warning: This article discusses violence.The most underrated quote from NBC's "The Office" (2005–13) comes from Robert California, as he muses on Halloween: "Fear plays an interesting role in our lives. How dare we let it motivate us? How dare we let it into our decision-making, ...
British director Paul Greengrass first gained mainstream recognition in 2004 with “The Bourne Supremacy.” The frenetic, rapid-cutting, unsteady camerawork of the Bourne series — somewhatderided by some critics as “shaky-cam” filmmaking — came to define action movies for the remainder of ...
Growing up black in Dublin, Ireland, Rejjie Snow (whose real name is Alexander Anyaegbunam) has always occupied an unusual vantage point. His musical style is no different. It is hard to categorize Snow's music: an eclectic mix of hip-hop and jazzy rhythms bedazzled by fragments of his own life. ...
