Andrew OsborneFilmAustin,
Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One" chronicles an epic battle for control of a fully immersive, massively multiplayer online virtual reality space known as the OASIS where users escape the depressing dystopic reality of the story's 2045 setting.
Based on the novel of the same name by Ernest Cline, ...
Nancy S. BishopTheaterChicago,
Paul (Joel Reitsma) is a rock star, with rock star habits and ego. He’s now in Moscow, nearing the end of a long tour and faced with going home to London. He and Johnny, his bandmate, (played by Dushane Casteallo) are getting ready to perform in concert.
“Birdland," written ...
Josh BaxtTheaterSan Diego,
What do you know about mariachi music? If you’re like me, not a lot. Up to now, it’s been the background music while consuming margaritas, chips and queso. Not anymore.
Set in a U.S. Latino community in the 1970s, American Mariachi addresses ethnicity, gender roles, aging, family, friendships, ...
Lewis WhittingtonDancePhiladelphia,
Berlin – based dancer-choreographers Honji Wang and Sébastien Ramirez are partners onstage and off and their company Wang Ramirez has earned them not only accolades, including the Bessie Award, and wide commercial appeal in part due to their arena-edge choreography for Madonna’s ‘Rebel Heart’ tour in 2015. The ...
Andrew OsborneFilmAustin,
I recently shared my Top Five favorite films of the 2018 South-by-Southwest festival, but what about the other screenings I attended? What didn't quite make the list (and why)? Well, let's start with the...
CLOSE CALLS
MORE HUMAN THAN HUMAN
...
Toba SingerDanceSan Francisco,
“There’s only one thing worse than being in a Robbins work, and that’s not being in one,” a veteran New York City Ballet dancer remarked recently. Circling ’round the New York ballet world in eighty minutes, this all-Robbins program offers a palette of repertoire starting with the harrowing dreamscape in ...
Emily S. MendelTheaterBerkeley,
“We’ve got thirty per cent the same [genes] as a lettuce…”
The successful birth of Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, was a startling event in 1996. Now the news of Barbra Streisand’s cloned puppies has shown how replicating pets genetically is easily available to the privileged ...
Andrew OsborneFilmAustin,
The 2018 South-by-Southwest Film Festival featured 130+ movies over the course of nine days, making it literally impossible for anyone to see more than a fraction of the premieres and festival favorites available for review. For strategic reasons, then, I skipped the high-profile, jam-packed A-list screenings of Wes ...
Paula FarmerFilm
For those more accustomed to the light touch and whimsical ways of director Cédric Kaplisch (“L’auberge Espagnole” and “Russian Dolls”), which is attributed to a big portion of his body of work, his latest film, “Back to Burgundy”, may seem a bit of ...
George WuFilm
"Ismael's Ghosts" is director Arnaud Desplechin's sixth outing with actor Mathieu Amalric. With such fantastic works as "My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument," "Kings & Queen," and "A Christmas Tale" between them, it's a collaboration as fruitful as the legendary ones between Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro ...
