A&E Features

Culture and A&E Features


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Wednesday July 2, 2008 08:00 AM EDT
image-1Essential Theatre celebrates its 10th anniversary with POWER PLAYS FESTIVAL, another triple header of local and world-premiere plays. This year’s lineup, selected by artistic director Peter Hardy, includes Paul Rudnick’s comedy Valhalla, featuring Topher Payne as Mad King Ludwig; Gina Gionfriddo’s heavyweight drama After Ashley, opening Wed., JULY 2, about the media circus surrounding a... | more...

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Wednesday July 2, 2008 12:04 AM EDT
What the Atlanta-based erotica writer finds hot | more...

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Wednesday July 2, 2008 12:04 AM EDT
Downtown’s Arts for All Gallery executive director | more...

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Wednesday July 2, 2008 12:04 AM EDT
In repertory at Georgia Shakespeare | more...

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Tuesday July 1, 2008 07:02 PM EDT

image-1Local poet and member of the Atlanta Art Amok! Slam Team, Shannon Leigh, died yesterday, having been in critical condition for more than two weeks following a cave-diving accident June 14. She was 20 years old.

She had gotten trapped in an underwater cavern at Ginnie Springs in High Springs, Fla., when her breathing apparatus came out. It’s unknown how long she was underwater before...

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Tuesday July 1, 2008 02:05 PM EDT

Today’s Air Loaf features CL’s Chanté LaGon and Curt Holman discussin OnStage Atlanta’s production of Urinetown: The Musical. (Through July 12.)

Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.

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Tuesday July 1, 2008 08:00 AM EDT
image-1Good and positive music is sometimes hard to come by, so when LYFE JENNINGS comes to town Tues., JULY 1, with his Baby I’m A Star Tour, people can enjoy the R&B and soul singer’s unique brand of urban music that soothes while also delivering a powerful message. Jennings served 10 years in prison for an arson arrest, and since his release has been singing and informing youths of the... | more...

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Tuesday July 1, 2008 03:45 AM EDT

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1) New Exhibits continues at ART Station Contemporary Arts Center.

2) Barbara Ann’s features Blues Jam Session with Frankie Lee Robinson.

3) Lyfe Jennings plays at Center Stage.

4) DJ Romeo Cologne hosts Funk Disco at Star Bar.

5) Summer Slaughter Tour 2008 comes to the Masquerade.

(Image by Bob McGill)

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Monday June 30, 2008 09:30 PM EDT
Last night I attended Valhalla, the kick-off production of Essential Theatre’s 10th anniversary season of local and world premiere plays. Valhalla was kind of an odd duck, juxtaposing the life of Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria (Topher Payne) with an impulsive, gay Texan (Matt Felten) in the 1930s and 1940s. Playwright Paul Rudnick tends to be something of a one-liner machine, so the play’s... | more...

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Monday June 30, 2008 08:28 PM EDT

image-1 In a display of ambition that seems positively, well, Shakespearean, The New American Shakespeare Tavern has announced that it will stage 15 plays between this August and next June for its 2008-2009 season. That’s a staggeringly busy schedule for a company that has no second stage, requiring constant performance.

In prior years the Tavern has staged “August Three-peat” repertory...

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Monday June 30, 2008 02:24 PM EDT
image-1We’ve got a ton of free passes to see tonight’s screening of Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson, which I review in the next issue, at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema. (Hint: I likey.) Just email me at davidlee.simmons at creativeloafing.com. One huge caveat: The promoters of these screenings always encourage folks to get there early, as these passes don’t guarantee admittance,... | more...

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Monday June 30, 2008 08:00 AM EDT
image-1SILVER APPLES emerged from New York in 1967 with a rhythmic sound that was too revolutionary for the times. Forty years later, the name still carries a lot of weight among music heads who have an ear for true genius. Silver Apples opted for oscillators rather than guitars. And with these futuristic tools the group surfs the sine waves, carving out deep, psychedelic grooves that are as... | more...

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Sunday June 29, 2008 08:00 AM EDT
image-1Atlanta folk music duo Rising Appalachia has cheerfully woven topics of cultural evolution and fusion into its music, bringing the message around the world with its aural globe trotting. Siblings Leah and Chloe Smith take a more direct approach to encouraging themes of social evolution and responsibility when they host the third annual CONCRETE PANDEMONIUM Sun., JUNE 29. Billed as an... | more...

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Friday June 27, 2008 05:02 PM EDT
image-1Sunday offers us the first-ever Georgia Author Book Bash, presented by Atlanta magazine and the Literary Center of the Margaret Mitchell House. The event will take place from 4-7 p.m. at the Margaret Mitchell House. Tickets are $15 general admission, $10 members. Guests can schmooze with the LL (local literati) on the front lawn and wrestle them to the grass for an autograph. There’ll... | more...

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Friday June 27, 2008 03:51 PM EDT
One detail I left out of my interview with Andrew Stanton, director of Pixar Studio’s new classics WALL-E and Finding Nemo, was a tidbit about his early days. Before joining Pixar (where he was the second animator and ninth employee), one of Stanton’s first Hollywood jobs was on Ralph Bakshi’s short-lived animated sitcom “Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures.” “Mighty Mouse” offered a clever parody... | more...

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Friday June 27, 2008 03:25 PM EDT
On Sat., June 28, The Silver Scream Spook Show at The Plaza Theatre presents 1958’s classic technicolor space opera, Forbidden Planet. It looks pretty kitschy these days, especially because The Naked Gun’s Leslie Nielsen (referred to as “talented Leslie Nielsen” in the trailer) plays the heroic starship captain, a clear role model for William Shatner’s James T. Kirk. Forbidden Planet gets extra... | more...

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Friday June 27, 2008 02:25 PM EDT

We all love Film Love, the ongoing cinematic series from Andy Ditzler’s Frequent Small Meals that looks into the nooks and crannies of more independently minded movie-making in a way that’s both entertaining and informative.

The Film Love blisses out on July 25 at Eyedrum with a twofer titled “The Trick of Disaster,” which looks at the domino effect of destruction. Showtime is 8 p.m....

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Friday June 27, 2008 08:00 AM EDT
image-1When EMMYLOU HARRIS was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame this year, the only question was: What took so long? Harris may be the finest song interpreter of our generation, the closest thing to a heavenly voice on Earth. Now 61 and still in full form, she’s back on the road to promote her introspective new album, All I Intended to Be, and stops in at Chastain Park Fri., JUNE... | more...

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Thursday June 26, 2008 08:35 PM EDT
image-1Remember waaay back in our June 4 issue, where we ran my review of the not-terribly-charming Hats Off, filmmaker Jyll Johnstone’s loving profile of 93-year-old bit-part actress Mimi Weddell? (Of course you do!) Well, as is often the case with independent movies, the release date kept getting pushed back (the first time, after we’d gone to press and printed the review) and back and back... | more...

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Thursday June 26, 2008 08:22 PM EDT

image-1I want to clarify a little something I wrote in my review of the new Angelina Jolie shoot-em-up, Wanted, which is based on a graphic novel series by Mark Millar, J.G. Jones and Paul Mounts. I remarked that the film’s hyper-stylish portrayal of magical hitmen “proves that graphic novels don’t have to be about superheroes to provide material for silly movies.”

I read the Wanted...

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Thursday June 26, 2008 02:21 PM EDT

image-1In this week’s “View from the Couch” DVD column, Charlotte’s Creative Loafing film critic Matt Brunson spans the spectrum of new releases. He takes on new films Definitely, Maybe as well as The Spiderwick Chronicles, Be Kind Rewind and 10,000 B.C., but also has takes on releases of older films such as The Furies and Xanadu.

For me, the most intriguing of the releases is the...

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Thursday June 26, 2008 08:00 AM EDT
image-1Georgia Shakespeare courts controversy by staging THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, historically one of Shakespeare’s most puzzling plays. Beneath the trappings of light romantic comedy, Merchant features the antagonistic role of bloodthirsty moneylender Shylock (Chris Kayser), one of Shakespeare’s most vivid characters, yet the embodiment of some of the Elizabethan era’s anti-Semitic stereotypes.... | more...

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Wednesday June 25, 2008 07:53 PM EDT
image-1I reviewed the Actor’s Express production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch in this week’s issue, and while I believe there’s room for improvement, it remains an impressive production. And as I stated in my review, one of the reasons why watching Hedwig is such a compelling experience is because John Cameron Mitchell’s collaboration with Stephen Trask is the most authentic... | more...

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Wednesday June 25, 2008 01:41 PM EDT

Today’s Air Loaf features CL’s Chanté LaGon and David Lee Simmons discussing Hedwig and the Angry Inch playing tonight and through the weekend at Actor’s Express.

Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.

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Wednesday June 25, 2008 08:00 AM EDT
image-1No, it’s not onomatopoeia. Middle Ohio trio PSYCHEDELIC HORSESHIT shrouds primitive but gorgeous melodies and pop hooks in a dense cloud of buzzing, lo-fi noise and seat-of-the-pants punk-pop slop that evokes everyone from Guided by Voices to Times New Viking. Australian duo and Siltbreeze Records labelmates Fabulous Diamonds switch gears from the din and distortion that is quickly... | more...