dvd of the week Steve McQueen’s remarkable 12 Years a Slave is based on the 1855 autobiography of Solomon Northup, played in the film by the great British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor. Solomon was born free and educated in upstate New York, and while his wife and children are away, he is kidnapped and sold into…
dvr this The CW, Mondays, 8 p.m. While the CW is best known for soapy teen dramas, often with a supernatural twist, the also-ran network is not known for high quality. But it should be. The new sci-fi shows on TV this year have huge budgets on ABC and Fox, but they’re better written and…
thursday, feb. 27 Marcus Kenney Lux Institute’s current artist in residence is Marcus Kenney. Poverty, alienation and social injustice are frequent themes in the multimedia works of Georgian painter and sculptor Kenney. His subjects, both humorous and macabre, suggest Southern Gothic dramas with folksy cross-cultural references. Kenney’s mixed media paintings and sculptures with found objects…
Steve Grand has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund his first album, which he hopes to release in May. And to give everyone a sneak peek, he’s released a new music video, “Back to California,” on YouTube (see above). The audio track is available for free on Bandcamp.com (and also on iTunes). Check out Gran’s…
Global Entertainment Properties 1, LLC, (GEP) producers of The Complete Frida Kahlo exhibition, today announced an extension of the exhibition in San Diego through June 8. The exhibition, on display at historic NTC at Liberty Station, was originally planned to be in San Diego through Jan. 19, with San Diego being the first stop on…
After announcing he’s gay back in April, Jason Collins, formerly of the Washington Wizards, signed a short-term, 10-day contract with the Brooklyn Nets making him the first openly gay player in any of the four major national sports league franchises in North America. The Nets Tweeted Sunday, “Official: The #Nets have signed @jasoncollins34 to a…
SAN DIEGO – At 7 p.m. Sunday, May 18, the iconic folk duo the Indigo Girls will join the San Diego Women’s Chorus (SDWC) for an exclusive performance at the Balboa Theatre. This unprecedented concertSongs of Protest, Songs of Peaceis a fundraising event benefiting the newly launched Lesbian Health Initiative of the San Diego Human…
When I told another critic at the screening of Winter’s Tale that it was adapted from a novel many consider to be one of greatest of the last quarter of the 20th century, I was given a blank stare. As in: Really? Are you kidding me? I don’t know this factoid because I’ve read Mark…
OK, pay attention. Sometimes, that’s all you need: just someone to watch you, to hear what you’re saying or understand your feelings. A little attention can be a bad-mood squasher, a good-mood enhancer or just validation. Yes, a minute in the spotlight can do wonders. And as you’ll see in Ham: Slices of a Life…
dvd of the week The plot of Gravity is quite simple. NASA astronauts have taken a space shuttle into orbit in order to repair the Hubble telescope. It is Matt Kowalski’s (George Clooney) last mission and Dr. Ryan Stone’s (a brilliant Sandra Bullock) first. While they are on a space walk outside the shuttle working…
