Pussy Riot: A Punk Rock Prayer

Posted 4:47pm Sunday 18th August 2013

Rating: 3/5 It’s a story that has begged to be told outside of the news media. Maxim Pozdorovkin and Mike Lerner’s Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer is an intriguing documentary that tells the story of how and why three young activists were arrested and prosecuted for publicly opposing the Russian Read more...

The Editor

Posted 3:03pm Sunday 26th May 2013

Tales of obsession never lose their appeal. If there is a character’s flawed logic, actions ignited by the flame of desperation, and the smell of blood disrupting the logical flow of common sense, we the readers love to wait for the eventual calamity. Samuel Dansam’s The Editor reads like an Read more...

On the Road

Posted 6:30pm Sunday 24th March 2013

In the autumn of 1957, Jack Kerouac picked up an early edition of the New York Times from an all-night newsstand in the Upper West Side, Manhattan and read Gilbert Millstein’s review of On the Road. Millstein declared the novel “the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important Read more...

A review, an outro; a comedy: Melville’s Bartleby

Posted 5:59pm Sunday 7th October 2012

It was on a fine day in New York City that the tall and lanky young man entered the chambers of an elderly Wall Street lawyer and undertook the job as a legal scrivener (legal copyist). The lawyer’s chambers were on the second story of a building that sat in the shade of its neighboring buildings. Read more...

Apollo’s Arrow

Posted 4:57pm Sunday 16th September 2012

Stage 10 of the 2001 Tour de France was a climb in the French Alps involving three above category hill climbs, summiting at the legendary ski resort l’Alpe d’Huez. It is the first mountain stage of the world-renowned bicycle race. Early in the day, Jan Ullrich had eased into the lead of the peloton Read more...

The Art of Fielding

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 19th August 2012

The Art of Fielding reads like a wicked change-up. The pages flip fast as the narrative creeps closer to the plate, but as the crux of the novel draws near it’s difficult to judge the arch the themes arrive on. Is Chad Harbach’s debut novel about baseball or a University campus? Has he revamped Read more...

ZINEFEST 2012

Posted 4:49pm Sunday 5th August 2012

Glue Gallery - 26 Stafford St Friday August 10th 5pm-9pm & Saturday August 11th 10am-6pm THE ZINE MINUS THE MAG: THE UBIQUITOUS, TRASHY, PRETTY, TINY TAILORED TREASURE OF WORDS, SITTING RIGHT UNDERNEATH THE NOSE ON YOU. Zines. They’re in cafes, pubs, boutiques, and dairies. You Read more...

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Posted 5:13pm Sunday 8th July 2012

Tom Ripley just wasn’t good enough. His Aunt Dottie told him so. Dottie raised him, so she should know. Tom’s parents drowned when he was a child. On a hot summer’s day when he was 12, in the middle of a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam, Dottie told Tom to fill up a thermos with ice water at a filling Read more...

White Noise

Posted 7:58pm Sunday 20th May 2012

White Noise hisses between radio stations, on the TV, between life and death. It permeates the airwaves. It’s the death knell that slips into the caverns, the subterranean passages that “distinguish words from things.” The unimaginable weight of death presses on Jack Gladney’s shoulders. He is a Read more...

Ignorance

Posted 3:53pm Sunday 15th April 2012

Ignorance is not just stupidity. Milan Kundera’s thoughtful examination of repatriation is qualified by his own experience as a Czech émigré living in France. His firsthand experience of what it is like to leave home and start over provides the novel with a problematic yet realistic interpretation Read more...