Shaw Festival 2014

Ten show choices in the 
beautiful setting of Canada’s wine country

Queen Street in Niagara-on-the-Lake

     We used to visit Niagara-on-the-Lake (NOTL), Ontario, annually until a few years ago.  It’s in the middle of Canada’s wine country and features The Shaw Festival, one of North America’s finest professional theatre companies.  Imagine Napa Valley with the Guthrie or The Goodman smack up in

AMC Sunday: Halt and Catch Fire

What’s a network to do 
when the great shows go?

     AMC (formerly American Movie Classics, though they mainly showed the second-rate) took off in 2007 with Mad Men.  It was their highly successful attempt to become a buzzed about cable network in the manner of FX and follow the premium cable networks HBO and Showtime, which had pioneered the magic formula a decade earlier.  The “open sesame” is an original series that few actually watch, but critics, bloggers, and loyal fans can’t stop talking about such as Oz, The Sopranos, Rescue Me, Six Feet Under, The Shield, Queer as Folk, etc.

Megan and Don at Howard Johnson

     Unlike those programs, Mad Men was a period piece and it seemed literary.  I always thought it was as if a John Cheever novel had been turned into television and, as it’s progressed chronologically, it feels like a John Updike novel.  From the

Maleficent

An alternate take on a classic 
fairy tale would be unimaginable 
without Angelina Jolie

     We haven’t visited the cinema lately, mainly because we’re in superhero – i.e. fascist bullshit season for the simple-minded – and have been catching up on more intriguing

Arnold’s Bar & Grill

A Cincinnati institution 
that keeps a-going and deserves attention

The Courtyard at Arnold's

     Katy and Denny just moved to a spacious, beautiful apartment downtown so we decided on Arnold’s for dinner a couple of weeks ago.  They’d visited earlier in the spring and

Tammy

Melissa McCarthy’s hilarious, 
but the script can’t deliver on expectations

      Yes, Melissa McCarthy emerged as a unique force of nature in the movies three years ago as a smart, foul-mouthed, gifted physical comic actress.  The previews for Tammy actually worked because they made us want to see it.  We went with Martha and Kaylee.  Bryce had heard it wasn’t

Obvious Child

Let’s hear it for the Girls

     Writer-director Gillian Robespierre, producer Elisabeth Holm, and star Jenny Slate have collaborated on a romantic comedy-drama that’s probably the best one since The Kids Are All Right (2010).  I’ll state now that there is an early first

Tom Perrotta: The Leftovers

Perrotta’s books have 
transferred well to film, but will this?

     Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers (2011) tells of a small town three years after 2% of the world’s population suddenly vanishes in what some believe was the Rapture.  Though it explores a number of residents in that town during the span of

So Retro They’re Current

Echosmith, The Temples, 
Hamilton Leithauser

     Some of the recent bands sound like chestnuts of yesteryear, whether or not on purpose.  There’s pleasure in rehearing the sound of a favorite period or musical group in a new artist, though it begs the question of whether that artist can make the sound its own and whether they can maintain a long-term career in the mainstream.

Echosmith Siblings

      Echosmith is probably the least like an earlier sound in its instrumentation.  Formed by the Sierta siblings (Jamie, Sydney, Noah, and Graham) when were just out of the womb, Neil first heard them on WNKU being expounded as a band

Private Lives at CSC

Excellent direction, good acting, a dreary set, 
and an opening night audience from Hades

     D. Lynn Meyers’ strongly directed and skillfully acted production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives opened last night at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company.  Coward can be difficult to pull off because his works seem simply charming.  Actors that play the lines for laughs will be left in the dust because

Chef

Jon Favreau’s delightful family film

     Jon Favreau’s Chef (and it is his movie because he wrote, directed, and stars) will, I hope, be a sleeper hit.  It’s a sweet, family focused work with a salty tongue.  It’s playing at The Esquire, but with a cast including Sofia Vergara, John Leguizamo, Scarlett Johansson, Bobby Cannavale, Oliver Platt, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert Downey, Jr., it feels like it