The sweet harmonies of USM student jazz musicians Peter Eberhardt and Emmett Harrity made lunch in the Woodbury Campus Center classier than usual last Tuesday. The show was the first installment of Jazz Tuesdays, a series of monthly concerts in the campus center being organized by the Portland Events Board in conjunction with the Jazz Studies Program.
Category: Arts & Culture
New to DVD: Observe and Report
Warning: viewing this movie on your home entertainment center may cause your fist to fly right through that lovely flat screen television!
“Observe and Report” presents the story of the mall security guards who patrol the aisles of the Forest Ridge Mall. The main character, Ronnie Barndhart (Seth Rogan), is so pitiful, delusional and egotistical that the comedic value in the character is lost.
Search for a better bean
I’ve been looking for a good cup of joe since I started at USM last month. So I did some research, drank a lot of coffee and decided on a few favorites:
The Husky Hideaway in the Student Center is the best place to go for coffee on the Gorham campus. When you’ve got the time to wait, their Pura Vida coffee comes in a variety of flavors and is a bold and rich way to refuel your brain.
The Leftovers
There’s too much boring music these days. The radio is gushing over-churned unoriginal pop music. Most of the “real” rock and rollers seem too unsatisfied and tortured to get along with each other long enough to keep a band together for more than a few albums.
PEB kicks off year with exciting open mic
The Portland Events Board put on an Open Mic Night in the Woodbury Campus Center in Portland last Wednesday. While only about 30 people showed up, the show was bigger than the PEB’s open mic last year. Christine Bullard, the chair of the PEB, considered it to be a huge success.
“X-Men Origins: Wolverine” surpasses expectations
Attention all X-Men fans: The fourth live-action film in the X-Men series has made its way to store shelves!
“X-Men Origins: Wolverine” provides the background story of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), a character who the first three movies catapulted out of the traditionally acne-ridden realm of comic books and video games and into the popular spotlight.
Poem – More Days
It so happens that I am sick of being a man.
Of rising at the same time, showering
In the same way, of living life
Like there is a tomorrow.
It is that I’m tired of having the same route
Into town, of passing the same hobo asking
For the same quarter to buy the same
Cheap beer sold down at City Beverage.
Jolie Holland rocks Space Gallery
Several hundred people packed Space Gallery in Portland last Thursday night for a concert by the critically acclaimed folk artist Jolie Holland of the band The Be Good Tanyas. Singer-songwriter Matt Bauer opened.
The venue was fairly packed by the time Bauer, a fairly imposing man with a very soft voice, began his set of slow songs full of nature imagery.
Portland on a Whim
It’s Thursday night. You’re old enough to drink and young enough not to have to worry about trucking off to the office at 9a.m. Friday morning. The only problem is that that rent check you just wrote for your new apartment just cleared out whatever was left in your bank account, and you’ve got almost no money to spend.
“Inglourious Basterds” gleefully shuns historicity
“Inglourious Basterds” is an entertaining ride that will thrill fans of Quentin Tarantino’s other movies but may cause history buffs to squirm. Be warned, the movie is an absurdly fun piece of fiction with little regard for history or even plausibility.
Set in Nazi occupied France, the film is seen through two viewpoints.
Classic romantic musical opens in South Portland
The atmosphere at opening night of “Company,” the new production that kicked off the fall season of the Portland Players Theater in South Portland on Friday night, was as lively and welcoming as a reunion of old friends.
The building hummed as about 75 local theater lovers flowed in to take their seats before the 8p.
By the book
The art of book-making is almost as ancient as writing itself. For thousands of years human beings have been designing scrolls and manuscripts and binding pages together to contain the written word. This past July, art students at USM had an opportunity to learn some of these skills as part of the week-long 200-level Book Arts Program at the Stone House, a USM facility in Freeport.
Fine art by foot
On the first Friday of every month, Congress Street in Portland bustles as locals, tourists and students venture out to peruse the downtown galleries and take in the vibrant scene of street performers and musicians.
This month was no exception. The Portland Museum of Art showcased an exhibit named “Call of the Coast: Art Colonies of New England” that included art from Charles Ebert, Willard Metcalf and Andrew Winter.
WMPG tunes in for another exciting year
Viewed from the street, the small building looks like all the other white, clapboard cottages that USM owns along Falmouth St. in Portland. Go in the main entrance and through the sticker-plastered door on the left, however, and you’ll find yourself in the thriving cultural nexus that is WMPG, the community radio station for southern Maine.
Picnic festival comes back to Portland
Looking for something fun to do next weekend? The 2nd annual Picnic Music and Arts Festival is coming back to Lincoln Park in Portland, located on the corner of Congress Street and Franklin Arterial.
If you missed Picnic last year, you should know that this will be a unique kind of local festival that will be well worth stopping by and checking out.
A “lite” comedy about man’s best friend
A.R. Gurney’s 1995 play, “Sylvia,” playing from April 24-May 3 at the Russell Hall Main Stage in Gorham, though it treads the fine line between “light” and “lite” comedy, is only partially a play about a dog. In the hands of a more experienced director, it has the potential to be a passable, though somewhat protracted and obvious, comedy about love, jealousy and the ramifications of impending old age.
Summer movie madness
June
“The Proposal” promises audiences a Sandra Bullock (“Crash,” “Miss Congeniality”) romantic-comedy that we can all be proud of her in. I’m not knocking her talent, just her choice of movies over the last few years. Bullock plays an obtrusive boss that forces her young assistant, Ryan Reynolds (“Van Wilder,” “Waiting”), to marry her.
Bountiful Bromst
Bountiful’ is the best word I can come up with to describe the music of Dan Deacon. It is bountiful in its sounds, styles, influences and directions. His latest album, Bromst, has the magnitude of a large piece of classical music with all of the benefits of a pop album.
Bargain bin pick
Victor Wooten has done it again! Straight from the man who brought us “Soul Circus,” and “Show of Hands” comes an album that will completely blow your mind. “Palmystery” shows the full extent of this bass playing virtuoso. Combining his classic ‘slap and pop’ technique to create a masterful display of musicianship, Wooten does the name of the album justice, for it is indeed a mystery.
Showing off their stuff
A question many college grads ask themselves is: four years in college and what do I have to show for it (besides loans)? The graduating studio art majors get a chance to show the public what exactly they have to show for college at the B.F.A. exhibit at USM’s art gallery in Gorham.
DVD Battle: Muppetational Edition
With a new Muppet movie comes a new excuse to write about the Muppets.
Keeping it Classy
Classical music, as an art form, has traditionally influenced developing musicians. But, it’s easy to believe that young people today are less interested in Classical and more interested in contemporary genres such as alternative rock or pop music, due to the over-exposure of these types of music in the media.
“Rescue Me” Returns
For those ignorant to the powerhouse cable show called “Rescue Me,” may your houses be adorned with immense shame.
The show focuses on a crew of New York firefighters that are forced to deal with the trauma of September 11th in both their professional and personal lives.
Epicurean epics
Pre-dawn walks with Caleigh to the top Peacock Hill reveal a neglected orchard, with rows of apple trees, naked and gnarled, silhouetted against the inky sky. Deer are back on the move as is evidenced by distinct tracks on the side of the road and barely visible trails through the woods.