Category: Arts & Culture

Dozens of local artists displayed paintings, jewelry, handmade bags and even carved wooden pickle forks at the third annual Gorham Art Fair on Sunday. The event was held in the Shaw Gym in the back of the municipal center on South St. and lasted all day, running from 9a.

“Tea and Sympathy,” the Theatre Department’s latest production, opened in Russell Hall in Gorham last Thursday.

Originally written as a loose autobiography of the playwright Robert Anderson, the play presents the story of Tom, a student in a boy’s school in the 1950s who is suspected of being a homosexual.

??Care to take a trip down memory lane? The celebrated children’s story by Maurice Sendak has finally overcome its “unfilmable” reputation and landed on the big screen. Now don’t lie to yourself, you know you are dying to see it!

??????For those who need a slight refresher on “Where the Wild Things Are,” the story follows a disobedient child named Max.

In every backyard battlefield,

hordes of half-grown children play,

plaid cowboy shirts tucked into blue denim,

fringe flying, cheeks blazing.

Shoot ’em up, they scream,

each hand waving a silver pistol,

whirling a limp lasso; stolen clothesline tied to the hip.

Mihku Paul Anderson, a Creative Writing student in USM’s Stonecoast MFA Program, is a proud member of the Maliseet, one of the five groups that comprise the Wabanaki Confederacy. Raised near Penobscot Indian Island Reservation, her indigenous identity flows into everything she does.

The low budget crime thriller “Boondock Saints” is a staple of many college students’ DVD collections. Although nobody seemed to notice it in the theaters when it came out in 1999, it’s attained an almost cult-like following, grossing over $40 million in DVD sales.

“FlashForward,” a new Thursday night primetime sci-fi drama on ABC, might just be television’s most captivating mind-bender since “Lost” first aired in fall 2004.

The show’s premise is bizarre. Everyone in the world blacks out for two minutes and 17 seconds and sees visions of their lives six months into the future.

A pair of psychic fortune tellers used tarot cards to predict the futures of around thirty students in the Brooks Student Center in Gorham last Thursday. The Gorham Events Board organized the event as part of their weekly Thirsty Thursday series.

The GEB decided to bring the fortune tellers in a last minute change of plans when the scheduled main event, a mind reader, was unable to come.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m picky about my coffee. I like to taste coffee. Sometimes I add soymilk, and sometimes I drink it straight up black. No matter how I order it, this particular beverage is a big part of my day.

Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts have their own rivalery story, and I’m not about to dive into that controversy.

A production of two of Anton Chekhov’s one-act plays, “The Bear” and “The Proposal,” opened last Thursday to a packed audience in Russell Hall in Gorham.

As the audience took their seats, old-fashioned balalaika music serenaded them off to nineteenth century Russia, setting the mood perfectly.

Jakob Battick has a half-groomed beard and wavy brown hair that hangs below his ears. He is very tall and very intelligent. He loves playing the guitar and spending time with his family. He doesn’t like playing Frisbee. He is my friend.

We met in the fall of 2007 when we lived on the same floor of Robie-Andrews Hall.

This past Tuesday, two USM connected bands, Marie Stella and the Rattlesnakes, opened for the New Jersey based punk band Screaming Females at Space Gallery in Portland.

Marie Stella kicked off the show with a new song titled “Lonely is Better,” which showed off USM alumna Sydney Bourke’s sweet soprano vocals, powerful bass-playing abilities and growing songwriting talent.

Prepare to get hungry; this charming film will capture both your heart and your taste buds. Filled with witty humor and clips of delicious meals, “Julie & Julia” is the year’s best chick flick by far.

The film follows two different true stories. The first belongs to Julie Powell (Amy Adams).

Six Afro-Cuban jazz musicians from around the world will be coming to USM for five days of live performances and workshops starting next Thursday. The musicians are part of a group called Un Mondo, which translates as “One World,” in an event hosted by the School of Music and the Cultural Affairs Committee.

It’s a First Friday Artwalk in Portland, and a busy crowd of tourists and students are exploring the chic galleries along Congress St. As they approach the intersection with High St., they feel the warmth of a soulful voice and an acoustic guitar wafting through the air.

A large crowd packed into the gallery of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies on Congress St. last Thursday for the opening of an exhibit of poetry by women incarcerated in the Maine state correctional system. The poems are the result of a year of creative writing workshops conducted by Family Crisis Services, a Maine-based non-profit that works with victims of domestic violence.

Saturday came very close to being a perfect day for the USM student concert band performance on the front steps of Corthell Hall in Gorham. You could smell the good, cheap barbecue all the way from Upton-Hastings. The crowd was comprised mostly of local families with small children, but there were a handful of student enjoying the sunshine as well.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.