Category: Arts & Culture

It’s hard to go wrong with Jack Black and Mos Def starring in your film, and Be Kind, Rewind is a perfect example of that. The latest effort from Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine, Science of Sleep) follows the same style of his previous work, but adds new dimensions of humor and reverie.

Have you been getting bored of the same old drinks?

You wake up every morning and try not choke and die on that nasty pulpy OJ your roommate insists on buying.

Come lunchtime at the Brooks Student Center you buy a Vitamin Water.

Why? Because everyone drinks Vitamin Water! It’s a flavored alternative to water! “WHOA COOL!” Also, the hip people who make it write funny things on the side of the label! “EVEN COOLER!”

Vitamin Water is owned by Coca-Cola; a giant corporation.

Last year, USM shut down an art exhibit for the first time in the school’s history. During the time that “Can’t Jail the Spirit” was supposed to be hanging in the Woodbury Campus Center, Ubu Gallery in Portland’s East End hosted the exhibit. The show then traveled to Philadelphia, Providence, New York City and Cambridge to the Harvard Divinity School.

There’s nothing like a subtle compliment to boost the spirits of your Valentine. Do-It-Yourself projects meet the cheesy world of Valentine’s phrases in just a few simple steps. Hot sauce 1. Cover the label of a bottle of hot sauce. 2. On a new label write a phrase that includes the temperature of your Valentine.

Monday, February 11, 2008 Check out “In the Center of It All: Glimpses of African American Life in Central Maine,” the annual exhibition by the African American Collection of Maine. The exhibit is open during library hours/ Glickman Family Library/ Portland Campus/ fmi: http://library.

House lights are on high, splashing white and yellow onto the black walls framing the stage. Student actors are positioned around the unfinished set in their street clothes while senior Kristen Peters watches her peers work through the script. They are pacing around the skeleton of a beach house that will, I’m assured, soon be surrounded by actual sand.

From Italy to the South Pole, Russia to Australia, the 59 Seconds Festival has traveled the globe with the goal of presenting their unique film festival 59 times. Last Friday, USM became stop number 51. The one-time-only project, a traveling film festival that changes each time it’s shown based on audience reviews, will have traveled to 59 locations around the world by its end in 2009.

Marie-France Lefebvre, a nationally renowned opera coach, visited the USM School of Music last week to give master classes.

“It’s such a cool opportunity to have her here,” said senior vocal performance major George Eisenhauer. “I wish I could have worked with her more.

The only requirement to enter WMPG’s Cajun Cookin’ Challenge was that you had to bring a minimum of ten gallons of food. This didn’t stop the nine restaurants or several feisty individuals that vied for the 2008 crown. By the end of the afternoon judging period, supplies were diminishing as the contestants raced to cook up and dish out new batches of their specialty dishes.

Our chairs were so close together that my elbows were touching the people on either side of me. Gathered for a lecture, 976 people seemed a little absurd, even for the spunky city of Portland.

Because of the number of people in attendance, the Portland Museum of Art could not host their own event, and turned to the Holiday Inn by The Bay for the biggest ballroom in town.

Sex was on everyone’s minds last week, especially in the Glickman Library. Moderated by USM’s Diana Long, professor of history and women’s and gender studies, a forum titled “Silencing Sex Ed” presented a panel of experts to discuss teaching abstinence to students in America and abroad.

Monday, February 4

Marie-France Lefebvre, former prompter at the Metropolitan Opera will lead several master classes today. Sessions of piano coaching from 10 a.m.-12 p.m.; French and Italian diction sessions will be held from

3 – 5 p.m.; and voice coaching with the Opera Workshop will be held from 7 to 9pm.

Yesterday on PerezHilton.com, there were three postings keeping up with the mental health of Miss Britney Spears and her trips to the psychiatric ward of the LA hospital at which she is becoming a regular.

D-listed.com is a celebrity gossip site that prizes itself for updating every fifteen minutes.

LAMINATED CAT

A band from Maine! This quartet from the Augusta area changed their name from Interobang to Laminated Cat and moved to Boston, where they’ve recently opened for Apples In Stereo. They even played 2007’s Athens PopFest in Georgia, with the likes of Ted Leo & The Pharmacists and Daniel Johnston.

The Brooklyn-based Fiery Furnaces played at SPACE gallery last Saturday in support of Widow City, their sixth full-length release in four years. Portland’s Phantom Buffalo opened, playing a few songs from their previous Shishimumu, but mostly selections from their forthcoming Take To The Trees.

Forty-five minutes after the reception opened some of the professors had trickled in.

A gallery employee stuck a tiny red dot next to a painting by professor Richard Brown Lethem, indicating that it had sold for hundreds of dollars. Gallery curator Carolyn Eyler slowly made her rounds.

The room was buzzing with energy. Parents had video recorders, students were leaning in to pay delicate attention to each other’s performances, and in the back was a row of standing smilers. The beaming back row, it was obvious, were the coordinators of the program, showing gestures of success, nodding to one another in delight of what was going on onstage.

monday, january 28

RON PAUL. AT USM.

Republican presidential nominee Ron Paul will speak this morning on campus. Free/ 9:30-10:30 a.m./ Hannaford Lecture Hall/ Portland campus/ Contact Jason Lavoie 228-8768

tuesday, january 29

HIT THE ROAD.

What USM is calling ‘The Ultimate Road Trip: Campus2Career’ will be an hour-long interactive presentation on the ins and outs of succeeding in courses, the college internship, goal-setting, and developing a ‘personal brand.

“One, and two, and cellos now.”

It is cacophony. Cellos screech, violins come in early, and at the front of the room, Marshunda Smith stands, poised, her face not giving in to the grimace that anyone else would make.

This group of children is just beginning to learn how to hold their instruments and bows, and while they might want to play the theme to Star Wars, they have quite some time before that is possible.

Monday, January 21

LOLA. L-O-L-A. The Portland Museum of Art shows Lola Alvarez Bravo, credited as Mexico’s first acclaimed female photographer. The exhibit features 55 vintage photographs

During the winter break, five fledging USM jazz musicians found work in Downeast Maine. Over the course of several days the aptly, if uncreatively named USM Jazz Quintet-Noel Brennan (drums), Josh Evans (piano), Jim Ellis (guitar), Kyle Hardy (saxophones) and Chris Sprague (bass)-filled a Calais, Maine auditorium several times over and met with local high school musicians for some jazz performance workshops.

The Leftovers are traveling the globe and taking the world by storm. They’re also attending classes at USM.

The band formed in 2002, and immediately turned heads with their EP Mitton Street Special. Two years later, they released their first full-length album, “Stop, Drop, Rock, & Roll.

As the New Years festivities subsided, and the long, cold month set in, a gallant plan was formulating. And although it seems as if winter has already slapped us by declaring our semester start with a blizzard, we can still win. Behold, a brief guide to pleasures that will keep you going through the rest of this cruel month.

The very first thing Judith Ellis Glickman suggests during our interview is that if USM students would like, she’d be happy to do some guided-walk-throughs of her upcoming exhibit.

This is something that would be impossible from the current exhibitor, the late Frank Llyod Wright to consider.