Stage
The Nutcracker is one of those stories that seems destined to never truly leave the public consciousness, having been adapted to ballet from an Alexandre Dumas story, which itself was an adaptation of an E.T.A. Hoffman story, back in the late 19th century. Since then, it's endured innumerable permutations for
Music
It's funny, the disconnect that happens in the time it takes for a band to record an album, and for a music critic to listen to it. So much of the time, the critic will struggle for words, and resort to some description along the lines of, "This band is
South Sound Cinema
Welcome to Three Easy Pieces, where I explore a witheringly specific area of pop culture from its birth to how it exists today. This month, I'm thinking of A Star Is Born. Hollywood likes to remake it roughly once every generation, dating back to the 1937 original. Though the story's about
Music
So much of rock and roll boils down to one simple goal: shaking off the oppressive stress and browbeating aggressors of everyday life. If you make it through the exhausting marathon that makes up just one average, unremarkable weekday in this life of ours, you're afforded the opportunity to frantically
Stage
Yohen takes its time revealing exactly what's going on with its two characters, James (Malcolm J. West) and Sumi (Aya Hashiguchi). While they speak as though they've known each other for many years, there's a hesitance to their interactions, a kind of nervous energy that feels slightly off. It takes until
Attractions
It's a never-ending source of fascination, to me, that people so frequently volunteer to be horrified. With a world so chock-full of real, readily accessible terror, how odd and endearing is it that people line up to pay money for the privilege of having of the wits scared out of
Music
It's a curious trait we have of striving to summarize eras in easily quantifiable terms, regardless of whether or not those designations hold up to scrutiny. An easy place to look for this behavior is in the repeated, exhausting attempts to define generations -- what it means to be a
Music
In radio pop, there's frequently an atmosphere of worshipping the young and pristine, and eschewing the unique and experienced. Talent shows like American Idol and The Voice rendered this subtext overt, sacrificing cherubic, would-be stars week after week, before arriving at one performer to be fed into the music industry's churning machine. While more
South Sound Cinema
It's the spookiest month, and thus the spookiest Three Easy Pieces, where I examine a corner of pop culture from its birth to today. I'm thinking, now, of horror movies. While horror has classically been shrugged off by the snooty gatekeepers of fine cinema, there's one subgenre that's even more
Music
Early in the lives of many a burgeoning music nerd, there occurs a watershed moment where you're exposed to a band that unites your current passion for discovery with your love for novelty songs instilled in you in early childhood. These bands are a little funnier, a little weirder, a
Stage
Eighty years ago, this month, Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre players took to the radio to broadcast a live adaptation of HG Wells' classic tale of an alien invasion, The War of the Worlds. What followed, as legend has it, was widespread panic from listeners who believed they were actually
South Sound Cinema
While our usual advice, when confronted with an overwhelming festival, of any sort, is to take your chances on any random entertainment you may not have heard of, throwing a dart at a board isn't always enough. After all, we're also opinionated film nerds, and we can't pass over the
South Sound Cinema
We've been covering the Tacoma Film Festival for a number of years, at this point, and one of the pleasures of doing so has been in charting its steady rise to becoming one of the Pacific Northwest's preeminent annual cinematic events. Since its humble beginnings at the Grand Cinema, 13
Music
Humans have the capacity for doing a great many things -- good, bad and indifferent. We've all been inundated in our lives with moments of cruelty, both on a large scale, and on a smaller, more insidious one. Our instincts for conflict, exclusionism, and a fear of uniqueness have resulted
Stage
In many ways, Tacoma Little Theatre's production of The Foreigner feels like a more light-hearted version of Martin McDonagh's work. Earlier this year, I reviewed TLT's staging of McDonagh's The Pillowman, and The Foreigner -- penned by Larry Shue -- shares with it a pattern of jarring tonal shifts and an overabundance of ideas.
Music
I recently stumbled across a baffling playlist on Spotify called "Songs to Sing in the Shower." It seemed like the ideal soundtrack to cruising around on a sunny almost-autumn day, but I was quickly surprised by a series of songs that were either picked by a blindfolded person throwing darts
South Sound Cinema
For the past 13 years, the Tacoma Film Festival has been one of the bright spots of Tacoma's cultural landscape. Bringing in exciting voices and visions in film from all over the world -- including featuring the best local talents -- TFF has grown into a cinematic behemoth, as essential
South Sound Cinema
Another month, another edition of Three Easy Pieces, where I explore a specific pop cultural subject from its birth to how it looks today. It's generally accepted that remakes of movies are never as good as the original -- and I'd usually tend to agree. This month, I'm looking at
Music
Paul McCartney recently did an interview where he ran down some of the best songs that he wrote for the Beatles. At a certain point, after discussing the likes of "Hey Jude," "Let It Be," and "Blackbird," McCartney noted how proud he was that, for the most part, Beatles songs
Stage
The household presented in Lakewood Playhouse's production of Brighton Beach Memoirs is one of a rumbling, simmering strife. Economic hardships and unresolved resentments have been so thoroughly woven into the fabric of this family that everyone has been inured to a general feeling of anxiety. I certainly felt a bit anxious watching