Articles by: style

 

• Dialogue Vs. Dynamite: Solving the Feud Between Explosions and Plot

  Lifestyle November 17, 2009 at 4:40 pm Comments are Disabled

  Evan Benton, Staff Writer Last weekend, I was arguing with a friend from my high school who was in town for the night. I had just come out of a University Mall Theatres screening of Inglourious Basterds, and was particularly surprised and enthralled by the film. The strength of Basterds was its writing, as it is in every film Quentin Tarantino has ever made. He possesses a narrative style all his own, and writes dialogue so realistic that it makes even the most outlandish and fantastical themes seem plausible. The friend from my high school, Steve, has been my friend since the first day of school in eighth grade. And in those nearly eight years, half of every conversation Steve and I have ever shared has involved the topic of film. We bloviate on the best movies of our generation, dismiss certain actors and actresses and praise others, and generally consider ourselves the most luminous film aficionados of our generation. And when two people such as these discuss something they love, sometimes they high-five in concordance, but they mostly butt heads in discord, the latter of which applied to this particular argument, which occurred while Steve was about seven beers […]

   

• Crooked Musicians, Straight to Success: Supergroup Fuses Genres on Debut Album

  Lifestyle November 14, 2009 at 5:07 pm Comments are Disabled

  Pearson Jones Them Crooked Vultures is a new band with a lot of history and nothing to prove, because they already have. That’s what happens though when your basses is John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), a musical shining golden god who has announced his return finally after three decades by joining up with two of Zeppelins most devout followers, Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age. Overly glorified and most undeserving of the label, super-groups have never had a high success rate; unless you were one of the few die-hard Slash fans who thought Velvet Revolver succeeded in becoming a mock-up of a new generation Guns and Roses. An album can be bombarded to death with ideas when you get so much talent in one room. Sometimes too much of a good thing is the one thing you don’t need. Them Crooked Vultures is their own deal, though. They don’t commit to just one style of the trio, though they do subtly rob ideas and formulas from their previous projects that made each one of these musicians into the legends they are. This album isn’t Zeppelin homage, even though Grohl and Homme probably would […]

   

• CFA Hosts Jazz Ensemble

  Lifestyle November 12, 2009 at 4:36 pm Comments are Disabled

  The George Mason University Jazz Ensemble and the Fairfax Law Foundation will be presenting the 8th Annual Jazz for Justice concert. The event will be held at the George Mason University’s Center for the Arts Concert Hall on Friday, Nov. 13 at 8 p.m. The proceeds of the event will go to the charitable efforts of the Fairfax Foundation. It will also help support the Mason’s Jazz Studies program. The George Mason Jazz Ensemble will be performing with Geoffrey Gallante, a 9-year-old trumpet prodigy, who will serve as the main attraction for the performance. Freshman and communication major Sha’ Air Hawkins will lend his voice as a guest vocalist. George and Edward Weiner will guest conduct the entire ensemble. Director of Jazz Studies Jim Carroll expressed his excitement about the contributions the event made. “The Fairfax Law Foundation provides a valuable contribution to the Fairfax community through its programs educating young people on the justice system and its pro bono work,” said Carroll. “Our Jazz Ensemble is delighted to partner with the foundation year after year, and we’re thrilled to perform this year with such a gifted young musician as Geoffrey.” The program for the evening includes Duke Ellington’s ‘Caravan” […]

   

• GMU Players Take Center Stage: Actors Rescue Weak Plot

  Lifestyle November 12, 2009 at 4:35 pm Comments are Disabled

  Dylan Hares, Staff Writer The world of literature is oversaturated with coming-of-age stories – especially unimaginative ones. They follow the same pattern, reach the same climax and follow the same conclusion. They are boring and stale. Such is the case with Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness! Set on Independence Day during the early 1900s in New England, Ah, Wilderness!”is the story of an upper class family who is genuinely ordinary. Their oldest son goes to Yale and their youngest daughter is peppy and annoying. Their 17-year-old son, Richard Miller, is a brooding, angst-driven teen who feeds off of the anarchist material of Irish writers such as George Shaw and Oscar Wilde, quoting them and others extensively in long, exhausting and melancholy monologues. We learn about Richard’s brother Arthur and how the time he has spent at Yale has made him stuck-up. We learn about Uncle Sid and his excessive drinking and Lilly, the girlfriend he can always come home to when he is drunk and not have to worry about leaving her as long as he looks sorry. Any information we get about the father and mother, Nat and Essie, does not contribute to the story at all, nor does any […]

   

• Talking About The Box: Diaz, Kelly and Marsden Talk with Broadside

  Lifestyle November 12, 2009 at 4:34 pm Comments are Disabled

  Based on the short story by Richard Matheson, The Box is a new psychological thriller directed by Richard Kelly and starring James Marsden and Cameron Diaz that depicts a financially unstable 1970’s couple who one day receive a mysterious box with a button inside. They are told that if they push the button, they will receive one million dollars, but someone, somewhere in the world will die. Broadside recently had the chance to sit down with Diaz, Marsden and Kelly to talk about their experiences on making the film. Have any of you read the short story or seen the Twilight Zone episode this movie is based on? JM: Embarrassingly, I never read the short story, not out of laziness, but because we just wanted to focus on our version of what we were doing. I did see the Twilight Zone episode which—Richard where are we with that whole mentioning the Twilight Zone episode? RK: I’m under the impression that I’m not allowed to mention those words legally. [Laughs] But the short story was something I read when I was young and it had a huge impression on me, obviously, and I optioned it from Richard Matheson and I spent […]

   

• Disasterpieces: The 10 Best Movies About the End of the World

  Lifestyle November 12, 2009 at 4:31 pm Comments are Disabled

  Ross Bonaime, Staff Writer This week, director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) will destroy the world once again with his newest disaster film, 2012. As audiences, we’ve seen many horrible disasters and the many ways the world has come to complete destruction. Here are the greatest disaster films: 10. Sunshine Before director Danny Boyle turned a slumdog into a millionaire, he made this space-epic about a group of people who go to “restart” the sun to save the freezing earth. The slow breakdown of the astronauts with the fate of the world at their hands makes for a thrilling space drama. 9. Cloverfield An unidentified monster destroys New York in the surprise hit from last year. The film uses a first-person point of view to generate a greater sense of fear than in many other past disaster-films. The haunting monster that easily looms over the Big Apple is chilling. 8. Independence Day Yes, it’s cheesy and ridiculous. Yes, it’s over-the-top. And yes, it’s odd that aliens use Apple computers. But the film that made Will Smith a movie star is a fun action film that goes for cool explosions and hilarious one-liners. 7. 28 Days Later Imagine […]

   

• ‘Tis the Season for A Christmas Carol: Director Robert Zemeckis Teams Up with Jim Carrey for New Take on Holiday Classic: New Carol? Bah, Humbug

  Lifestyle November 12, 2009 at 4:28 pm Comments are Disabled

  Josh Hylton, Staff Writer And the onslaught begins. Here we are, not even 10 days into November and the Christmas spirit has already begun to seep through the cracks of the nation. Christmas commercials are popping up on television, retail stores are preparing for the inevitable hordes of holiday shoppers, and Christmas music has already begun to ring in our ears. America has a strange fascination with the holiday and Hollywood is happy to oblige, this time in the form of yet another version of the timeless classic, A Christmas Carol. A quick Internet Movie Database (IMDb) search of “A Christmas Carol” pops up 26 exact matches of the title, with an extra 12 partial matches that include adaptations of the story from the Muppets, Sesame Street, the Flintstones and, evidently, Barbie. There are quite literally dozens of versions of this story and although director Robert Zemeckis’s newest iteration is far from a bad film, it is this overabundance of adaptations that really holds it back. By now, you know the story. Scrooge, a greedy, curmudgeonly old money-grubber, hates Christmas. He treats his employee, Bob Cratchit, like scum and he thinks of nobody but himself. Little does he know, though, […]

   

• ‘Tis the Season for A Christmas Carol: Broadside Sits Down with Zemeckis

  Lifestyle November 12, 2009 at 4:26 pm Comments are Disabled

  Josh Hylton, Staff Writer Beginning with The Polar Express and Beowulf, award-winning director Robert Zemeckis has become the pioneer for motion capture technology, a technology that allows the performers’ movements to be captured and reproduced digitally, and his latest 3D visual darling is A Christmas Carol, starring funnyman Jim Carrey. Broadside recently chatted with Zemeckis on the look and feel of his new film, the challenges of getting it done, and what new elements he hopes to bring to the timeless story. What inspired you to follow up Beowulf with A Christmas Carol? Why Dickens’ Christmas Carol and not another story? When I was doing Beowulf, I realized that this is a great form to reintroduce classic stories in a new way to a new generation of movie-goers because what you can do is can create a version of the story which is visually modern and separate it out, and many of these classic stories have great spectacle in them which makes them, in a strange way, difficult to do for the big screen so they are sort of relegated to Masterpiece Theater and that sort of thing. So you get a chance to really, in the case of A […]

   

• Two Days, Two Stars: Bob Dylan and Rob Thomas Highlight Week at the Patriot Center

  Lifestyle November 6, 2009 at 12:30 pm Comments are Disabled

  Patrick Wall, Style Editor The coming week is one filled with musical superstars. Matchbox 20 frontman Rob Thomas takes the Patriot Center stage with OneRepublic on Nov. 10, followed by the incomparable Bob Dylan the day after. Three-time Grammy winner Thomas burst into the spotlight in 1996 with the release of Matchbox 20’s freshman release, Yourself or Someone Like You. Anchored by five popular singles including “Push” and “3 A.M.,” the album went on to sell over 10 million copies. The band’s next two albums were also commercially successful and the band churned out several more radio hits. After the release of their third record, Thomas left to work on a solo project. Already famous on his own, thanks in large part to his collaboration with Santana, Thomas released his first solo effort, …Something to Be. The album debuted at number one, based largely on the strength of hits like “Lonely No More” and “This is How a Heart Breaks.” Thomas returned to Matchbox 20 after the group’s 5-year hiatus, culminating in 2007’s Exile on Mainstream. The band toured for a year before Thomas returned to his solo career. In 2008, Thomas again returned to the solo scene with Cradlesong. […]

   

• New November Music: Like Autumn Leaves, New Albums Dropping all Month

  Lifestyle November 5, 2009 at 9:22 pm Comments are Disabled

  Patrick Wall and Pearson Jones, Style Editors Weezer – Raditude (11/3) Legendary nerd-rock quartet Weezer is back with their seventh album, Raditude. The lead single, “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To,” is as hooky as the name is long. Singer Rivers Cuomo retains his awkward charm while the band provides an energetic pop-punk background. Raditude has the potential to be the best summer album of the winter. Dashboard Confessional – Alter the Ending (11/10) Chris Carrabba, better known as the mastermind behind Dashboard Confessional, will release his sixth album, Alter the Ending. The lead single, “Belle of the Boulevard” has the same kind of heartfelt emotion of Carrabba’s older work, but feels more like his polished work from Of Dusk and Summer. Fans who have stuck by him thus far will likely be pleased with the new batch of songs. Three 6 Mafia – Laws of Power (11/10) Oscar-winning hip hop trio Three 6 Mafia (that title never gets old) return with their follow-up to last year’s smash Last 2 Walk with their tenth studio album, Laws of Power. The record features a litany of musicians ranging from Insane Clown Posse to Guns N’ […]