Reviews

sisterhelenCOLOR
By   |   February 17th 2012

Yale may suffer from an overabundance of music. The average Yalie’s e-mail and Facebook are regularly flooded with invitations to acapella shows and symphony orchestras, and roughly 90 percent of Yale students seem to know how to play the piano. Still, all of this technical skill hasn’t resulted in a particularly vibrant music scene. In …

By   |   February 16th 2012

About a year ago, as I obsessively searched for bootleg videos of London DJ Kode9 performing Burial’s unreleased material on tour, I stumbled upon 30 seconds of “Ashtray Wasp” and cried. It was just too beautiful. Last Saturday afternoon, Hyperdub records digitally released Burial’s Kindred EP, including “Ashtray Wasp” as one of two B-sides. Although …

By   |   February 16th 2012

In his latest release, Paul McCartney is neither original nor exciting. But considering that that was the point—he calls it “an album you listen to at home after work, with a glass of wine or a cup of tea”—Kisses on the Bottom is a beautiful, delicate success.
Made up almost entirely of less-recognized works from the …

By   |   February 16th 2012

On each wall is a picture frame, empty but for a small, gravestone-shaped recording device in the center. When pressed, each mechanism plays a “sound memory.” If you enter the room on a busy day, you’re overwhelmed with noises: the racket of a Fourth of July parade, the squawking of a canary, the jingling of …

By   |   February 16th 2012

110 straight minutes of back-to-back Oscar-nominated live action short films left my head spinning—in a good way. The screening is a rapid-fire emotional roller coaster, condensed and packaged perfectly for short attention spans.
The series of five begins with Pentecost, a cheeky Irish comedy that finds a fresh way to make fun of the Church. A …

By   |   February 10th 2012

Wim Wenders’ homage to the life and works of Pina Bausch, the German choreographer who died in 2009, is a relentless and oftentimes grueling exploration of the pursuit of freedom through bodily constraint. With Pina, Wenders performs a radical experiment in uprooting dance from the stage and taking it almost anywhere, from precipice to sidewalk.
Informed …

By   |   February 10th 2012

There is something wondrously romantic about seeing a 1611 copy of Romeo and Juliet bathed in the Beinecke’s orange glow—until you realize you’re single. Self-pity aside, Beinecke’s Shakespeare exhibition, “Remembering Shakespeare” (Feb. 1 to June 4), does a marvelous job of collecting works from six centuries by or pertaining to William Shakespeare.
The bottom floor contains …

By   |   February 10th 2012

Calling all free-spirited bohemians: First Aid Kit is a Swedish folk duo composed of two sisters, Johanna and Klara Soderberg. The group’s new album, The Lion’s Roar, their second LP, is a pleasant collection of all-American lyrical nostalgia, with a hint of hippie. But the Soderbergs seem to recognize their own limitations here—their soaring melodies …

By   |   February 10th 2012

Genre appropriation is a tricky little thing. Forget even the challenge of perfectly nailing the sound you’re dipping into; listeners will turn their noses up if they detect the slightest lack of sincerity (see: Christina Aguilera). So how to both stay true to the genre and inject personal flair? Brooklyn-based band Escort tackles both issues …

eugenides-2
By   |   February 10th 2012

It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that a modern reader with a literary bent must be enamored with Jeffrey Eugenides. In the past two decades he has published three novels, each one lauded as a work of genius, and each abjectly distinct from the others. The Virgin Suicides, published in 1993, is Eugenides’ lyrical …

By   |   February 3rd 2012

Albert Nobbs, Rodrigo García’s film adaptation of George Moore’s short story “The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs”, contains elements of Romeo-and-Juliet-cliché (boy falls in love with girl at a masquerade, boy catches girl outside alone, boy asks girl’s name) and comedy (an unexpected pregnancy)—elements one wouldn’t anticipate from the altogether depressing tale of a waiter, …

By   |   February 3rd 2012

Sam Messer, Associate School of Art Associate Dean Sam Messer hoped that “Three Card Monte,” the MFA exhibition which opened Jan. 18 in the Green Hall Gallery, would breed “a guerrilla style of curation.” And despite its hasty assembly, the show, curated by Peter Moran, Florencia Escudero, and Kristian Henson (all ART ’12), is a …

By   |   February 3rd 2012

If you were thinking of going to Shame because you heard it was NC-17 and wanted to see what hunk du jour Michael Fassbender or Carey Mulligan were hiding in their glossy-mag photo shoots, look elsewhere for your fantasy fodder. It’s true: both Fassbender, as a young, successful man with a crippling sex addiction, and …

By   |   February 3rd 2012

As I pressed play on Lana Del Rey’s new album Born to Die, I tried to suspend my prior judgments. This is not just another talentless rich girl, not just another awful album title. Glancing at the song titles—“Diet Mountain Dew,” “This Is What Makes Us Girls”—I was having a hard time. But everyone deserves …

sushi
By   |   February 3rd 2012

Though both the pizza and the hamburger are rumored to have originated in New Haven, Yalies often turn to a more international delicacy when the pangs of hunger strike. I’m talking, of course, about sushi. Luckily for us sushi enthusiasts, New Haven offers a surprisingly varied selection, from an all-you-can-eat hole in the wall accessible …

By   |   January 27th 2012

The Iron Lady is, without question, one of the most disappointing movies I’ve ever seen. This isn’t necessarily because it’s a bad movie—in fact, it’s a perfectly average movie with decent acting. There’s the star actress—the dazzling Meryl Streep—and the classic nostalgia about old-fashioned values being so much stronger than our postmodern heathenism. These, along …

By   |   January 27th 2012

When we see art, especially graphic design, we often overlook the rich personal background of the artist who created it. The new special exhibition on Tom Morin, called “Threads of Influence: The Visual History of a Life in Graphic Design” and on display at the Haas Family Arts Library until Apr. 13, offers insight into …

By   |   January 27th 2012

Sometimes an artist finds a sound palette that works and successfully runs with it for an entire LP. On Strange Weekend, the first LP from one-man project Porcelain Raft, Mauro Remiddi tries hard to do just that, but the album’s circularity and drowsy mood often drag it to a halt.
The album’s most common flaw emerges …

By   |   January 27th 2012

Feeling paranoid walking around New Haven hella baked at 3 a.m.? Have we got the app for you! The myGuardianAngel iPhone app from DS Apps LLC aims to put a “blue phone” (you remember them from your college tour) in the pocket of every iPhone user. Open it and a large red “Help” button appears. …

carnage3
By   |   January 27th 2012

You are in a high-rise apartment in Brooklyn. You do not know how you got here, but your attempts to exit have been foiled. The rest of the world is out there, somewhere, distinguishable only by the sight of the L train through the window, the buzz of a Blackberry on the coffee table, and …