The newest and most highly anticipated show from NBC’s fall lineup premiered Monday night. Heroes enacts everybody’s dream fantasy – to wake up in the morning and discover an amazing superpower. Along the lines of a televised X-Men, the show follows nine characters around the globe who find themselves in just that situation.
Arts & Entertainment
Keep up to date on local art, new albums, and everything entertainment-related.
MUSIC: Rejecting the Metric system
I wish I could make it that everyone who sees the Soft Skeleton has to drink Guinness, says Emily Haines, Metric’s cool, commanding and completely sexy front woman, as she takes another swig, “but it’s okay if you’re having, like, a vodka soda. I just don’t think you’ll totally get what we’re doing, but that’s okay!” Despite the absence of Guinness anywhere in the general vicinity, last Monday night’s show at Le National Théâtre was not lost on many.
REVIEWS
Motörhead. Kiss of Death. It’s time to dust off the cowboy boots and iron cross belt buckle and cut a rug to the 19th album by the UK’s original beer-drinkers and hell-raisers. Though markedly Motörhead, as per the abundance of ammunition adorning the cover to the plodding bass and bourbon-drenched vocals of front man Lemmy Kilmister, Kiss of Death is a pretty standard speed/thrash metal offering.
POP RHETORIC: I like it on top
Montreal is renowned for doing a lot of things very well – festivals, live music, smoked meat, poutine – but sometimes the things it does badly are overlooked. Specifically, pizza. There is no great pizza in Montreal. I know pizza isn’t a Montreal specialty, like smoked meat, but one might expect at least a few places to sneak in and corner the market.
MUSIC: Where’s the Schulich at?
Members of the music community are positing Montreal as the next Seattle or Greenwich Village. While Toronto is well known for its festivals lined with big-name artists, such as the Virgin Music Festival, which hosted both Gnarles Barkley and The Strokes this year, the sounds that are challenging and changing the face of North America’s oversaturated music industry are being produced in our own backyard.
CD REVIEWS: Seabear: We Built a Fire
Björk and Sigur Rós may have put Iceland on the musical map. But Seabear – the seven-person collective that just released their sophomore album and made their North American debut at South by Southwest – have proved themselves to be the most promising new Icelandic indie export.
POP RHETORIC: The movie is, like, always better than the book
I was making small talk with a co-worker this summer when my eyes latched on to the title on the spine of the book she was reading, Pride and Prejudice. “Oh yeah,” she explained, “it’s this movie with Keira Knightley, and it was pretty romantic so when I saw the book version I thought I’d check it out for summer.
CD REVIEWS: The Fugitives: Eccentrically We Love
After their EP In Streetlight Communion was nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award in 2007, it’s no wonder that The Fugitives’ first full-length album Eccentrically We Love pushes the boundaries once again with their storytelling and instrumental fusing talents.
FILM: The truth will set you free?
In The Last Kiss, a Hollywood remake of the 2001 Gabriele Mauccino film L’Ultimo Baccio, Zach Braff finds himself almost-30 and on the verge, looking dazedly around in the suspended moment before he walks quietly into baby-and-coupledom for the rest of his life.
RETROSPECTIVE: Jimi Hendrix 1942-1970
Even though he died 36 years ago yesterday, his music is among the most timeless and influential ever produced. Jimi Hendrix arguably changed the electric guitar sound more than any other guitarist in history. He was the guitar player who brought deft use of overdrive, feedback and the wah pedal to the masses and following in the footsteps of Eric Clapton’s days with Cream and John Mayayll’s Bluesbreakers, was among the first to swear by the Marshall Stack (amplifier) to give him one of the loudest, most blistering guitar sounds to accompany his legendary playing technique.
