Arts & Culture

Kitchen Theatre Company’s Girlfriend Is Thin on Plot But High on Feeling

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Based on Matthew Sweet’s 1991 alternative-rock album of the same name, Kitchen Theatre’s first production of the 2018-19 season, Girlfriend, has everything you’d expect from a classic summer rom-com — the meet cute, the mutual pining, the awkward yet exhilarating first date, the inevitable challenges and their resolution. What makes Girlfriend different from the start, however, is that instead of boy-meets-girl, it’s boy-meets-boy, in a small, conservative, midwestern town. It’s the summer of 1993 in Alliance, Nebraska, and Will (Jonathan Melo) is still celebrating graduating high school and his new-found freedom when he receives a mixtape out of the blue from a classmate, Mike (Woody White). Unlike Will, a musical theater nerd constantly bullied at school for his sexuality, Mike is the golden boy of the football team with a (rather absent) girlfriend and a full ride to college, and it had seemed unlikely for their paths to ever cross. What they share, however, is a passion for music.

Arts & Culture

GUEST ROOM | Why We Need to Watch Mr. Robot

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The recent news that Mr. Robot’s fourth season will be its last signals the end of a show that redefines what it means to be revolutionary. The techno-thriller chronicles the story of cybersecurity engineer Elliot Anderson, a morphine addict who wants to save the world from corrupt corporate powers. The cybersecurity firm that he works for protects the data of conglomerates such as E Corp, a manufacturer of most of the world’s computers and phones and a provider of much of the world’s entertainment. E Corp, led by a power hungry board of directors, also covered up a toxic gas leak that led to some of their workers contracting leukemia — including Elliot’s father. Thus, despite the mission of his workplace, Elliot works to expose some of E Corp’s secure digital records with the hopes of diminishing their grasp over the global market.

Arts & Culture

Hold On to Your Dentures: Roomful of Teeth at Bailey Hall

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The small a cappella ensemble brought their big guns right away, with each member speaking in rhythm, creating a wall of chatter that in an instant, gave way to raucous polyphonic vocals. After a few iterations, rhythmic spoken word became interspersed with small vocal phrases. The piece was chugging along and it was clear that Roomful of Teeth had a very important message to share with the audience that evening. Roomful of Teeth, the Grammy-winning vocal octet, visited Bailey Hall on Friday night to kick off the Cornell Concert Series 2018-2019 season. The group was founded in 2009 with a goal to explore the expressive potential of the human voice.

Arts & Culture

Maggie O’Keefe ’19 Creates Exhibit Filled with Intimacy and Humanity

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Passerby, which ran from September 3 through September 8 in the Tjaden Experimental Gallery, displays work by Maggie O’Keefe ’19 that spans her time in New York, Ithaca, Rome and the Chautauqua Institute over the course of two years, from 2016 to 2018. The exhibit draws upon a theme of intimacy and liminality, featuring works whose subjects exude a sense of familiarity. A largely autobiographical show, the artist invites the viewer to participate in the works, drawing upon one’s own memories to understand this state of in-betweenness as passerby. The exhibit plays with scale, featuring full body, life-size portraits of family and friends of the artist that invite the viewer to come face-to-face with the art. One particularly striking piece is “Welcome,” which features the artist’s mother and grandmother sitting opposite of each other on a porch.

Arts & Culture

TEST SPIN | Anna Calvi — Hunter

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Anna Calvi’s career as a songwriter began with the release of her eponymous debut album in 2011. Garnering nominations for both the Mercury Prize and the British Breakthrough Act at the Brit Awards in 2012, Calvi quickly gained recognition for her reverb-drenched guitar riffs and drifting vocal runs. Her euphoric sound feels quintessentially Brit-punk, yet her illusory vocal inflection feels oddly operatic. Before any success as a songwriter and virtuosic guitarist, Calvi was a classically trained violinist and didn’t begin singing until her mid-twenties. Throughout her latest album, Hunter, baroque vocal harmony and ambient guitar riffs are masterfully integrated to create a space that feels more like a dreamscape than a compilation of songs.

Arts & Culture

Searching Is a Flawed But Wholly Original Thriller

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Searching is a refreshing film. Although the plot isn’t as graceful as I expected it to be, the movie serves up enough novelties to redeem it. Unfolding entirely on a desktop screen, the movie is about a father, David Kim (John Cho), looking for his missing daughter, Margot (Michelle La), through a police investigation. It’s no typical search, though; Asian-Americans can imagine what it might be like if their father decided to set out on a mission to save his daughter. Google spreadsheets are happening.

Arts & Culture

Join the Legion: Interview with Legion M CEO on Upcoming Film Mandy

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The Sun: What is Legion M’s involvement in the upcoming film Mandy starring Nicolas Cage? Paul Scanlan, co-founder and CEO of Legion M: We’re one of the investors, partnering with SpectreVision, Elijah Wood’s production company, and RLJ, who is distributing the film in the United States. Sun: What can we expect from Mandy? PS: Have you seen the trailer? Sun: Yes.

Arts & Culture

Interview with Pigeons Playing Ping Pong on the Band’s Unique Personality

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Pigeons Playing Ping Pong is a funk and psychedelic band from Baltimore, Maryland that will be performing at The Haunt in Ithaca tonight at 8:00p.m. The band is best known for its explosive performing style and the eccentric, fun personalities of its band members. Luckily, we were able to chat with vocalist/guitarist “Scrambled” Greg Ormont about the band’s beginnings, his approach to performing and tonight’s concert in advance of the show.  

The Sun: Now that you’ve grown to a very successful nationally touring band, what would you say would be your end goal? GO: Well really since we started it all, its been the same mentality. It is never enough.

animation

LING | Eat Up!

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Walking into a dark theater to watch Incredibles 2 this summer, I was excited to watch a highly anticipated sequel to a movie that had been a part of my childhood, not to be emotionally wrecked. When the customary animated Pixar short began, I gasped as the image of a squat Asian woman deftly shaping meat-filled buns on her kitchen counter filled the screen. The familiarity of the motions as well as the hunger-inducing detail of the ingredients brought to mind moments of my own childhood, moments that I hardly expected to be represented in animation before a blockbuster Pixar film. The short film, “Bao,” depicts the complex relationship between a Chinese mother and her son, a steamed bun that suddenly comes alive, from birth to rebellious adolescence. Directed by Domee Shi, a Canadian-Chinese woman, “Bao” is able to accurately capture bits and pieces of the Chinese-American experience, from a house filled with objects that can be found in every Chinese household to the pain and distance the son inflicts on his mother in his attempts to navigate assimilation.

Arts & Culture

Mission: Impossible — Fallout Wrapup

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I’ve often made what I now consider the mistake of lumping the Mission: Impossible movies in with franchises like Fast & Furious and Transformers — what I might call “guilty pleasures,” though the last couple Transformers haven’t even been pleasures — but that’s not a fair evaluation. I don’t feel guilty at all about loving Mission: Impossible — Fallout. It’s more John Wick than Skyscraper, which is to say it combines its breathtaking action sequences with, let’s say, consistently acceptable and somewhat believable storylines. Yes, MI6 has some issues, but an outstanding cast, iconic score and solid directing from Christopher McQuarrie turn what would have been a just a good stunt movie into a truly gripping action thriller. Fallout is absolutely worth seeing, if only to try and catch a glimpse of Tom Cruise’s humanity in that shot where he broke his ankle.