Harry Potter and the Triumphant Finale

Frédérik SisaA&E, Film

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – While the press salivates about the box office achievement of the last film in the Harry Potter series, it’s worth noting that, financial success aside, it also represents a victory for cinematic storytelling.

Richard III: Loud and Glib at the Theatricum

Frédérik SisaA&E, Theatre

Don’t let the program fool you; the casting of two actors in the role of Richard III isn’t a sign that the Theatricum has developed an appetite for the avant-garde or the experimental.

On Stranger Tides: Watered-Down Rum but Rum Nonetheless

Frédérik SisaA&E, Film

The Hollywood blockbuster has always been vulnerable to film’s version of shock-and-awe: Too much is never enough. After their previous entry in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the entertaining but ultimately exhausting and overstuffed At World’s End, screenwriters Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot (and other filmmakers) take mercy on our senses and return to the focused storytelling of the film that started it all, The Curse of Black Pearl.

Not Your Ordinary Music Fest: ‘This Is Drop Dead’

Frédérik SisaA&E, Film

For nine years, New York and other cities around the world have played host to a scrappy DIY bacchanalia dedicated to drinking up, as the official website puts it, “Art in every aspect of Life.” Still young and independent enough to be considered underground, unlike other DIY-fests that have since sold out, the Drop Dead Festival (DDF) has become an international showcase of iconoclastic musicians and artists from a scene that might loosely fit under the umbrella of goth/death rock/punk if its members didn’t often achieve a more singular, category-defying individuality.

Bin Laden is Dead, Bin Laden Lives On

Frédérik SisaThe Recreational Nihilist

King of the Greek Molossian tribe during the Hellenistic era that spanned from 323 B.C. to 146 B.C., Pyrrhus of Epirus was considered by Hannibal himself to be the time’s greatest military commander, perhaps second only to Alexander the Great. He was a staunch and able opponent to the Romans, as demonstrated in encounters such as the Battle of Asculum that pitted roughly equal forces against each other.

The Magic of Indian Dance in a Tribute to Tagore

Frédérik SisaA&E, General Art

On Sunday, April 10, mother and daughter called upon their art to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rabindranath Tagore, a notable and prolific Bengalese artist whose work encompassed writing, music and painting, and whose accomplishments were recognized with the first Nobel Prize for literature awarded, in 1913, to a non-European.

The Actor’s Gang Triumphs with ‘Tartuffe’

Frédérik SisaA&E

Despite what it might sound like, “Tartuffe” is not the name of a French custard-filled pastry and the Ivy Substation has not been remade as a Parisian café. Yet what we have here is nevertheless a wicked confection as one of France’s greatest playwrights, Molière, gets the Actor’s Gang treatment in a revival of their hugely successful 2005 production.