‘Being Gay Is Disgusting’: A Clever, Irreverent Retelling of the Bible’s First 5 Books

Frédérik SisaA&E

Whether new to the Bible or looking to refresh the ol’ memory, Edward Falzon’s book provides readers with a fun and accessible pathway to reading and understanding one of the world’ most influential texts. Much like Ben Akerley’s X-Rated Guide to the Bible shows us the Bible’s sexual side, Being Gay Is Disgusting serves as a guide to the Bible’s violence.

‘The King’s Speech’: Music to Our Ears

Frédérik SisaA&E, Film

Label a movie “feel-good” and “triumphant,” and you’re liable to conjure visions of a hard-luck sports team elevated by tough-love ministrations or cute animals in danger who win the day through sheer pluck.

An Enchanting Dance Recital by India’s Rama Vaidyanathan

Frédérik SisaA&E, Theatre

After the evening’s performance at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Center, Shakti Dance Company founder and Bharata Natyam guru Viji Prakash took to the stage and articulated what I had been thinking all along. While the music and dance are richly rewarding for people well-versed in the compositional intricacies of classical Indian music and the kinetic language of Bharata Natyam, the novice aficionado can just as easily and fully be elevated, inspired and moved. The vernacular gives way to the universal, the senses become engaged in the music and costumes, and cultures comes together in a shared experience of beauty.

Monsters: When Giants Walk Among Us

Frédérik SisaA&E, Film

To the list of up-and-coming directors with a keen understanding of what makes science fiction such a scintillating canvas for thoughtful speculation — a list that includes Duncan Jones (Moon) and Neill Blomkamp (District 9) — one can now add, with some reservation, the name of Gareth Edwards.

If You Value Freedom, Make Pot Legal

Frédérik SisaOP-ED

You don’t have to smoke pot or approve of smoking to make it legal because the issue isn’t really about that controversial little plant. The issue is freedom.

Hereafter: Deathly Dull

Frédérik SisaA&E, Film

What Shakespeare described as the undiscovered country from whose borne no traveler returns is also something less poetic: the subject of a turf war among theologians, charlatans, New Age fabulists and other opportunistic metaphysicians. Like the true believer, Clint Eastwood's latest – with the unsubtle title “Hereafter” – aims to prove itself of a modern, post-Enlightenment mindset by exposing various con-artists out to exploit the grieving through the pretense of communicating with the dead. In an amusing bit of mockery, various kinds of mediums — channellers, spiritualists and Electronic Voice Phenomena technicians — are paraded and punctured.

Break the Whip Whips it Good

Frédérik SisaA&E, Theatre

The Actor's Gang, one of L.A.’s most consistently magical troupes, can always be relied upon to deliver theatre that channels our era's nebulous zeitgeist.

ICT’s ‘The Clean House’ Is a Funny Place to Live

Frédérik SisaA&E

Matilde, a Brazilian live-in maid with an inconvenient disdain for housecleaning, would have been right at home in World War II efforts to weaponize humour. That is, if she occupied a vintage Monty Python sketch instead of Sarah Ruhl’s new play “The Clean House.”