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Open House showcases the U of C art department's best
2009-04-16 - Amanda Hu, Entertainment Editor

Emerging artists from the University of Calgary art department are poised to show off their work from year in the Art Open House on Thursday. The event features projects from all disciplines, including, but not limited to, painting, drawing, installations and video work.

Chris Mandseth is just one student showcasing his hard work from the year. He says his project is a seemingly unconventional approach to video work.
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Drama to get you through to summer
2009-04-16 - Amanda Hu, Drama and Dance Delights

As school winds down and exams and final papers hit the masses, it's hard to get relief from all the stress floating around. The Calgary theatre and dance community has your answer, however, as they present various productions to entertain and inspire through the end of April and into May.

Dance hits the Grand as Theatre Junction presents Three Sixty Five by Wen Wei Dance. The project is an innovative move for Wen Wei Wang, inspired by Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." Six dancers portray themes of life and death to Italian-Canadian composer Giorgio Magnanensi's electronic score. You can check out the project until April 18.
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Festival helps student artists take flight
2009-04-02 - Amanda Hu, Entertainment Editor with files from Jordyn Marcellus

theatre - A performance festival completely run by students. The notion, at first glance, could ring to some as the painful exercise of a rag-tag bunch of "future performers" taking the show out of their parents' basements and onto the stage. The University of Calgary drama department's fifth-annual Taking Flight festival proves otherwise, as artists from the program showcase their polished and hard-worked productions over the course of two weeks.

Directing student Anton deGroot took on the task of staging well-known Canadian playwrights Robert LePage and Marie Brassard's Polygraph. The story, based partially on real events from LePage's life, looks at murder and the morality of its portrayal within art. Polygraph is known for its highly cinematic feel and deGroot says he took an unconventional twist on that element.
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Learning the ways of the scene
Going the solo route means big changes for Calgary musician Brock Geiger
2009-03-26 - Amanda Hu, Entertainment Editor

music - The Calgary music scene is becoming more and more well known for its sense of camaraderie and community. Many bands emerging from the scene praise the city's musicians for working together towards common success and creation. As Sea Level Rise's Brock Geiger is an emerging artist who is continuing to reap the benefits of this auditory solidarity.

"I started playing with a band," Geiger says. "We played for three or four years. We started getting involved in the scene with the band and people took off to university and other places and I ended up doing a solo thing. I've started playing with various musicians and developing a different sound with more simple arrangements."
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No alternatives to Plants and Animals
2009-03-19 - Amanda Hu, Entertainment Editor

music - Nobody really knows what alternative music is anymore. The days of Bush, Alice in Chains and the Foo Fighters are in the past, while the section devoted to the genre grows bloated with unclassifiable music in CD stores. Montreal's Plants and Animals' newest release, Parc Avenue, was recently nominated for best alternative album and best new artist at the 2009 Juno Awards, though many say the album's sound is highly indefinable and certainly not simply "alternative."

"It used to make sense," lead singer and guitarist Warren Spicer says. "They used to have whole radio stations for that kind of music, but I don't think we sound like that. I don't know what that means besides we've made some sort of a rock record that we've been nominated for an award for. Going to the event will be an interesting day."
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Grief and the environment
Tree Hugger looks at on losing a loved one and the urban sprawl
2009-03-05 - Amanda Hu, Entertainment Editor

theatre - Protesting at the top of a tree is the newest form of grief therapy in Urban Curvz's upcoming production of Ayla Stephen's Tree Hugger. The show stars Stephen herself as a woman mourning the loss of her lover to cancer all the while taking a stand against pollution and overdevelopment.

"My inspirations come from a few different things, like all the development that's going on in Calgary right now and all the commercialism," she says. "In the new communities, they have all those mini malls to make things more convenient for them even though we have a million of them all over the place. [There is a large] effect that this is having on the environment in terms of how big the city is-- there's an urban sprawl, so you need a car to get anywhere and transit sucks in this city. The emissions from that [negatively] affect the human body."
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Celebrating the trailer court culture
2009-02-26 - Amanda Hu, Entertainment Editor

theatre - Life in the land of mobile homes is not always as Trailer Park Boys makes it out to be. Lunchbox Theatre's production of Darrin Hagen's Tornado Magnet shows that trailer court living is often more about camaraderie and community than white-trash, drunken shenanigans-- though some people in the park do know how to party.

The show is a dialogue with trailer maven Dotty Parsons on the families in her court, the trailer park class system and the trials and tribulations that come along with living in an easily-movable abode. Director Kate Newby says she was immediately interested in taking on the project.
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Julie Doiron
I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day
2009-02-26 - Amanda Hu

Spun - Julie Doiron's wispy voice and distorted guitar melts hearts. Her latest, I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day, conjures images of lazy afternoons, wintery scenes and garage band practices, all while featuring Doiron's completely endearing words and pared-down sound.

"Spill Yer Lungs" is the first of the album's forays into gritty guitar riffs which work as a perfect counterpoint to some of the folkier moments. Doiron's vocals casually plunk over the simple instrumentation with charming lines like, "Maybe I should have mentioned that I was not built for this kind of lovin'." Finger-picked acoustic guitar takes over for "Nice To Come Home" as Doiron tells the story of relaxing and thinking of her loved one and what they're up to. The track shows Doiron's talent for making potentially mundane circumstances seem completely romantic and definitely song-worthy.
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Handling violent video games
2009-02-12 - Amanda Hu, Entertainment Editor

Editorial - While the war between gamers and computer-generated enemies wages on consoles around the world, another battle is being fought irl (in real life, for all those non-gamers) as the argument surrounding the increasing popularity of violent video games and their effect on those playing them is coming to a head. With the media and critics making the connection between aggressive events, like the Columbine High School massacre and the shooting in Taber, AB and video game play, the general public is quick to point an accusatory finger towards first-person shooters and other violent games.

The jury is still out on whether the content of video games plays a significant role in the real-life behaviour of those playing the games and there is a lot of research supporting both sides of the issue. Game developers claim that youth violence rates haven't shown a significant increase since the advent of violent games, chalking up a lot of the controversy to media sensationalism, while cognitive psychologists propose that children's tendencies towards aggressive actions increase if they are exposed to such images in their formative years. They also assert the ever-more realistic qualities of first-person shooters blur the line between fiction and real life for young gamers, causing even more aggressive and violent behaviour, not to mention extreme desensitization to similar images.
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The Hylozoists
L�le De Sept Villes
2009-02-12 - Amanda Hu

Spun - The Hylozoists' latest release is a vocalist-free, orchestrated delight. Chock full of bountiful string arrangements and vibraphone melody lines, L'�le De Sept Villes skillfully jumps from ambient-sounding distorted strings and bowed percussion instruments at the beginning of the CD to triumphant movie soundtrack-esque tracks and classy pop rock in the latter half, all the while maintaining a cohesive and coherent feel to the album.

"Bras d'Or Lakes" stands out with its striking ability to emote with lamentful minor key string vamping. Paul Aucoin's vibraphone works perfectly in place of a vocal line and plays flawlessly towards the song's chorus that builds with more and more strings. The climax of the song is powerful with all the group's instruments in full force with melodica adding some understated grittiness underneath it all.
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