New on DVD and Blu-ray: ”THE BOX,” starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden. Writer-director Richard Kelly continues to squander the considerable benefit of the doubt he achieved with 2001’s enigmatic but intriguing ”Donnie Darko.” Here, as in his second effort, ”Southland Tales,” you’re likely to find yourself more frustrated than entertained. A couple (Diaz and […]
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Uncle Andy’s still a diner families can depend on
Uncle Andy’s Diner is one of those places that seems stuck in time. In a good way. The place has been in South Portland, in a building across from Mill Creek Park, since the 1950s. About half the dining room is taken up by semi-circular counters lined with swiveling stools. You can see all the […]
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Ex-cartoonist and poet now says it in songs
Andy Friedman creates ”fractured folk songs,” says the Los Angeles Times. The Boston Globe called him an ”erudite redneck.” Friedman stumbled into the role of singer/songwriter after working as a cartoonist, then a performance poet. He will share the stage with singer/songwriter Jeffrey Foucault on Friday in Portland. Each will perform solo and support each […]
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‘Strongman’ finds the artist in a sideshow metal bender
Zachary Levy would really like it if you saw his verité documentary, ”Strongman.” And it’s not just that he’s trying to get out of debt. In examining Stanley ”Stainless Steel” Pleskun, a professional strongman known as the ”strongest man in the world at bending steel and metal,” Levy believes he’s captured a fundamental element of […]
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Classical guitarists take their listeners far with the exotic ‘Enso’
Portland is a rocker’s town. Sure, there are viable artists of all varieties around, but the Port City’s got a hard-blues, Elvis Presley obsession. Stroll through the Old Port on a weekend night, and gnarled power chords rule the soundscape. For as deeply gratifying as 3-minute, 30-second pop-song structures can be, folks forget this is […]
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Musical tribute to Longfellow shows how inspiring he’s been
PORTLAND — The Longfellow Chorus and Orchestra present their annual Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Birthday Concert this weekend at First Parish Church on Congress Street. Under the direction of Charles Kaufmann, the chorus and orchestra will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. The program will include the winning choruses, songs and short cantatas […]
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Plummer and Mirren worth the price of admission
An elderly Russian man, his face bordered by a white beard so sparse it’s almost ethereal, gazes at his wife of half a century, remembering their youthful days together. ”We were incredibly, terrifyingly happy,” he says, and his use of the past tense speaks volumes; it’s a moment that’s almost an entire movie, right there. […]
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Marching onward after taking in Friedman, Hog Farm shows
February, it was lovely knowing you and you treated us quite well actually, but let’s not keep in touch, shall we? Perhaps I am being too harsh, because after all, the month is ending on such a gold-star note with the Friday-night show at One Longfellow by Andy Friedman. March arrives with a stupendous one-two […]
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Throat singers use their voices in way that ‘really gets to you’
How does a guy — namely, Sean Quirk — from Milwaukee end up in Tuva, a small republic that is part of the Russian Federation, working as the interpreter and manager for an ensemble of throat singers? He fell in love. Quirk fell in love with throat singing when he was in college, majoring in […]