My father was a huge football fan. As an only child, Dad decided at an early age that I was going to be the one to carry on our family tradition of being 49ers fans. At the tender age of three, when all of my friends were dressing up as princesses, I insisted on being the littlest 49er.Read More
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The intimate Loft on Congress Street has come to serve as the place to feature some of the very best in emerging and established artists from around the world. It is here where music lovers of all genres can spend an evening of discovery. Last year, Loft acts showcased the music of Ethiopian songstress Meklit, the quirky songs of Jocie Adams (formerly of the Low Anthem), Cumbia music from the Los Angeles based Latino group La Santa Cecilia, and the powerful blues guitar of Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, among many others.Read More
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What a treat to see the fabulous, toe-tapping, exuberant, and expertly staged and acted Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story at the Music Hall’s Historic Theater Wednesday evening!Read More
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Now is your chance to win a VIP Buddy Holly Evening. We are so excited about our new partnership with The Ogunquit Playhouse and our production of Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story that we have decided to give away a VIP Evening. All you have to do is sign up to become a member of The Music Hall or upgrade your existing membership and we’ll enter you in.Read More
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A boy wants to visit his girlfriend, so he climbs over a wall. That’s the basic setup for Omar, a Middle Eastern thriller that we will be discussing on Tuesday at The Music Hall.
It’s not that simple, of course, because the wall is the separation wall between the Occupied Territories and Israel. And the boy is also a Palestinian fighter who believes he’s helping the cause when he and his friends do a little killing. Interrogation. Admission. Informing. Double dealing on all sides. That’s what thrillers are made of.
Of course, any film about Palestinians and Israelis is automatically about moral dilemmas and how the same actions seen from a different point of view can be interpreted very differently.
But director Hany Abu-Assad, who scored big with his previous work, Paradise Now, isn’t just interested in sending messages. His movie is a thriller in the Hitchcock tradition, rife with mixed messages and ambiguities that keep the audience unsure of who to believe and who to trust.
A film that works on many levels is always ripe for a good discussion, and Omar works on level after level.
I hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day and I hope to see you tonight at The Music Hall. We’ll be in the Big Room.
Note: A couple of weeks ago we did a discussion of Nymphomaniac Vol. I and found that it was a work of genuine character and feeling whose high level of sexual content was as natural to it as violence is to other movies. I was a little conflicted about not doing a discussion of Nymphomaniac Vol. II, which is playing in The Loft. I expect it is as heartfelt and insightful as Vol. I. But Omar is just too good to miss. And having two movies that are so good that the choice is hard is exactly why The Music Hall is so vital to the nutritional needs of filmgoers in the Seacoast.
Paul Goodwin
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Choosing which movie to see is often vexing. There are just more releases every month than an ordinary human being with an actual life can see. It’s a shame, but there it is. But sometimes it’s harder than usual.
A month or so ago, as I was facing the task of choosing which movies to discuss in May, I had a couple of real posers. Last week, my choices were either Catherine Deneuve in On My Way or Nymphomaniac Vol. I. I chose the one with all the naked people in it because I wanted to keep up with what Lars von Trier is up to. But I knew that the Deneuve film would also be good.
The choice for this week was equally difficult, given that I would rather watch movies in The Historic Theater. The Big Room was playing Enemy, an intellectually challenging thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal. I like Jake, and I like thrillers.
And yet, despite all that, I chose to head to The Loft to watch and discuss Particle Fever, a documentary about the Large Hadron Collider, the extremely large machine built in France and Switzerland to shoot very small bits of matter at one another at unimaginably high speeds in hopes of getting a glimpse of the Higgs Boson.Read More
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