The Cloris Leachman Excellence in Theatre Arts Awards, a celebration that brings together Des Moines’ theater professionals, reflects its namesake. Leachman was a dynamic, versatile performer whose work spanned nearly eight decades and every acting medium. From dramatic roles (including Ruth Popper in The Last Picture Show, which earned her an Academy Award) to her […]
Arts & Entertainment
Posted inArts & Entertainment
This weekend in Iowa: Bawdy Bawdy Ha Ha takes us to the circus, Alternating Currents is underway in the QC and more
Established 2001 | Always free! Today is the first day of the Alternating Currents festival in the Quad Cities, with events already underway this afternoon. On the festival schedule Friday night are the indie-rockers Hembree with Lauren Lovelle & The Midnight Spliffs. Monk’s in Dubuque has an album release for Dead Nerves, Numb Hands, the […]
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Dearborn — ‘Memo for a Friend’
Memo For A Friend by dearborn There’s a particular atmosphere to a sleepless night. More than likely, it culminates in stumbling through a dark room and mental fog to turn on the TV, hoping bottom-shelf infomercials and reruns of yesteryear sitcoms quiet your mind. In those moments, when the rest of the world is asleep, […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘At the Park on the Edge of the Country’ by Austin Araujo
Austin Araujo’s debut poetry collection At the Park on the Edge of the Country (Ohio State University Press) explores life at the intersections of immigration and naturalization, adulthood and childhood, understanding and apathy. Using figurative language and descriptive imagery, the collection’s three sections separate poems into formal and thematic movements. The first section addresses borders, […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
This weekend in Iowa: Yes! Fest in Cedar Rapids, Robert Cray in Davenport and more
Established 2001 | Always free! Not everything is all doom-and-gloom out there. Hinterland is healing, a Wisconsin bear that had his head stuck in a jar was freed, relocated and released and there are tons of events to check out in our Weekender. Joytrip, Joel Sires and One More Hour play Gabe’s in Iowa City […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘The Hinterland vibes are back’: Iowa’s biggest music fest returned with a vengeance for 10th year
This August, as festivalgoers streamed into the new grounds of Hinterland Music Festival, the question wasn’t just whether the music would be good, it was whether organizers could recapture the magic that made Hinterland among the biggest and best music festivals in the Midwest over the past decade.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Newman’s cold one of choice, Jamiroquai’s ‘Canned Heat’ and all the films you need to see in local theaters this month
Hey folks, welcome back to Little Big Screen: On the Big, Big Screen, where film columnist Benjamin McElroy recommends five screenings happening at Iowa’s independent movie theaters. Keep scrolling for the full list of this month’s big screenings.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Aaron Pang isn’t brave. But he’s currently sharing stories from his sex life at the Edinburgh Fringe festival.
Only a day removed from a red-eye journey from Iowa City to Edinburgh, Scotland, Aaron Pang, as he puts it, is a sleepy baby. Pang and crew did that thing you try to do when traveling; power-through a night-turned-day sans sleep, hoping that your circadian rhythm can catch-up to the change in time zones. But “the time difference is a bitch,” Pang shares.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: BYOBrass — ‘Breathe’
Breathe by BYOBrass Breathe, the latest album by Cedar Falls-born BYOBrass, opens with an earthy soul groove in its opening track “Inner Turmoil.” Its melodic notes are pillows that lay upon each other, until they create this soft bed of a beautiful chord. Penned by bandmember Andrew Piper, the track has a spiritual tone with […]
Posted inCommunity/News
FilmScene begins two-year process to buy their Ped Mall building after Moen foreclosures
In April, GreenState Credit Union surprised Iowa City by foreclosing on some of the city’s best-known buildings, properties owned by real estate developer Marc Moen and business associates. When news broke, one of the questions that immediately lit up social media was, “What will happen to FilmScene?” FilmScene, the state’s oldest and largest year-round nonprofit […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Plain Spoken: More than 40 million pigs are slaughtered in Iowa annually. This author has a word for that.
Are the hills of Iowa enmeshed with a vast network of death camps, comparable in moral terms to those of the Holocaust? This is one of the questions raised, indeed hurled, by Elizabeth Costello in The Lives of Animals (1999), a novella-of-ideas by the Afrikaner-Australian and Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee. In 1997, Coetzee was invited […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
This weekend in Iowa: CATVIDEOFEST, Bluesmore in CR and more
Established 2001 | Always free! The big destination this weekend is the Hinterland Festival in Saint Charles Iowa (let’s hope the temps of last years fest don’t return). If that’s not in your plans there are plenty of other music and arts events in our regions this weekend. QueertopIA, a celebration co-hosted by Dreamwell Theatre […]
