Arts, Culture and Entertainment in Montreal
“This is also an argument for progressive rock as a grand cultural detour that invented much of the music that’s popular now…’prog’s’ reputation has never quite recovered from a series of crises in 1977 and 1978. Punk won over the critics, disco won over the teens, and major progressive bands deflated like punctured blimps.” -David […]
“All the films in this book share an air of disreputability.” -Charles Taylor (from Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You) I do not often look back to the ‘80’s with fondness; that decade was most unkind to me. But the few bright memories I do retain usually have to do with the […]
“To this day I have fond memories of the whole Playboy experience. Playboy represented a time and place unique in history. It will never come back again. It was an amazing moment and I was thrilled to be a part of it” -Arlyne Rothberg (from Playboy Laughs) “I think the real meat of Playboy was […]
“She would create a movie about outlaw women on the run, busting out of tedious, thwarted humdrum lives – lives like hers – for freedom that let them finally become their true selves. She imagined it all: a movie unlike any other she had ever seen, where women drove the story, maybe even got to […]
“…Letterman inspired an entire generation of comedians. He created a blueprint that was followed by almost every late-night show with an adventurous bent, and helped define a sensibility that changed the entire culture.” -Jason Zinoman (from Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night) During my college years there were few options for after primetime comedy/variety/talk […]
“He still wanted to work, not only for the money – he had, by now, made plenty of that – and not for prestige – he had more than most in Hollywood ever get and was still greeted with shouts of “Moses” by fans wherever he traveled all over the world. He simply loved acting […]
“It has often been said that the episodes of The Twilight Zone are parables – short allegorical stories designed to illustrate or teach some truth or moral lesson.” -Anne Serling (from the Introduction to Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone) I first heard of The Twilight Zone in the mid-seventies. […]
“In my mind, a song is not iconic until it has stood the test of a generation – twenty-five years.” -Marc Myers (from Anatomy of a Song) When I was very young I would often spend afternoons playing my family’s modest single 45 record collection of mostly children’s songs and the theme from the Batman […]
“Their namesake sketch series helped define Gen Xers, arresting their generational sensibility mid-eyeroll: sarcastic, sneering, derisive of authority and self-importance, yet also progressive, compassionate, wildly intelligent, and maybe more than a little self-indulgent.” -John Semley (from This is a Book About The Kids in the Hall) In the Late eighties SCTV was gone and although […]
Here are some Montreal arts and culture highlights for February 2017: MUSEUMS The blockbuster exhibition Chagall: Colour and Music at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts features some 500 works and documents—paintings, collages, watercolours, sculptures, stained glass windows and ceramics—which show how the aesthetic and artistic world of famed Russian-French artist Marc Chagall (1887-1985) is imbued with […]