In Carrboro a film festival is more than just a formal gathering to coldly judge the work of ambitious filmmakers. Around here it’s something more akin to a family reunion.
AC/DC hasn’t aged well. Bon Scott’s death in 1980 and Brian Johnson’s ascension as lead singer was like the onset of some kind of degenerative disease. The body remained strong at first, but has been breaking down ever since.
Time: 8 p.m. Saturday Location: The Station 201 B E. Main St., Carrboro Info: www.sr-nc.com
In the midst of a musical era that prizes The Arcade Fire over “La Traviata,” it might seem that opera has gone the way of the eight track — old-fashioned and hardly interesting to today’s listeners.
Who knew the zombie apocalypse would be so listenable? Set stage in east-side Indianapolis, Jookabox is here to save us from the brain-munching undead. Armed with brash bass and crunchy PAC-MAN chiptunes, Jookabox’s defenses are reckless and kitschy-cool.
If you are usually suspicious of white blues artists, you’re not alone. I’m right there with you.
But Durham’s Jon Shain has crafted an album resembling a modern melting pot of rock and jazz that’s also chock full of traditional guitar picking that stays true to the blues genre.
On Midnight Soul Serenade, Heavy Trash combines just the right amount of garage rock, rockabilly and blues to create an album that is anything but junk.
Roland Emmerich has made a career by directing big-budget apocalyptic extravaganzas that delight in showing the world’s most famous landmarks crumbling under onslaughts of aliens, elements and even a giant lizard. “2012” continues this trend. It’s as if Emmerich looked through vacation postcards for monuments to destroy instead of writing an actual script.
When Michael finds his mother engaged to a complete stranger, David Harris, he is far from pleased — especially when his new stepfather explodes at all threats to the ideal he envisions for the newly formed family. As the opening scene proves, Michael is right to be concerned.
Great rock ’n’ roll movies are hard to come by. Though there are exceptions — “Almost Famous” and “High Fidelity” — most films revere the genre through character nomenclature and an overabundance of rock references and, in the process, forget to be movies.
Not since “Remember the Titans” has a true story graced cinema screens with such poise and vision. “The Blind Side” is more than just a feel-good story. Director John Lee Hancock skillfully and honestly crafts a two-hour tale of inspiration and resilience from the biography of Michael Oher.
As the next decade stands impatiently on our doorstep, Dive takes a look at the past 10 years in arts and entertainment. Whether it’s the potential threat of rap’s demise or reality TV’s utter inundation of broadcast and cable, the shifts in popular culture over the new century’s first decade have been profound and far-reaching.
If a band you like took six years between full-length albums, you’d likely be annoyed and incredulous as to how the process could actually take that long. But if you’re a fan of Chapel Hill’s Fin Fang Foom, you’d probably understand.
Like many great things in music, Fin Fang Foom’s sound is built on tension. The Chapel Hill trio potently distills elements that just shouldn’t work.
Brutal intensity with delicate emotionality, primal fury with existential angst, vigorously adventurous rhythms with guitar lines so strung-out they seem like they haven’t slept for days — that’s the razor’s edge the band navigates.
When most music lovers think of Chapel Hill-Carrboro, the first things that come to mind are the town’s venues and the prolific scene. But Lake Inferior, an artist on student-run label Vinyl Records, proves that UNC is a contributor to the town’s pool of talent.
Diversions Assistant Editor Linnie Greene sat down with Lake Inferior’s Nasir Abbas, Logan Hornebuckle and Derek Torres to hear about the band’s new album, Pegasaur, and why falling trees can be a guitarist’s worst enemy.
Diversions: So what’s different about this EP versus your last one?
It’s rare that a band fuses disparate sounds and influences effectively, but Atlanta-based Little Tybee accomplishes this feat on Building a Bomb, deftly blending bluegrass, pop, Americana and world music in one seamless package.
The title track exemplifies the band’s ability to unite this menagerie of influences. Integrating the mournful sounds of fiddle and keyboards with traces of Brazilian bossa nova, the band wrangles what could have been a disjointed sonic array into something smooth and intricate.
With his proper debut, Wale presents the epitome of an Internet-rap dilemma.
His debut features everything we’ve come to know and expect from the DC artist: the “indie” appeal, a go-go influence and the attempted reinjection of consciousness into mainstream hip-hop.
As a band that got its start at a handful of UNC house parties, Lake Inferior knows how to make people dance. With an infectious mix of pop and electronic music, the band has crafted an EP that far outshines its humble beginnings.
A flagship band for the University’s own Vinyl Records, Lake Inferior blends synthesized sounds with whimsical lyrics. Pegasaur confidently delves into a dance-happy journey sure to please anyone looking for rhythmic, youthful fun.
Ben Davis and the Jetts, Charge It Up!, 4 of 5 stars
It will likely surprise unfamiliar listeners that Charge It Up! is spearheaded by a mild-mannered, well-bearded Carrboro family man.
But Ben Davis, who leads his Jetts, fits that description, though you’d never know it from the 10 red-hot cuts on his band’s album.
Wrangling the blistering fuzz of Sonic Youth and hitching it to rocket-powered rhythms, the outfit has produced an album that careens down the cathartic back roads that turn art rock into jubilant pop.
Just about anything is possible in the 1976 world of “The Box.” A strange mix of amputated toes, nosebleeds, “employees,” morality, Mars and potential alien embodiment should really trip the audience out. But with so much to work with, director Richard Kelly drops the box.
Norma (Cameron Diaz) and husband Arthur (James Marsden) live a seemingly happy life outside D.C. in 1976. Their son, Walter (Sam Oz Stone), even brushes his teeth without being asked. He attends the private school his mother works at, and Arthur works for NASA. But the seams of their innocent life come undone when Arlington Steward (Frank Langella), a missing, potentially dead, come-back-to-life scientist, offers them the cash opportunity they desperately need, if only they will press a button to kill someone else. Cue the dramatic music.
Fall break is past, Thanksgiving yet to come, but “A Christmas Carol” already present. This time Disney tries its luck with a performance-captured animation of Charles Dickens’ classic novel. The result can be best described as something like an adolescent facing an identity crisis. It’s unsure of what it wants and goes back and forth between extremes.
And while the name Robert Zemeckis seems reason for excitement because of his earlier successes such as “Forrest Gump” and “Back to the Future,” and previous Disney work “The Polar Express,” the result is disappointing.
So says Sy Ableman, the seemingly benevolent acquaintance of the Coen brother’s latest ill-fated protagonist.
The victim this time is Larry Gopnik, an average suburban- American Jew in the late 1960s, and Sy has actually stolen his wife (in a totally kosher way, of course).
Lunatics like to watch movies, too, and the makers of “The Men Who Stare At Goats” understand that well. Alien abductees, telekinetic spoon-benders, time travelers and Blue Devils will find a lot to identify with in Grant Heslov’s inventively quirky farce of “sort-of true” events. It challenges the audience to take all this lunacy seriously.
Down-on-his-luck reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) stumbles upon a potential story once he meets Lyn Cassaday (George Clooney), a retired psychic spy for the U.S. military who has been reactivated (via telepathy, of course) to search for his longtime friend Bill Django (Jeff Bridges).
There isn’t really anything obscured by Canadian band The Hidden Cameras, who are known for their elaborate stage antics and catchy symphonic pop songs that pour on the eccentricity. But on the latest record, Origin: Orphan, the band taints their generally silly music with a touch of darkness, in an attempt to break away from the immaturity they are known for.
Ever make a mixtape you were real proud of? Did you try to play it for all your friends and they didn’t seem to “get it” like you got it?
That’s essentially what this album is.
Late Night Tales is a series of compilations in which each volume is assembled by a group or artist and includes songs that inspired them to make music. The artists are also asked to include one original cover of another song.
Carrboro’s Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz take fiddling around very seriously. As Mandolin Orange, the group’s self-titled EP boasts a set of seven classic bluegrass songs, demonstrating that despite ever-changing music trends, these musicians can make bluegrass basics appealing.
The only real hurdle to overcome when listening to Jet Black is Reg Vermue’s strikingly breezy and whispery vocals, which have such unique presence that it threatens to overshadow the entire album.
With its exaggerated, horn-driven intro, the opening of Elvis Perkins’ Doomsday EP sounds like a cross between M. Ward and a New Orleans funeral march. Throughout the album, this mix of indie pop and vintage influences proves enduring, resulting in a set of songs characterized by multiple genres and innumerable influences.
Like the name suggests, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin resonates with its cognitive dissonance. The title track begins the album with a ghostly, ancient drawl as The Low Anthem starts to sound like a well-mannered band lost in the 1800s.
For someone whose life was so intriguing and so popular, biopic Amelia's rendition of Amelia Earhart, beloved woman of the skies, falls flat on its face.
Although Hilary Swank is a picture-perfect image of Amelia Earhart, the character fails to come alive among disorganized direction of Mira Nair and a script that invested in all the wrong places.
Amelia longs for the freedom of the sky and finds the idea of becoming a vagabond idyllic.
Diversions is a Thursday entertainment section focused on local artists. Includes movie and album reviews, columns, calendars and local entertainment news. E-mail story ideas, tips or corrections.
Dive Recommends
Album from the Vaults
Johnny Cash, At Folsom Prison: The man in black is at his finest on this 1968 live release, crooning to a bevy of rowdy Folsom prisoners. It’s a classic, not just because it showcases Cash’s gritty vocals at their prime, but also because it exemplifies Cash’s refusal to cater to “the man.” Subversives, take note.
Movie from the Vaults
“Breakfast at Tiffany’s”: Based on the Truman Capote book of the same name, this much-adored 1961 Audrey Hepburn film revealed that even cat people can find love. Sure, it took her a little while to get over the whole mob involvement, possible prostitution thing, but who doesn’t love a 1960s Cinderella story? And the classic alley-in-the-rain make-out scene is an added bonus.
Events
Friday, Nov. 19: Heavy Trash at the Local 506 | Prepare for Heavy Trash’s maelstrom of frenzied piano and guitar-driven rock at Local 506. Knowing the band’s penchant for quirky, foot-stomping pop songs, it’ll be a rollicking good time with more than a little dancing. And who doesn’t love a show where you can move your feet without getting glares? Elliott Brood opens. 9:30 p.m., $12
Luego at Duke Coffeehouse | Migrate to Durham to catch Luego’s brand of Dylan-tinged retro rock. If you need motivation, just take a listen to Taped Together Stories, Luego’s recent record, and check the opening acts — The Bright Young Things and Ponderosa. And there’s always the fact that Duke Coffeehouse is BYOB. 9 p.m., $5
Labyrinth Rock Opera at Nightlight | Who doesn’t love a wonderfully tacky post-glam-rock musical extravaganza? OK, there might be some scrooge out there who can resist David Bowie’s charm, but Dive sure can’t. Go check out the musical full of gob.
Saturday, Nov. 20: Future Islands at the Local 506 | The driving rhythm that pervades Future Islands’ songs should induce some dancing on Saturday night at Local 506. With a set of songs that integrate everything from organs to synths, it should be an exciting show. Brian Corum of Lonnie Walker, Thank You, and Height open. 10 p.m., $7
Wednesday, Nov. 25: Little Dragon at the Local 506 | Little Dragon’s charming, contemplative brand of Swedish pop will surely charm local listeners Wednesday night at Local 506. Yukimi Nagano’s childlike, playful voice layered with tinkling keyboards makes for an enchanting, if eccentric, combination. Land of Wonder and local electro-pop outfit Motor Skills open. 9 p.m., $10
