Student filmmakers had a chance to show their work at Harper’s Downtown, 131 Albert Ave., Thursday night during a program called Lawn Shorts.With a big turnout, despite the change of venue from the rock on Farm Lane, Harper’s downstairs club was pounding with noise and excitement but no alcohol.
You know the entertainment industry is getting bad when actors get so frustrated with the lack of good movies being made that they start writing and directing their own.
When 20-year-old Caleb Dillon, an East Lansing resident, wrote and recorded songs three or four years ago, he never thought he would be performing them in front of an audience.. Dillon’s project, Starling Electric, will perform for the first time at Lower Level Records, 611 E.
Call me old-fashioned, but mix tapes are fantastic. No, they’re super hip. I’m not talking about burned CDs, I’m talking old-school mix tapes, complete with static, low bias and songs that are sometimes cut off too short. Since junior high school it’s been a hobby of mine to put together mix tapes for people I become friends with.
Turntables will be twitching and scratching in Lansing’s Old Town when the second annual Electronic Sound and Image Festival kicks off Friday afternoon. Last year’s ESIFest drew more than 15,000 people during the two-day event.
Kresge Art Museum supplemented its paper art exhibition with a talk by artist Alan Shields Thursday evening.Shields’ offerings continue at 5 p.m.
On Dec. 7, 1941, John Moon was 13. Sitting in the back seat of a Buick on the way to see his Aunt Bess in Detroit, he heard on the radio Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Moon, now 72, is a senior companion volunteer for Active Living for Adults and said the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington evoked emotions comparable to his initial reaction to Pearl Harbor. “My reaction was similar to what is going on right now,” he said “Amazement and shock.” The public has been bombarded countless times with media comparisons to the attack on Pearl Harbor, an event the student population at MSU has little means to relate, other than stories from grandparents and residents like Moon. “I was kind of too young to be shocked right away, but I knew there was this terrible thing,” Moon said of the Pearl Harbor bombing, the event that drew the nation into World War II.
You haven’t seen every side of Shakespeare until you’ve seen “Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet).” It’s a hybrid of “Romeo and Juliet,” “Othello” and author Ann-Marie MacDonald’s sense of humor and is being performed at Bath Middle School, 13675 Webster Road, this weekend. “It starts out with this drab academic who’s been working on her doctorate and her thesis is that ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Othello’ were originally comedies,” Bridgette Redman said.
Everyone has a friend that always talks about making a movie.Some people even rope their buddies into acting out a few scenes in their ambitious masterpiece.But for all those people who have actually spent a great deal of time and money to create their own film, there aren’t a lot of places available to show it.
The Women’s Resource Center and MSU’s Department of Residence Life are teaming up to present a jazz concert on campus. “An Evening With Women in Jazz: A Tribute to Breast Cancer Survivors and Their Supporters” will be held from 6:30 p.m.
The Dollar Nightclub, 3411 E. Michigan Ave., will host the eighth birthday of The Edge on Friday with an all-night concert featuring Exit to Windsor, Joydrop, Bliss 66, Molly, 19 Wheels and the Verve Pipe.Doors open at 7 p.m., but Exit to Windsor and Molly will perform at an outdoor stage beginning at 5:45 p.m.
Ahh, predictability. Almost all of modern sports movies are full of obvious twists and turns you can see coming before you even buy your ticket - and I’m not just talking about Adam Sandler movies. Every team is awful at first, gets good, undergoes tragedy and then overcomes that tragedy to attain victory.
If you haven’t heard of Bad Ronald then you probably haven’t been to the mall lately. The group’s self-titled debut is an ideal soundtrack for most mall clothing stores frequented by college students.
Famous Michigan writers and poets have the chance to display their work by taking part in the Michigan Writers Series, which is presented by the MSU Libraries. Beginning in 1992, the annual fall event was created to recognize writers who had ties to Michigan and bring those ties to campus. Because of increased popularity and audiences from 25 to 75 people, the yearly gathering of writers was eventually changed to a series. “I realized the audience was larger, so I decided to switch it to a series,” founder Peter Berg said. Writers now have more chances to express their work, while allowing the audience to hear some of their favorite readings and interact with them. From its creation, the series has been a complement to the Michigan Writers Collection, which is a primary resource for the rich literary heritage existing in Michigan. The collection was started to recognize the works created by MSU students that went on to earn national and international recognition.
If there was any doubt about Ben Folds’ ability to make an album without former bandmates Robert Sledge and Darren Jessee by his side, “Rockin’ The Suburbs” has washed it away. The new album is distinctly Ben Folds in both style and song, and although it tends to be more melancholy than his previous albums with Ben Folds Five, it doesn’t hurt the record.
The average band doesn’t often get the opportunity to play on national television or star in a documentary, but Under Construction isn’t the average band.The East Lansing band is making an appearance on national television, headlining a Saturday night show at Rick’s American Cafe, 224 Abbott Road, and debuting a documentary about Under Construction - all in the same week.Under Construction is the guest band on the Mitch Albom Show on Wednesday afternoon, which airs on the radio station WJR in Detroit from 3 to 6 p.m., and on MSNBC Cable from 3 to 5 p.m.On Thursday night, lead singer Jesse Young will be debuting his documentary about the time and work that goes into Under Construction for an MSU film festival called Lawn Shorts.
An elaborate and well-constructed set was probably the best part of the Lansing Civic Players’ weekend performance of Agatha Christie’s murder mystery, “The Spider’s Web.” Because it is a Christie story, the audience should know what it is in for.
Kresge Art Museum went all-out for its second Twilight in the Garden fund-raiser Sunday at the MSU Horticultural Gardens.
In lieu of last week’s tragedy, new episodes of some of television’s most popular shows were postponed for an extra week.But as far as most are concerned, it’s not a big problem.
When did thrillers all start to suck? You can’t find a good one anymore. And believe me, “The Glass House” is a prime suspect for pure unadulterated crap.