'The Great Gatsby'
rated PG-13
Unfortunately, Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” falls so far outside these boxes, it’s not even on the playing field of adaptation. Imagine an amusement park rollercoaster named “Richard III” or a sport-utility-vehicle called the “Oedipus Rex” and you have a rough idea to what extent this movie can be considered an adaptation of the slender 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Black Trumpet owners will launch new restaurant in NewmarketRevolutions begin in bars, and the best inventions have emerged from garages, note Evan and Denise Mallett in their announcement of a new restaurant they are scheduled to open in August. Hopestill Garage, on the site of the former Riverdale garage at 66 Main St. in Newmarket, will harness both of these traditions by using the innovation of their new restaurant to fuel the local food revolution. New shows announced: Discover Thursdays, Parma Fest, Book and Bar summer shows and moreContinuing their tradition of bringing in indie stars that fly under the mainstream radar, Portsmouth Book and Bar will welcome Billy Eli and Ken Stringfellow in early summer shows. A beatiful scenespring fever breaks into summer art shows First the trees bud, then the tulips pop, the green grass grows, then come the summer art shows. Spring on the Seacoast is bursting with vivid color after a long gray winter, and so are art galleries throwing open their doors for the new summer season. This year, they’ll be joined by a new crop of outdoor markets, murals, sculpture gardens and artwalks. Seacoast's TEDx trailblazersOn top of the 10 live talks, the day featured three music and dance performances, and four videotaped talks from previous national TED conferences, plus socializing among the audience members during several breaks. In the audience alone were enough city government, business, arts and non-profit leaders to create another whole TEDx conference. “Portsmouth Now!” takes case to City CouncilAn informally organized group of city residents who have been meeting and talking for more than a month in Portsmouth about the pace and character of development have taken their concerns to City Council in the form of a petition. Councilors responded at their May 6 meeting by agreeing to a joint work session with the planning board to discuss an emergency one-year city-wide hold on all commercial and residential development over 5,000 square feet. Richard Thompson kicks off Prescott Park summer seasonPrescott Park Arts Festival has earned the best kind of kudos for its free summer concert series—waiting for a show to start, attendees have been overheard saying, “I don’t know who this band is, but they’re playing here so they must be good.” After a long winter of speculating how he could top last year’s lineup, festival director Ben Anderson puts fans’ nail-biting to rest with the announcement this week of the summer headliners. 'Iron Man 3'Sequels are the cruelest of all film phenomena. Held in contempt by their creators, by the industry at large and by audiences, we nonetheless live in desperate hope exactly because our expectations are so low. And then, BAM! Sucker-punched again, sucker! No matter how low your expectations, Hollywood can always go lower. 'Deadlier than the Male'J. Arthur Rank, 1967: The sets, cars and costumes look expensive, the effects and direction are excellent, and it’s never boring, traveling from swinging London to sun-bleached Liguria. It’s astonishing that the two hit-girl lovelies are allowed to be as viciously sadistic as they are, gleefully dispatching male victims with spear-guns.
'The Common Heart'A story of hope, humor and lopsided idealism at Pontine Theatre In the late 1830s, the Transcendentalist cultural movement in Concord, Mass., included environmentalists, religious mystics, human rights advocates and no small amount of doggedness. The men and women behind the movement were proto-hippies, including young spiritually minded philosophers who studied at Harvard and then retreated into the New England woods with 1,000-volume libraries to form new societies situated on land no farmer would touch. And now the Pontine Theater has brought their journey to the stage with their original production of “The Common Heart.” More Seacoast dining developmentsSince we published a round-up of dining developments on the Seacoast last week, there’s been plenty more news on the food front. New releases: Supermachine, Alcoa, Peter Squires, and the Army of Broken ToysIt’s clear that the members of Supermachine understand their genre. They don’t fuss too much with technique and instead offer a straightforward approach to their hard rock sound. That’s not to say the songs are bland, or basic, in any way. In fact it’s sort of refreshing to listen to something that doesn’t try to trick the listener into appreciating the band. Dan Blakeslee's big heartDan Blakeslee, you’ve won over the entire city of Vital signsOur life in the public square—talking with neighbors, voting, volunteering—is a subject of enduring interest locally and nationally. Residents of New Hampshire, in greater numbers than most states in the country, turn out to vote, to talk to our neighbors, and even to contact our lawmakers when something is bugging us. But the time we spend volunteering and our education levels are declining, and that’s worrisome, according to a new study from the University of New Hampshire on civic health in the state. Portsmouth Listens takes on city parking debateIt’s a city where the population has remained virtually unchanged for the past 20 years, only about 21,000 people in fewer than 10,000 households, but it’s being asked to face the parking challenges of a much larger community, thanks to businesses and attractions drawing many times that number of visitors each year. Sound effectsTen years ago, Portsmouth Music and Arts Center launched with ten music students. Today, they’re teaching music to 500 youth and adults each year, and this week they’re kicking off a $250,000 crowdfunding campaign to support a new and larger space that will help them keep serving the community that has supported them. |
