Muse House

November 7, 2009 - 3:50pm
European Modernism migrates to Central New York in Turner to Cezanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales.

Pick up a book on the history of 19th century European art and you’ll be more than adequately prepared to enjoy and perhaps curate the artistic coup that is the Everson Museum of Art’s Turner to Cezanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales.

November 1, 2009 - 7:33pm
The CNY Jazz Orchestra with special guests Joe Riposo and Steve Brown delivered a Friday night performance that lived up to its title: "Legends of Upstate New York, Part I."

 

Jazz can be a tricky genre to understand and appreciate. However, the Friday, October 30 performance of the CNY Jazz...

October 31, 2009 - 4:26pm
The Coens' latest film finally comes to Syracuse.

When Murphy’s Law is kicking into high gear and everything in your life that can go wrong is, what then?  Do you find comfort in laughing at the even greater misfortunes of others?  If you do, go see A Serious Man, the new black comedy by Joel and Ethan Coen.

October 31, 2009 - 1:41pm
The Syracuse Symphony Orchestra was joined by guest artist Jon Kimura Parker for an evening that rejoiced in the spirit of Romanticism.

Many composers have had to write against the odds.

Beethoven fought a long battle with poor mental health which was further undermined by the French invasion of Vienna at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Rachmaninoff suffered from a serious bout of depression after the failure of his first symphony in 1897. It wasn’t until several years later that he moved to Dresden, Germany in order make a second attempt, the result which was an hour long.

October 31, 2009 - 10:40am
Animation Saturation: Seth McFarlane's latest animated sitcom, "The Cleveland Show," falls flat.

The Cleveland Show, a new spin-off of the wildly popular Family Guy, doesn’t stray far from the formula that has made co-creator Seth MacFarlane the highest paid writer/producer in television history. Interchangeable cutaway gags, non-sequiturs, and pop-culture references run amuck. Jokes are played out for funny-then-stupid-then-somehow-funny-again effect. And talking animals are more sophisticated than the people around them (in this case a Germanic bear couple voiced by MacFarlane and, for some reason, Arianna Huffington).

October 30, 2009 - 8:14pm
More to Jennifer than her body.

When it was announced that Academy Award-winning queen of quirk Diablo Cody would follow up Juno with the teen-horror film Jennifer’s Body, the news garnered tentative excitement within the horror fan community. The teen-horror genre has been in a slump since the last Scream entry nine years ago. The deft Scream series toyed with genre conventions in a self-referential manner, while still providing a great number of scares. Saw and Hostel then started a wave of lamentable torture porn.

October 30, 2009 - 7:26pm
Gaspar Noe nixes substance for style, in his follow up to Irreversible.

Lars Von Trier. Park Chan-wook. Michael Haneke. Provocative auteurs like these are masters whose works are defined by their distinctive approach to divisive subject matter. France’s Gaspar Noe looked to be one of the tribe with his first feature, Irreversible. Told in a real-time backwards narrative, the film is infamous for an unflinching nine-minute rape sequence featured in the film’s first half. Yet as the film unraveled itself, it presented a dilemma.

October 30, 2009 - 1:24pm
Syracuse University's Black Box Players Stage a Poignant Treatment of the Grieving Process

People, by nature, have an aversion to the darkness.  Be that as it may, our lives are equal parts night and day, both literally and figuratively, and it becomes essential to our survival to reconcile ourselves with those darker times.  Such reconciliation is the goal of the Black Box Player’s production of “Rabbit Hole.”

October 28, 2009 - 4:57pm
SU's Black Box Players portray a grieving family.

The sound of little boy’s voice, calling to his father over the barks of his dog should be one of the most beautiful sounds in the world. In “Rabbit Hole,” produced by Syracuse’s Black Box Players, it’s the saddest. The story of a family grieving over the loss of its youngest member – the four-year-old Danny – David Lindsay-Abaire’s play burrows beneath the sorrow admitted in polite company to the messy anguish that causes discord between spouses, siblings and friends.

October 28, 2009 - 2:33pm
Review: America's Next Top Model has strayed far from what made the reality show so popular...and good.

The fashion industry has not only joined the reality TV bandwagon, it’s adorned the canvas cover in pink sequins and feather trim.

Shows such as The Fashionista Diaries, Project Runway, Make Me a Supermodel, The Fashion Show and Running in Heels crowd the cable pipeline, all vying to tell us how it “really is” being a model, stylist or editor.

But at its start, the reality fashion flood was a solitary wave in the ocean of TV programming: Tyra Banks’ America’s Next Top Model.