Artsweek

Sabatage: Downtown SB’s Favorite Rapper

Usually on Sunday mornings, I wake up at noon with a hangover and tend to a killer headache. But this Sunday was different: I happily got up at 8 a.m., got dressed and headed to a Starbucks on State S...
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Comedy Prospers at the I.V. Digital Film Fest

Just barely in its infancy, the second-annual Isla Vista Digital Film Festival premiered Saturday night in I.V. Theater to a decently packed and ultimately unenthusiastic crowd, despite the variety of...
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“Wolverine” Has Claws

An average start to the summer film season begins with the long-awaited "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." After three films of mutant ecstasy, viewers finally learn the troubled back story of their favorite...
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“Terra” is a Rarity Among Kids’ Films

"Battle for Terra 3D" is an imaginative children's film about a race of aliens who make first contact with a new species -- humans. Humans have abandoned Earth after destroying the ecosystem during i...
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The Lurking “Ghosts” of Rom-Coms Past

Matthew McConaughey's latest lazy vehicle, "Ghosts of Girlfriend Past," mixes a little bit of A Christmas Carol with every rom-com trope out there. Here, McConaughey plays a womanizing bachelor who le...
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Death Cab Brings Down the Thunderdome


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Controversial “Bashir” To Screen at Campbell

There are few topics more divisive and polarizing on our campus than that of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Even half a world away, this subject is something that almost no one is willing ...
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Classical Dance With a Modern Flair

Featuring experimentation with movements as diverse as the troupe of dancers who performed them, last Friday's performance by Spain's National Junior Ballet Company was exquisite. The company performe...
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Jazz Legend Plays in SB

This past Monday evening, 78-year-old jazz virtuoso stepped out on the stage at Campbell Hall and, without a word, lifted his tenor saxaphone to his lips and began to play. Beginning with a repetitive...
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Dazed and Confused in the Desert

By the time Crystal Castles' set in the Sahara tent ended early Friday evening, my muscles were sore, my skin was covered in other people's sweat and one of the lenses from my prescription glasse...
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Menomena @ Velvet Jones

For some reason, I had gotten it into my head that the band opening last Saturday evening at Velvet Jones was going to be The Sea and Cake, so you can imagine I was initially a bit confused when an un...
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Brit Beneath the Big Top

Despite the ample supply of confetti, little people, daring acrobatic feats, rings of fire and an extravaganza of lights found last Thursday at L.A.'s STAPLES Center, this was not your average circus....
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Low-fi Love at the Biko Co-op

I avoided Kimya Dawson like a plague the last time she came through Isla Vista and played at the Pink Mailbox back in 2007. "Juno," the Oscar-nominated "indie" darling of that year, had recently come ...
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Quick Takes:

Watching "Crank: High Voltage" is like seeing a porn star strapped with dynamite launched out of a cannon into a brick wall: loud, dumb, gratuitous and delightfully offensive.
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Psychedelic Mushrooms

Before seeing the band's set, I was rather surprised to see a long line of students waiting to see an Israeli trance duo named after an afflicted fungus wrapped around the UCen. Last Wednesday evening...
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