Costume dramas are not my thing. That goes double when they’re staged with an epic sweep — true tests of patience and bladder resolve. So there’s something admirable about directors tackling oft-adapted material with a decidedly different approach, which could account for two such pictures making many a critic’s 2012 best list: Joe Wright’s Anna […]
times
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Listen up again
Following up our list of 2012’s best local albums, here are our picks for the 10 top singles. 1. Sooner the Sunset, “All Because of You”If there is a formula to writing the perfect folk pop song, Graham Colton clearly has it, and to give him an equally formidable singer-songwriter to play off of (Lindsey […]
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Listen up
1. Parker Millsap and Michael RosePalisadeWhile it’s been another great year of quality Oklahoma releases, no one had quite the star-making performance that Millsap did with Palisade. The humble, 19-year-old Purcell native went from unknown to local favorite in less than half a year, thanks to his Tom Waits howl of a voice tearing through […]
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This Is 40
Opening Friday, This Is 40 tickles the travails of being rich, white and smug. Maybe a grown-up comedy isn’t in the cards for Apatow, whose best works (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up) celebrate arrested adolescence. His latest is a generally messy affair: often uproariously funny, but uneven, overlong, largely improvisational, packed with F-bombs and hobbled […]
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Django Unchained
The result is a brutal, bloody epic that hits theaters on Christmas Day. Happy birthday, Jesus! Paying homage to the Italian Django franchise birthed in 1966, Tarantino delivers what could serve as the origin story of the bounty hunter, if not for his Civil War-era setting and race-reversal casting. Jamie Foxx (Horrible Bosses) is enormously […]
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The write stuff
Photo: Shannon Cornman Oklahoma has a long, varied history in pop culture. From actors and filmmakers like Brad Pitt and Blake Edwards to musicians and singers like Charlie Christian and Garth Brooks, the state has been a leader in exporting world-class talents. One area that often gets overlooked is the state’s role in the realm […]
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Times bold
Photo: Doug Schwarz It doesn’t take more than a minute or so into Defining Times’ new record, Separate Tongues, to sense the intimacy, closeness and trust the Oklahoma City alternative band members must feel for one another. You’d think they’d been playing for a decade, not a year and a half. “It’s a brotherhood,” front […]
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Magnificent 7
Photo: Nathan Poppe Right in the thick of a deep run into the NBA playoffs, Oklahoma City came together earlier this year in not only a frenzy of fandom, but a dawning realization that this indeed is a major-league city and, by extension, state. Somewhere between the OKC Thunder sweeping the Dallas Mavericks and taking […]
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The Hills have eyes
To promote historic preservation within Oklahoma City, what better way than to see some examples firsthand? For more than four decades, Heritage Hills has held a self-guided tour of some of the historic neighborhood’s homes and gardens to do just that. Its 46th annual tour takes place Saturday and Sunday, featuring five private homes, as […]
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Nobody Else but You
A rather unconventional murder mystery fueled by the power and pain of celebrity, Nobody Else but You plays Saturday night as part of Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s French Cinema Week. Originally titled Poupoupidou in its native France for reasons that quickly become apparent, writer/director Gérald Hustache-Mathieu’s film stars Jean-Paul Rouve (La vie en rose) […]