Brewed Awakening

It’s time we opened our eyes to economic and social dimensions of coffee ● by Catherine M. Tucker

Do you drink coffee? If so, you are among the 80% or more of adult Americans who drink coffee at least occasionally.  Coffee is an ubiquitous part of daily life in the USA, yet few of us have time to think about how coffee is produced, its social and environmental ramifications, or the experiences of growers who depend on coffee as their main source of income.  This is true even though opportunities for awareness are greater today than ever before.  If we look closely at coffee in the grocery store, we are likely to see packages declaring “organic,” “shadegrown,”  “Fair Trade,” or “bird friendly” on the labels.  Each of these labels represents a claim to quality that encompasses environmental, economic and Read more

South Pacific

IU Opera and the Long History of the Middle Ground Between Opera and Musical Theater ● by Chris Lynch

If you’ve been monitoring the national opera scene, you may have noticed a few curious happenings: this season opera-diva Renée Fleming costarred with Broadway leading-lady Kelli O’Hara in a new production of The Merry Widow at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lyric Opera of Chicago is currently preparing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel for a production this spring, and next year San Francisco Opera will put on Sweeney Todd. What’s with the opera world’s sudden interest in musicals? As it turns out, it’s only new for these big opera companies, which have historically produced traditional operatic repertoire in a conservative manner. There have always been other institutions and artists that didn’t care about the differences between opera and musical theater or that worked to resolve the discrepancies. IU Opera Theater is one such institution, and their upcoming production of Read more

Charlie Hebdo: Choosing Sides

● by Ethan Sandweiss

On January 7th at 11:30, I was finishing my language class at Lyon’s Alliance Francaise.  Less than three hundred miles away, the employees of one of France’s premier satirical magazines were being slaughtered.

Despite the rise of terrorism all over the world, France has, up until the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office, remained remarkably untouched. I’m working in Lyon as an au pair, but when I first heard about the attack (through my American family), it seemed far off and small, as if in another country. Being a foreigner here, it’s sometimes hard for me to gauge Read more

Film: 12 Criterion Releases That Made My 2014

● by Craig J. Clark

As any self-respecting cinephile can tell you, the Criterion Collection is an invaluable and expertly curated resource for anybody looking to be a well-rounded movie-lover. Releasing dozens of films a year (at the rate of 6-8 a month with the occasional boxed set thrown in for good measure), there’s never a shortage of goodness to be had on Criterion’s slate. (This also includes their periodic Blu-ray upgrades, which often come with new supplements that weren’t included on the original releases.)

Before we get too far into 2015 (which is yielding its own crop of must-buys, including Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le silence de la mer), I’d like to highlight a dozen of their best titles from 2014 – one for each month. Read more

An Energetic And Raw Romeo & Juliet

● by Chris Lynch

Students in Indiana University’s theater department will premiere a new production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, directed by professor Nancy Lipschultz, on February 27. According to the director, “Our approach is totally traditional this time. I’m not really known for that. I’m known for mixing it up and doing things like Les Liaisons Dangereuses with Jay Z, but this time we’re going late Renaissance. The stage is sort of a replica of [Shakespeare’s] Globe stage, the costuming traditional, and there will be traditional music—lute, drums, mandolin, and some singing of lullabies and Elizabethan drinking songs at the beginning.” Lipshcultz felt that “it might be nice to have the students do a full-on late-Renaissance Romeo and Juliet without, you know, adding the Dixie Chicks.” Read more

Chadors And Shadows

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and the Iranian Vampire Western ● by Tom Prasch

Alone in her room, dancing by herself in a windowless, barely furnished space, walls papered with vintage-feeling (80s-ish) pop posters , with her pixie-cut hair and striped shirt, the girl seems to be channeling Jean Seberg ala Godard, back when the nouvelle vague was still new. But when she dons the black chador to go out into the streets, prowling the menacingly empty desolate night spaces of her oil-industrial city, she becomes something else: a dark-clad vampire who mirrors the movements of her prey before her incisors snap forward like a switchblade and she goes in for her kill. Read more

Celtic And American Roots Music

● by Jamie Gans

Much like the Blues and Appalachian music, the Celtic roots revival began to re-sprout within its own cultural and ethnic regions of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany by the late 1950’s. Over those past fifty plus years the music has expanded its boundaries throughout the world. On both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, musical tradition and innovation continue to thrive from Kentucky old time to Gaelic sean-nós. Here are some recent releases that represent the best in Celtic roots. Read more