On November 26 we reveal our critics' top picks for top CDs, DVDs and video games of the year, and we want you to get in on the action! Comment to this post with your picks (for all, or any category), and you will become eligible to win this amazing book (and some boss runner-up prize packs) in our poorly organized, but totally legit contest. Entries must be received by Friday, November 13 at ...

Hall of Fame: Bruce MacKinnon We reserve our Hall of Fame---a special honour that retires both the winner and the category they won in---for the iconic figures, people who have owned their title year in and out, who have made such a mark in Halifax that their names are indelibly linked to the work they do. So, imagine our surprise when longtime Chronicle Herald cartoonist Bruce MacKinnon, well ...

November. Summer days are far behind and endless winter is just around the corner. It’s enough to make a person want to hole up in a nice cozy living room until spring arrives. Well, DaPoPo Theatre is offering a creative and affordable antidote to those blues and blahs: a month long “Live-In” at The Living Room Theatre on Agricola. They’re putting on 14 nights of workshops and play readings (pay ...

live in a time when debauchery was its own excuse. by Carsten Knox Oh, to live in a time when debauchery was its own excuse. Like the 1970s, or fin-de-siecle Paris, where this story---adapted from a pair of books by French novelist Colette---is set. Frears and screenwriter Christopher Hampton are reunited with star Michelle Pfeiffer, all of whom shone in Dangerous Liaisons in 1988. Pfeiffer's ...

by Lizzy Hill Sin Nombre portrays a fictionalized version of Central America's harsh political reality. El Casper (Édgar Flores), a young romantic and member of the gang La Mara, joins paths with Sayra (Paulina Gaytan), a strong-minded young woman fleeing to the United States via freight train. New director and writer Cary Fukunaga provides no shortage of brutality: grown men beat up a young boy ...

With Rick Rubin back at the helm recording, Slayer has lost no speed and ferocity. by Loukas Crowther ZOMG NEW SLAYER. Listening to this and I am back in junior high wearing all black and pretending I am better than everyone, when in reality I am totally jealous of my friend's Amiga and will punish his level 26 mage with my sadistically nerdy dungeon-mastering ways. (Magic missile this, you ...

Three Sheet has some fine funk, R&B, soul and rock styles. by Sean Flinn A spirited, thoughtful MC, Expedyte's verses can get wordy at times. Occasionally he sounds hurried, behind the beat. But he nails it on, for example, "Norm Now." Vanessa Furlong delivers throughout the album, particularly "Blood Whale" and "How it Goes." Halifax's Three Sheet has got something. They've got a human beatbox ...

The hilariously named Monsters of Folk consists of indie-rock superstars M. Ward, Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis (both from Bright Eyes). Many have already compared MoF to the Traveling Wilburys, and it's appropriate since both bands are folk-rock supergroups, but a more notable point is that the Monsters, like the Wilburys, are artists who may be pushing past their ...

by Mike Landry You can almost taste the angst from the opening of In This Style's debut . While these Dartmouth prog-rockers deliver a hefty helping of the teenage delicacy with lyrics like "hate is beauty," the real treat is when they move from heavier chords into melodic, angular riffs. It's then that the music effectively translates more sincere emotions. An emphasis on atmosphere gives heart ...

Darrell Dexter by Carsten Knox Was it just us or did the city collectively exhale when the NDP swept to power this past June? It may be less fun to mock premier Dexter than it was RodMac, but now the provincial political complexion has changed to a shade of tangerine, are our expectations even higher? Well, they should be. We gave this guy the steering wheel, let's make sure he's got his hands ...

Discover who Coast readers selected this year on our new Best of Halifax pages. Browse our 87 award categories, organized into four sections: Arts & Media, Public Life, Shopping and Sports & Leisure. [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Another non-linear, exquisitely structured, interesting and ultimately antiseptic puzzle by Atom Egoyan by Lindsay McCarney Adoration is the latest entry in writer-director-Canfilm icon Atom Egoyan's career-long treatise on technology, fiction and identity. And, like so many Egoyan offerings before it (Exotica, Ararat, Where the Truth Lies) the film is a non-linear, exquisitely structured ...

Halifax Haunts: Exploring the Citys Spookiest Places by Steve Vernon "Made of wet boots and rain and shiny black ravens on chimney smoke lanes," sang Tom Waits in his song "November." We recommend you dig out Waits's Black Rider album to spin while you dig into Steve Vernon's book---published by Nimbus---on the darker corners of our seaside town, the restless spirits that stalk our old buildings ...

Art Gallery of Nova Scotia Taking back its crown, the big boy on Hollis Street is at the top of Coast readers' minds again. Top of our mind is the Jean-Pierre Gauthier show opening December 20. The Sobey Art Award-winner is bringing his *Machines At Play* kinetic sculptural work to the AGNS, an installation that takes cables, wires and electrical devices and turns them into singing, playing ...

Megan Leslie Everyone respects and likes the NDP's Megan Leslie, even people who don't share her political views. It's because she's young, bright and she's representing us in Ottawa with a lot of character. In case you think we're biased, consider that in May of 2009 Leslie was voted Rookie MP of the Year in *MacLean's* magazine third-annual Parliamentarian of the Year Awards, an honour voted ...

A star turn from Carey Mulligan doesn't make this coming-of-age story any less uncomfortable. by Hillary Titley An Education certainly has enough achievements to boast about, namely the star-turn from Carey Mulligan and Nick Hornbys expertly crafted screenplay. But director Lone Scherfig cant lift the fog from the creepy undertones of its central relationship. Mulligans clever yet sheltered ...

Economic stimulus funds intended for Halifax were diverted for Conservative Party purposes by Tim Bousquet If anyone doubts that Conservatives are politicizing the spending of economic stimulus money, they need only look at how stimulus money is flowing through HRM. Halifax council held a rushed meeting the afternoon of April 28 to come up with ways to spend $87.75 million in stimulus money ...

I've got my hard-earned bucks down on Amy Jones as being our next-generation Lisa Moore (not sure why anyone needs to be the next anything, but that's what we do). Originally from Halifax, the winner of the Metcalf-Rooke Award and the CBC Literary Award for Short Story is launching her first book of short stories, What Boys Like , this evening, 6pm at The Company House. Jones now lives in ...

PEI native Wells writes poetry with a wintry state of mind, augmented by illustrations from cartoonist Seth. by Sean Flinn Zachariah Wells (reading this Thursday with Wayne Clifford and Amy Jones, 6pm at The Company House) frequently tunes to the world in winter, searching out its subtleties with heightened sense, a pursuit implied by title, design and illustrations by Seth. The PEI native's ...

We may not know much, but we knows our beers. In this week's NOW magazine , Propeller Bitter, now available in Ontario LCBO stores, receives four-star praise for being a "very satisfying, traditional, finely carbonated, soft, fruity ale with a lip-smacking dry finish." [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]