I love watching the award shows, from the red carpet coverage all the way through to the Best Picture award winner, I settle in on my couch, with my popcorn and cheer for the one movie that I had actually seen. I used to wonder where you could see some of these lesser known movies and always resolved that next year I’d see all of the Best Picture nominees, a resolution that never seemed to happen. That is until I started working here at The Music Hall. Thanks to our stellar line up of movies, I have the chance to see almost all of the films that are up for awards. I figured I’d share what movies we have that are nominated (or have won) so you can mark your calendars.Read More
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Welcome to the New Year! (Or, as a slightly more cynical person might put it, “It’s a New Year and you’re welcome to it!”)
But I refuse to give in to bitterness. Wallow in it, yes. But I won’t give in to it.
Besides, whatever may be happening elsewhere in our beloved Republic, Portsmouth is enjoying a New England January that calls for indoor activities. And The Music Hall, ever attentive to our needs, is presenting its usual menu of movies that you won’t see at the MallPlexx 6000.Read More
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Happy Halloween! And congratulations for being residents of the only state I know of to do its trick-or-treating on the day before Halloween. Makes you feel special, doesn’t it?
So, movies. Tomorrow night (Tuesday), we have a comedy coming to The Music Hall, which seems appropriate, as comedy has become a big business. It used to be that the only way a comedian had to get his/her material in front of a large audience was to make an LP album.Read More
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The recipe for an erotic thriller is simple. Take two hypnotically gorgeous people (say Matthias Schoenaerts and Tilda Swinton) and have them play rich people—a rock star and a filmmaker—in a ridiculously attractive setting (say the Mediterranean island of Pantelleria). Then add two outsiders (also gorgeous) including an ex-boyfriend of Swinton’s (Ralph Fiennes) and his daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson (of Fifty Shades of Grey fame).Read More
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On Tuesday, we will be discussing Love and Friendship, a film that brings together two creative people for whom I have a great deal of affection. The first is Jane Austen, who is, without a doubt, one of the clearest-eyed, most wickedly amusing observers of human behavior ever. Her insights into the jealousy, snobbery and folly of late 18th and early 19th century England can still draw blood, which is why filmmakers keep making and remaking her novels into movies. (Well, the fact that her works are all in the public domain and feed the current general hunger for costume dramas may have something to do with it.)Read More
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Well, it’s time to get serious about this movie stuff! We have three straight weeks of discussions coming up in July, and the movies themselves, are (I think) all perfect for summer evenings. There’s not a gut-clenching moral dilemma, haunting historical tragedy or blood-soaked shoot-out in the bunch.Read More
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We don’t hear much from filmmakers in Greece these days (and no, I don’t count My Big Fat Greek Wedding), but given that country’s position at the foundation of Western Civilization, that seems like a shame. A country that gave us The Iliad and the Odyssey and a dysfunctional family of gods that could go straight onto reality TV—The Real Gods of Mount Olympus!—might tap into some interesting places in our collective psyche.Read More
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At the Shadows Fall North premiere, from left: Burt Feintuch, UNH English professor & Director, Center for the Humanities, UNH; Valerie Cunningham, historian & founder, Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail; JerriAnne Boggis, Director, Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail; Brian Vawter, Director & Editor of Shadows Fall North; Nancy Vawter, Producer, Atlantic Media Productions; Jason Sokol, Associate Professor of History, UNH & panel moderator; Chris Curtis, Music Hall Programming Coordinator
No one expected a Tuesday night documentary exposing hard truths about African American history in New Hampshire to be a sellout event.
Yet, nearly 700 people came to see the world premiere of Shadows Fall North in The Music Hall’s Historic Theater on May 26. Produced by UNH’s Center for the Humanities and Atlantic Media Productions, the film features the key players responsible for Portsmouth’s African Burying Ground memorial park, honoring the centuries-old souls discovered beneath city sidewalks more than a decade ago. And it delves deep into the overlooked history of racism in Northern New England. A rallying cry to acknowledge untold stories and set history straight, it brought the house to a standing ovation.Read More
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