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Thursday, January 28, 2016

Sundance Film Festival Capsules: Day 7

Sing Street, Christine, Yoga Hosers, Kiki, Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny, A Good Wife
Sing Street [Premieres] ★ ★ ★ ½ Disclaimer alert: A musical romance directed by John Carney (Once), set in Ireland and built on an affectionate skewering of 1980s MTV aesthetics might as well be custom-designed to my particular specifications. But there’s still an ocean of charm in this tale set in 1985 Dublin, where 15-year-old Connor Lawlor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) responds to life upheavals—a new school, his parents’ fighting and a crush on mysterious older girl Raphina (Lucy Boynton)—by starting a band.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Sundance Film Festival Capsules: Day 6

Birth of a Nation, Kate Plays Christine, Wiener-Dog, Newtown, Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Wiener-Dog [Premieres] ★ ★ ★ Todd Solondz’s caustic view of the world hasn’t changed much in the 20 years since Welcome to the Dollhouse, but sometimes he can deliver just enough pitch-black humor to sweeten the despair. Here he follows a forlorn-looking dachshund through several owners: a boy (Keaton Nigel Cooke) recently recovered from illness; a film studies professor (Danny DeVito) whose own writing career is going nowhere; an elderly woman (Ellen Burstyn); and even Dollhouse’s own Dawn Wiener (Greta Gerwig).

Wine Wednesday: Chateau-Fuissé Les Clos Pouilly-Fuissé

In some circles, Pouilly-Fuissé wine – made from Chardonnay in France’s Burgundy region – is considered the poor stepchild of the fancier white Burgundies; particularly those from the Côte de Beaune like Montrachet, Meursault, and Corton Charlemagne. In part, that’s because it’s still recovering from the bad reputation in earned in the 1970s for being a lightweight proto-Pinot Grigio.

Bricks

An old SLC club gets reborn as a downtown bar arcade
Once upon a time, back in the day, there used to be a badass little club called Bricks. It was a mainstay for traveling alternative and punk acts throughout the '90s to pop into town and play a quick gig, a great venue for music when places like DV8 and The Holy Cow weren't hosting your favorite bands, but that's a different story for a different day.

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Sundance Film Festival Capsules: Day 5

Southside With You, Lo and Behold, Manchester By The Sea, Weiner, Sand Storm, Holy Hell
Southside With You [U.S. Dramatic] ★ ★ ½ On some level, this enterprise was doomed from conception, because there are only two ways you can tell this story—inspired by one long day in Chicago in the summer of 1989 that marked the first date between Barack Obama (Parker Sawyers) and his future wife Michelle Robinson (Tika Sumpter)—and both are fraught with peril. On the one hand, you could remind viewers that these two people were just ordinary folks like you and me: young legal intern Barack with his rusted-floorboard car and smoking habit; young associate Michelle fond of chocolate ice cream and willing to jump into the group dancing in a drum circle.

Monday, January 25, 2016

Speaker Hughes Sets Sights on Natural World

“I’ve had it, I’ve had it with federal management, or mismanagement,” he said
In a nearly hour-long speech on Monday at the State Capitol, House Speaker Greg Hughes opened the 2016 Utah Legislature with his sights aimed on the natural world, pledging to take over ownership of federally managed public land, ending red air quality days and resurrecting a “pioneer heritage” of water infrastructure that will shepherd in a new era of population explosion and economic prosperity. A year ago when Hughes, a Republican from Draper, took the speaker’s gavel, he said he did so with little knowledge about the state’s public land battle and the importance of water in the second driest state.

Monday Meal: Spicy Pasta with Mussels

I really love mussels and I also really love pasta. So, what could be a better partnering than mussels with pasta? 

Sundance Film Festival Capsules: Day 4

Tickled, Certain Women, Love and Friendship, Under the Shadow, Plaza de la Soledad
Tickled [World Documentary] ★ ★ ★ ½ New Zealand journalist David Farrier thought he was just going to find a subject for his light-hearted, pop-culture-focused features when he started investigating videos he found online for “Competitive Endurance Tickling.” Instead, he found the subject for a documentary that just gets weirder, funnier, more fascinating and more layered as it goes. Farrier (who co-directed with Dylan Reeve) begins trying to understand why the media company that promoted these tickling videos responded to him with insults, harassment and legal threats, and in so doing uncovers a story that could go back 20 years.

Purring Buddha

Natural body works made for every kind of conscious consumer.
With all the body works materials out there, it can become a mind-boggling challenge to decide what works best for you and what the best possible choices are for your own personal health and hygiene. Not to mention what said products are made of and what effect they have on the environment after you've finished using them.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

BLM on the Hot Seat

Tensions flare in St. George at public land talk
A pair of congressional meetings in St. George on Friday, Jan. 22, heated up as Utah’s congressmen and local ranchers expressed frustration with the Bureau of Land Management. At the meetings, tensions between those who support developing public lands and the federal land agency tasked with managing them grew so intense that a Utah state representative predicted there could possibly be bloodshed in the future.

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