Reviews: A Good Day to Die Hard, Beautiful Creatures
A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD * It’s been exactly a quarter-century since Bruce Willis became a movie star with the action classic Die Hard, but while 2013 finds the actor headlining the fifth film in the never-say-die series, it’s clear that A Good Day to Die Hard does his image — and his iconic…
Shameless self-promotion
Connect Savannah is very happy to again be a media sponsor of the Savannah Book Festival, happening this weekend. It’s been a blast interviewing and writing about some of the featured authors this year, such as Dave Barry and Paula McLain. This week’s issue is a real keeper. We feature interviews with two of the…
BOOK FEST: Midnight writer
“Please don’t ask me to be Mister Clean,” Gregg Allman sang on the classic Brothers & Sisters album, “cuz baby I don’t know how.” Allman wrote that song, “Wasted Words,” in 1972, and it proved prophetic: His autobiography is not only a chronicle of a life filled with dirty dealings, drugs and disappointments, it wastes…
BOOK FEST: Why Priests?
With the news this week that Pope Benedict XVI will be only the second pope in 600 years to resign, Garry Wills’s appearance at the Savannah Book Festival this Saturday couldn’t be more timely. The prolific Pulitzer Prize–winning Atlanta native has written dozens of well–received books on theology and politics, including Nixon Agonistes and What…
BOOK FEST: Al Gore, change agent
In his seminal 1970 bestseller Future Shock, Alvin Toffler predicted a “shattering stress and disorientation” would come over Western society as people found themselves unable to process too many changes in too little time. Forty–something years later, the future is here. While our “collision with tomorrow” hasn’t sent us skidding off into the ether just…
Classroom chaos theory
Like Lindsay Weir on the late and lamented series Freaks and Geeks, high school sophomore Vickie Martin is a rather reluctant member of the math team. Vickie joins the nerdy numbers squad to avoid detention, and — what do you know? — discovers that she actually, like, likes it. That’s the setup in the SCAD…
Across the Celtic universe
There was a moment, around 1987, when it looked like the Bolshoi were going to be among England’s biggest musical exports. Thanks to the sharp, cynical songwriting of lead vocalist and guitarist Trevor Tanner, the band was firmly rooted in that dark, post–punk place where pop and goth intertwined and had sarcastic little babies. History,…
Savannah Music Festival’s new additions
Old Crow Medicine Show, Dr. John and the Tedeschi Trucks Band are among the new concerts added to the 2013 Savannah Music Festival lineup. The Wailers (the remnants of the great Bob Marley’s original band, and still one of Jamaica’s coolest reggae exports) and indie rockers Sea Wolf round out the last-minute additions, announced Thursday…
Valentine’s edition
This week, the sweetest of the holidays rolls up on the day planner — Valentine’s Day. With a long history of waxy chocolates, sugary hearts admonishing “Be Mine!” and enough rose bouquets to give a florist nightmares, the holiday is laden with expectations: Candy, flowers, dinner, jewelry. Shake off the paradigm, boys and girls, and…
BOOK FEST: Coral reefs vs. U.S. Navy
Kevin McCarey’s day gig is as a professor of film at SCAD. But he’s also the author of an intriguing book about his experiences in the 1970s on the front lines of the long and eventually successful effort to stop the U.S. Navy from using Puerto Rican islands for target practice. Islands Under Fire focuses…
Girls in the Machine
Did you say you’re in the mood for some mytho–futurist–intergalactic–ohm rock? You must have heard about this Friday’s art/glam/punk/rock extravaganza featuring the hot girl group of the moment, Silver Machine. And we do mean ‘the moment,’ since they just formed a few weeks ago. “It’s a magical, quick event,” says Tracy Cox–Stanton, who recently had…
