FARMINGTON —The University of Maine at Farmington’s celebrated Visiting Writers Series proudly presents award-winning writer Deesha Philyaw as the popular program’s first reader of the season. Philyaw’s short story collection “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies” (West Virginia University Press, 2020), was awarded the 2021 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2021 Story Prize, was a […]

The animated “PAW Patrol” franchise doesn’t have the “for all ages” appeal of the best of Disney and Pixar. It’s from Nickelodeon, but it doesn’t even manage that channel’s trademark appeal to both kids and a certain brand of immature adult (“Ren and Stimpy” and “SpongeBob SquarePants” come to mind as examples). No, this is […]

“Free Guy” stars Ryan Reynolds as Guy, a mild-mannered bank teller whose life is cheerfully mundane. Every day he wears the same blue shirt, drinks the same generic coffee, makes the same jokes, and patiently endures bank robberies and crime sprees from people wearing special sunglasses. One day he meets a sunglasses woman named Molotov […]

FARMINGTON — The Novel Jazz Septet will be in concert at the Titcomb Mountain Ski Center on September 12 at 2 p.m. (rain date is 9/26, same time and place). They will feature music of the iconic Duke Ellington and his equally iconic musical collaborator, Billy Strayhorn. Novel Jazz is a Maine-based group, now in […]

FARMINGTON — Kaleigh Hunter and Emma Jones, winners of last year’s Nordica Scholarship  will perform in this year’s Nordica Day Concert. The event was live-streamed from Nordica Auditorium on August 17, but the video can also be viewed after August 27 on the Mt. Blue TV and ArtsFarmington websites. The direct link to the live-streamed […]

Watching “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” a question kept nagging me: Was “Space Jam” from 1996 this annoying? Both movies starred a professional basketball player who couldn’t act, both movies found a convoluted way to pair them up with the classic Looney Tunes characters in order to win a basketball game, and both movies tried […]

FARMINGTON — The Miss Farmington Fair pageant is back for its 21st year and will take place on day one of the 2021 Farmington Fair. Started by Founder Lisa Bird of Gorham 1999, the pageant has grown to be a crowd favorite each year and a wonderful way to kick off the excitement of the […]

FARMINGTON — On July 21st the third performance in the “Music at the Gazebo” series will feature Rachel Spear, a 2021 graduate from Mt.Blue High School. She will be attending Emerson College in the fall to pursue a career in the performing arts. Her performance will include original songs along with acoustic-styled covers.  Music will […]