The near-defunct genre known as the religious epic gets the aggressive 21st-century facelift that no one asked for in Noah. director Darren Aronofsky’s long-awaited followup to his delirious Black Swan.

It’s easy to be dismissive of a film like this. Taken at face value (and a terrible marketing campaign), it has the strained box of a History Channel original production. But there is much to savour.

Evolutionary creationism has never been presented like this before. The frenetic montage technique that so memorably burned through every kind of narcotic abuse imaginable in Aronofsky’s breakthrough Requiem for a Dream now guides us through countless millennia of celestial evolution that includes gigantic obsidian angels.

Aronofsky’s growing body of work may seem intensely disparate, but beneath the veneer of much kinetic editing beats the common heart of overwhelming internal burden.

The Peterborough Darkroom Project “On Film” for SPARK

If you’ve been in Peterborough for any amount of time, chances are you’ve caught a glimpse of something from the Balsillie Collection of Roy Studio Images. These historic photographs of Peterborough and the surrounding area adorn the walls of institutions, businesses, and restaurants all over the city.

A group of dedicated local photographers have banded together to carry on the legacy of the darkroom that produced them.

Bill Templeman is a writer, instructor, speaker, program designer, and coach with 20 years of experience working with corporate, public sector and nonprofit clients.

He has a strong background in experiential education (action learning), training program design, and process facilitation. He holds a B.A. in psychology from Concordia University in Montreal and an M.A. in English from the University of Toronto.

Bill has worked with clients across Canada and the United States. He has written, designed, and delivered a wide range of training programs to employee and management groups, including team effectiveness, leadership development, managing change, career transition, sales/client service, and coaching.

When Robert Boudreau, Micky Renders, and Bill Lockington first imagined a photo festival for Peterborough, they never dreamed the first “frame” would be as successful as it was.

Even the highly successful Contact Photography Festival in Toronto drew just 50 exhibitors in its first year; the SPARK Photo Festival boasted 47 in its first year in 2013.

Spring Awakening: The Musical is coming to Peterborough, but is Peterborough ready for it?

After successful productions of Legally Blonde and Xanadu, The Anne Shirley Theatre Company is bringing one of the most controversial and notorious productions in the history of theatre to Market Hall for five shows (and to Trent University for one show).

Under the direction of Dane Shumak, an energetic and good-looking company explores topics such as sex, revolution, abuse, masturbation, atheism, homosexuality, rape, S&M, abortion and death in what is essentially a youth-oriented production. Needless to say, Spring Awakening isn’t for every audience, but it is extremely provocative and daring amateur theatre. It is sure to be one of the most talked-about productions of the year.

Here’s a list of concerts this month in Peterborough and area that have piqued my interest. We are blessed to have such a great local music scene!

We live in an age where sex and horror are the new gods.

So what better way to illustrate this than dusting off ancient morality tales and pumping them full of graphic sex and deplorable violence so that a bunch of frat boys can be inspired to hit the weights together. The Immortals, Clash of the Titans, and — most persistently — 300 have narrated this strange misappropriation.

Original hack maestro Zach Snyder has taken sabbatical to ruin another franchise (he cast Ben Affleck as the new Batman) and has left the directorial reigns in the fumbling hands of Noam Murro. Bizarrely, this is Murro’s sophomore effort after the Dennis Quaid/Sarah Jessica Parker dud, Smart People.

Not that the original 300 — based on the overrated Frank Miller’s account of the desperate last stand between three hundred gallant Greeks standing against the racially ambiguous Persian masses — was much to savour.