American Idol
Song Sung Blue
Interview: Sasha Frere-Jones, part 3
New Yorker critic discusses last fall’s article on black music and contemporary indie rock
Interview: Sasha Frere-Jones (part 2)
New Yorker pop critic discusses music blogs and the state of pop criticism
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation
This Brazilian feature from Cao Hamburger follows a young boy in 1970, when his parents must go on a “vacation” to avoid arrest by the military dictatorship. After his grandfather dies, he’s taken under the wing of an older orthodox Jew in an all-Jewish neighborhood. Culture clash ensues, as the boy is only half-Jewish and…
The Visitor
Describing writer-director Tom McCarthy’s 2003 quirky indie feature The Station Agent made it sound insufferably precious: A dwarf living in an abandoned train station befriends a mouthy hot-dog vendor and a depressed divorcée. In fact, it was a charming oddball character study that earned its emotions honestly. Similarly, McCarthy’s latest dramedy sounds trite, but experiencing…
Blindsight
There will likely be a fresh burst of controversy from the Himalaya in the next two weeks as the Chinese try to get the Olympic torch to the top of Mount Everest during the narrow window in which ascents are possible. To facilitate this without protests, both sides of the mountain — the northern Tibet…
The Forbidden Kingdom
This new Hong-Kong-via-Hollywood martial-arts action fantasy film is a little bit like a meal at a Chinese-American buffet, where a variety of tastes run tastily into one another. The magical-cum-whimsical Monkey King (Jet Li) tosses his powerful golden bo staff into another world (ours) where a scrawny kid (Michael Angarano), who dreams of kung-fu finds…
88 Minutes / Baby Mama
What do a serial-killer thriller and a surrogate-pregnancy comedy have in common? The unforgiving advance of time, leading to great panic and momentous life-or-death decisions. In 88 Minutes, a man gets word that he’s about to die in — you guessed it — 88 minutes; he freaks out and decides kill the murderer first. In…
Recycling Resources
Reducing your environmental impact means putting recycling in perspective. First consider reducing your fuel consumption at home and on the road; think about buying less stuff that you’ll ultimately need to either discard or sort for the recycling bin. But for what you must consume, there are ways to recycle nearly everything. Curbside collection:…
Downward Cycle
On a Saturday morning, at the City of Pittsburgh’s recycling drop-off site in Point Breeze, you’re among the recycling bins and the true believers. The 15 dark-blue, office-cubicle-sized metal containers border the parking lot of Construction Junction, an outlet for used construction materials. Daily the cars stream in, and drivers unload the cardboard boxes, junk…
Lydie Breeze
Guare — whose talent for writing miniature portraits of “small” people struggling in ruthlessly specific milieus is unsurpassed — gets lost creating an “epic” play with “epic” characters.
Commodore Café
Commodore Café embodies all that is universal in diners while being very particularly local. As for the fare, health food it’s not; comfort food it is.
Development: North Siders storm developer’s office looking for CBA meeting
Chester Thrower asked North Side residents on April 17 to “accept my challenge. “I believe in action,” the North Side United member told about 30 residents inside a North Side Church, urging them to visit the office of developer Continental Real Estate on April 18. “Let’s go to the front line.” They did, and it…
Pride Week: Falling out leads to still-separate events
Thanks in part to differing agendas over corporate sponsorship and other matters, at least one group will be conducting a separate demonstration during the week of June 16-22.
Neighborhoods: Judge socks controversial apartment complex with huge fine
After complaining for close to a year, the neighbors of a former senior’s assisted living center get a judge to hit owners with a $1,000-a-day fine for improperly changing its use.
Roll Out the Barrel
Recycling rainwater isn’t an eco-friendly trick many people practice, but its positive effect on the environment is no drop in the bucket.
Upon Further Review
For the first time since 2001, the actions — or inactions — of some Pittsburgh police officers are preventing the Citizen Police Review Board from holding hearings on alleged misconduct. “It’s not the patrol officers — they are coming, they are fulfilling their obligations,” says Elizabeth Pittinger, the agency’s executive director. “What I am concerned…
This Just In: April 23 – 30
Highlights from the local TV news
Savage Love
I am a young, straight male — but I have this obsession with male-on-male dino-dragon porn. I don’t get it. I’M SUPPOSED TO BE STRAIGHT! Am I psychotic or what? Dinos Really Are Gonna Overtake Now You’re not psychotic, DRAGON. Just pathetic. I don’t mean pathetic in the “laughable or contemptible” sense of the…
Opening the Floodgates
“[H]e was too small a man to threaten the republic. His corruptions were too petty; his schemes too penny ante; and his spirit too … venal to make him truly dangerous. And he was a bridge, thank God, to better times.” — Ross Douthat on Richard Nixon Pennsylvania’s primary is being decided as I…
Mr. Cheesecake
Michael Martorella is Mr. Cheesecake. But the title may not befit a man who makes 50 kinds of cheesecake. So that’s Sir Cheesecake to you. During farmers’-market season, Martorella bakes more than a dozen specialty cheesecakes every week in a rented professional kitchen in Bridgeville. He then drives them to three markets. He sets up…
Howler’s free Sunday Hayrides series combines roots music and vegan eats
“It’s something that just shouldn’t make sense — vegans and country music — but somehow it does.”
New Yorker pop-music critic Sasha Frere-Jones chats before his Pittsburgh visit.
“One thing that hype does is that it’s sort of like Hamburger Helper — it sort of extends the conversation,” he says.
Jack Rose brings his “primitive guitar” to the Woodlab showcase
Each overlapping pluck reveals another coordinate plotted within this unique geometry of sound.
Philadelphyinz
“We didn’t just jack the lingo and jack the logo.”
Interview: Sasha Frere-Jones (part 1)
New Yorker critic on becoming a writer
Pop legend Nick Lowe performs at the Byham Theater
“Everybody’s hip now, even the stupid people.”
Stars of the Lid brings elegant soundscapes to the Warhol
“I’ve always found conceptual music and art a little bit like wading through vomit.”
Daryl Leroi Fleming waxes analytical on his latest release
Fleming offers thoughtful, applicable analyses of historical facts, rather than simplistic anti-Bush polemics and post-Seattle utopianist pipe dreams.
Protest singer Anne Feeney releases Dump the Bosses Off Your Back
You can’t get more comprehensively informed about traditional protest music in Pittsburgh than by listening to Anne Feeney.
Illustrations of Catastrophe and Remote Times intrigue at the Mattress Factory.
What makes this show in the Mattress Factory annex worth at least one, if not two or three visits, is speculating on how much the ideas in Bochner and Smithson’s article influenced the participants, if at all.
