Press release of the week
From Who’s A Rat?: Who’s A Rat (www.whosarat.com) is the first site to allow users around the country to post local, state and federal agents’ and informants’ names, pictures and related information. Legal? The founder of Who’s A Rat says yes — and has case law to prove it. Ethical? Regardless of your answer to…
Bush League
“The Big Squeeze.” That W — such a man of the people! Except when the people’s interests conflict with those of big corporations. Which is always. “[T]he government,” writes David Sirota in The American Prospect (September), “is now a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America.” W’s gifts: costlier and less widely available health care; prescription…
A Conversation with Ashley Cole
What was it like working around dead people? It was fascinating and life-changing. You see how quick life is taken and you begin to appreciate life more, so then you start writing about it. How many corpses did you see that summer? More than the average girl. A couple hundred maybe. During summer kids…
Half-Baked
Maybe because it’s election season, everything seems like a debate between conservatives and liberals, between secretive moralizers and idealistic do-gooders. It’s not just George W. Bush and John Kerry. The battle over preservation of the former Nabisco plant in East Liberty has taken on such overtones, down to the unfortunate distortions and failure to address…
Various
M83 Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts Mute Black Strobe Chemical Sweet Girl EP Output Prepare for the frog invasion. No, not a horde of mutant croakers leaping straight out of a Biblical plague — rather, 2004 could be the first time that two really hot bands came storming out of France…
Various Artists
“Keep the Lone Star cold / the dance floor hot while I’m gone / just keep your hands off my woman, boys / ’cause I won’t be gone that long.” When Dave Alvin sings “11 Months and 29 Days,” it’s with confident grit and broken-Bud-longneck antagonism. It’s a honky-tonk blues shuffle that could’ve smiled with…
Hero
If it’s possible to overdose on visual beauty, then Zhang Yimou’s Hero is an acid trip for the eyes: China’s most renowned director films his historic martial arts fantasy-drama in a variety of hues — blood red, melancholy blue, lucent green — and stuffs it with almost otherworldly digital effects. Still, for the first…
We Don’t Live Here Anymore
The two Andre Dubuses, pí¨re and fils, write dark, literate fiction — with complex emotions and thorny moral issues — that lately have been the foundation for some dark, literate movies with noteworthy casts: from Dubus the son, House of Sand and Fog, and from the father, In the Bedroom three years ago, and now…
Facing Windows
One pleasure of the bittersweet drama Facing Windows is letting Ferzan Ozpetek slowly reveal who and what his film is really about. And his eventual clumsiness wrapping things up is this otherwise engaging film’s biggest problem. Ozpetek’s protagonist is Giovanna (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), a 29-year-old mother of two who works as an accountant in a…
Lock 6 Landing
Location: 610 Midland-Beaver Road, Industry. 724-728-6767 Hours: Sun., Tue.-Thu., 5-9 p.m.; Fri-Sat, 5-10 p.m.; daylight marina dining, weather permitting Prices: Appetizers, $5-12; entrees, $20-30 Fare: From Continental classics to fusion cuisine Atmosphere: Recycled industrial elegance Liquor: Full bar Understandably, Pittsburghers have mixed feelings about industry. Sure, we all miss the steady hum of Big Steel’s…
Exorcist: The Beginning
This utterly pointless prequel to 1973’s genuinely unnerving film about evil, The Exorcist, simply borrows the name and few cheap similarities. Ostensibly we learn how Father Merrin, the earlier film’s priest, came to discover demonic possession and the power of exorcism. Having left the priesthood after the psychic rigors of World War II, Merrin (Stellan…
Lemon Pledge
Q: If a student did not want to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the only way he could not do that would be to get his parents’ permission? A: Right. Q: What would be the sanctions for noncompliance? A: It would be whatever sanctions the school does for other disciplinary things. — State House…
Festival Express
Bob Smeaton’s documentary follows a dozen bands who in 1970 were loaded onto a train — primed with amps, booze and a film crew — and set off across Canada to play concerts. At best, the film captures an interesting moment in popular music when some bands could bounce easily across genres — blues, rock,…
The College Student’s LOVE & SEX Survival Guide
Topics: How to Choose Your College Courses to Improve Your Love LifeHow to Handle an Instructor Who Hits on YouHow to Explain Interracial Dating to Family and FriendsHow to Handle a Roommate’s Unexpected Night VisitorHow to Impress a Date in Oakland for $10How to Get a Morning-After PillHow to Scam Free Birth ControlHow to Save…
Her Majesty
In this debut from New Zealand director Mark J. Gordon, a charming rural village goes a-tizzy when, in 1953, Queen Elizabeth comes to visit. Particularly consumed is 13-year-old Lizzie (Sally Andrews), who while planning for the royal visit begins an unlikely friendship with an old Maori woman, Hira (Vicky Haughton), whose take on the British…
Unhappy Hunting
“Oh Jesus, be a fence around me every day,” sings Aalaiza Venay, age 6, as she dances down the sidewalk. “Jesus, I want you to protect me, as I travel along the way.” Aalaiza says she learned the number as a member of the Rodman Steppers, a dance group at East Liberty’s Rodman Street Missionary…
How Cruel Was Our Valley
When people in a coal patch died fighting for a union, that town was sometimes called a “bucket of blood.” Little do most Pittsburghers know that the tiny former company town of Russellton, 20 miles northeast of the city, earned this hard distinction during the grueling coal strike of 1927. In Bucket of Blood, the…
Dep-Art-ure
In the two-and-a-half years since the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts fired key staffers and canceled exhibitions, the Shadyside-based mainstay has continued to operate. But the organization’s financial troubles only worsened. With foundation funding and membership both down, and facing a budget shortfall of about $1 million, on Aug. 21 the PCA shut its doors…
Long Shot in the Arm
“If anyone can present me with a more important issue, I’ll be glad to talk about it,” says Steven Larchuk. Larchuk, running as the American Healthcare Party candidate for Melissa Hart’s 4th district House seat, is a one-issue candidate and proud of it. The need for reform of the country’s health-care system, he says,…
