Proof
Simply put — and there’s really no complex way to put it — Proof tells the story of a morose young woman who fears she may have inherited mental illness from her father, a University of Chicago mathematician who made three landmark discoveries in his 20s, and who spent the time after that losing his…
The Thing About My Folks
In his latest riff on being a slightly neurotic, slightly Jewish, very privileged New York artist — something I’ve always wanted to be, and yet, a class of person I find it difficult to sympathize with — the actor/writer Paul Reiser, of TV’s Mad About You, uses an old woman’s suffering to tell a male-bonding…
We Jam Econo
“These guys are all weirdos,” Mike Watt recalls thinking about the early Southern California punk community. “It was the perfect scene for us.” “Us” was Watt and D. Boon, who with George Hurley would go on to form The Minutemen, a band that had a lot to say and usually didn’t take very long…
Third Time for Charmo
Something has always bothered Tim Stevens about the way police handled the investigation into the 1995 death of motorist Jerry Jackson at the hands of city Housing Authority Police Officer John Charmo. “This is one of the worst cases of covering up the death of an African American by police ever in the…
Many Ways to Bend the Knee
On the first day of school, Alicia Kramer asked her 10th-grade World History students at Oakland Catholic High School what their impressions were of various world religions. Their answers about Islam worried her. “They’ve seen the news — they called them extremists,” Kramer says. So, for the second year running, she offered…
Plate 736
Location: 736 Bellefonte St., Shadyside. 412-683-5756 Hours: Tue.-Thu. 5-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 5-11 p.m.; Sun. 5-9 p.m. Lunch service starting in October. Prices: Small plates and salads $5-14; big plates $17-27 Fare: Contemporary fusion Atmosphere: Eat-in art gallery Liquor: Full bar Here’s a Shadyside story about a favorite Shadyside pastime, eating out: A venerable, if not…
Spirit Moves Them Out
“Are gay men getting the same benefit out of religion that the general population is?” asks Dr. Brenda Cole, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. The answer so far, in preliminary findings from Cole’s research into the connection between faith and physical health, is no, especially compared to the general…
Cross Currents
Like Ron McRae, Lou Kavar is from Somerset, Pennsylvania. Like Ron McRae, Lou Kavar is a man of God, one who’d like to see government policy reflect Judeo-Christian values. But unlike McRae, who is charitably referred to as a “street evangelist,” Kavar has an actual congregation. (True, the Allegheny Open Arms United Church of…
All God’s Children Got Gods
“A lot of pagans have gotten nervous,” says Amy Mokricky, who is helping to organize this year’s Greater Pittsburgh Pagan Pride Day on Sun., Oct. 2. “Around 2000, we were experiencing a lot of growth, people being open about who they were. With the Bush Administration, people are just frightened. People are pretty skittish right…
Campaign Kickoff?
I don’t know who first compared Pittsburgh sportscaster Stan Savran to Burt Lahr’s “Cowardly Lion” character in The Wizard of Oz, but the dude is a dead ringer for the lion. But the analogy goes further. As Zeke the Cowardly Lion once queried, “What makes a king out of a slave? Courage. What…
Standing-Room-Only to Take an Anti-War Stand
The Pittsburgh contingent of the Sept. 24 anti-war march in Washington D.C. reached the White House (above) in the middle of what was the largest rally in the capital against the Iraq War since the first bombs fell in March 2003. David Meieran, an organizer locally with both the Thomas Merton Center and the Pittsburgh…
Why are there days that I can get radio reception throughout the length of the Squirrel Hill tunnels? How can this be?
It’s true that, ordinarily, radio waves bounce off the sides of mountains like common sense off Rick Santorum’s skull. But commuters to and from the eastern suburbs have been getting FM radio signals inside the tunnel for much of the past five years now. “It got started because in college, my…
DOMINION: PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST
If you thought last year’s Exorcist: The Beginning from Renny Harlin wasn’t worth the cost of the popcorn, here’s your chance to have another go at same story, with the same cast and sets, but under a different director. Once again, filling in the life-changing experiences of Father Merrin (Stellan Skarsgard) immediately following World War…
Giovanna’s 86 Circles
What’s likable about Paolo Corso’s first collection of short stories is easy to discern. The 10 stories in Giovanna’s 86 Circles — most set in the Pittsburgh area, where Corso grew up — are accessible, big-hearted fiction, their characters rooted in family, community and Italian ethnicity but always open to the possibility of…
FLIGHT PLAN
Starting with a bit of gloomy Euro-mood as the camera jumps about in non-linear fashion through subways, morgues and snowy courtyards, Robert Schwentke’s thriller teases that it might have more style than a rote outing. After the prologue we board a big double-decker trans-Atlantic airliner with the emotionally vulnerable Kyle (Jodie Foster) and her young…
Lost Tracks
For years, Pittsburghers have derided the North Shore Connector “T” extension as The Little Engine That Shouldn’t. The engine that shouldn’t just connect Downtown with the city’s two new stadiums. That shouldn’t cross the Allegheny River by tunneling beneath it. That shouldn’t be built at all. The proposed Connector would join the T — the…
THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED
When depicting the 1913 U.S. Open, screenwriter Mark Frost had several interesting subplots that he merely grazes on rather than develops: the class tensions between professional and amateur sports; the shift of golf from its British roots to the fertile soil in America; and the tendency of American media to hype a plucky nobody who…
Passion of the Crates
His answer comes swift and puncturing, like the sound of a scratch. “No.” No, DJ Bonics doesn’t care that society has more love for those with that University of Yeah, Yeah, Yeah-sealed paper, even though he makes it a point as to why he’s back in college. Posted down on a…
THE MEMORY OF A KILLER
A hitman, Ledda, fighting the onset of Alzheimer’s, arrives in Brussels to dispose of two individuals, but finds the assignment complicated when the second target is revealed to be a child. Tracking the first killing, two detectives discover that Ledda, while avoiding arrest, appears to be providing clues to a much larger crime, possibly a…
A Conversation with Chris Handa
A family behavioral consultant by occupation, in his off time Chris Handa continues to explore the human condition through his work in magic, the haunted Castle Blood in Beallsville and a burgeoning sideshow joint. Did you take up magic as a kid? Since I was in the second grade. I was never interested in…
OLIVER TWIST
The hero of Roman Polanski’s handsome new film is doubly familiar: He’s both Dickens’ parentless vagabond and an analog for the filmmaker’s own experience as a Holocaust orphan (as also explored in The Pianist). The film’s first half, filled with portents of death and imprisonment, is strangely enough its more hopeful; after Oliver (Jamie Foreman)…
No Sale
Dana Harris won’t quit. Ever since she began working at the East Liberty Shop N’ Save grocery store, she believes she’s been discriminated against by store management because of her religion. As a Sunni Muslim, she must pray at certain hours of the day, she can’t be touched by a man other than her…
Ceann
“I’ve finally found a place where I belong,” Patrick Halloran sings dramatically on the title track to Ceann’s Almost Irish, “so let me sing ‘The Unicorn Song.'” It’s an inside joke, a reference to some Irish-style bars’ ban on the über-annoying Irish Rovers tune, and something of a statement of purpose for the self-proclaimed…
Everything Is Illuminated
Ex-Wild Colonials man Paul Cantelon’s score for Liev Schreiber’s film Everything Is Illuminated marks one of those pointed cultural moments when flourishing underground meets mainstream culture — a moment when the tip of a massive artistic iceberg appears to the good ship American Life. Orthodox-Jewish reggae singer Matisyahu’s unexpected success gave the nation a taste…
