Setting Boundaries
This election will echo for a decade to come
No We Can’t
This may be the weirdest election in modern history. Amid the turmoil caused by Wall Street, voters are outraged by a bailout that will cost a fraction of what they fear, and for months have been leaning toward a Republican candidate, Pat Toomey, who once traded derivatives for a living. And months after an oil…
Short List: Week of October 21 – 28
Back in 1994, The Andy Warhol Museum opened with a bang — an all-night party. Since then, the museum named for one of Pittsburgh’s most famous sons has become only more renowned for its lively shindigs, like the events accompanying last year’s Shepard Fairey exhibit. This weekend, The Warhol returns to that 24-hour concept in…
Waiting for ‘Superman’
Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, who brought us An Inconvenient Truth, now turns his lens on another hand-wringing topic: the state of public education in the United States. The film is a huge info dump, with lots of statistics, charts (albeit wittily illustrated) and talking-head interviews with many concerned parties. Guggenheim doesn’t tell us anything that any…
Soul Kitchen
German-Turkish director Fatih Akin’s time-jumping dramas (Head On, Edge of Heaven) usually take viewers to a sad corner of human relationships, where good is affirmed, but only at some devastating cost. Now, in this ensemble comedy set in rainy Hamburg, Akin takes a break: Not only does the slim story travel in a straight line,…
Mesrine Part 2: Public Enemy No. 1
The misadventures of Jacques Mesrine continue in Part 2 of Jean-Francois Richet’s bio-pic. Booted from Canada, Mesrine (Vincent Cassal) returns to France in the early 1970s. A bungled robbery lands him in handcuffs, but he makes a dramatic escape. Another arrest, then voila! — another escape, this time from a maximum-security prison. The cops dub…
Jackass 3-D
Johnny Knoxville and his band of merry men are back for a third round of pranks, stunts and admittedly bad ideas, compiled for our entertainment and directed with intestinal fortitude by Jeff Tremaine. Frankly, I was hoping for more from the added third dimension, but most of this film still looks like it was shot…
The Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
The 25th annual festival continues with entertaining and provocative feature films, documentaries and shorts highlighting gay, lesbian and transgendered experiences.
Sababa
Both quick bites and full entrees satisfy at this Squirrel Hill Middle-Eastern eatery
Savage Love
My husband and I have had an open marriage for the last two years. Up until five months ago, it was working beautifully. At that point, however, I was sexually assaulted by a former partner. Since that incident, I cannot stand sex with my husband. I become panicked and feel repulsed. Those times when I…
Meat-ing Halfway
Cleveland resident earns bread from sandwich-shop settlement
Getting the Picture
AIDS support group weighs use of surveillance cameras
Trial by Jury
The performances are energetic, the voices robust and the orchestra skilled.
Theatre Festival in Black & White
The big hit is Wali Jamal’s “Doo Rag,” a richly but darkly humored whodunit that twists stereotypes as well as its plot.
Pittsburgh Ballet promises classical steps plus sword-fighting in its first-ever take on The Three Musketeeers.
“We have built up to a combination of dancing and sword-fighting.”
This Just In: October 21 – 28
Highlights from the local TV news: Deer John
It’s fine for watching hockey, but what the new arena’s best at is telling people to leave.
This building belonged on the vast, still-empty swath of parking between Centre and Bedford, where a more gracious and resolved design might have been possible.
Pittsburgh Marshmallow Factory
These aren’t your granny’s marshmallows.
Richard Barone of The Bongos taps the best qualities of his 1980s output
Barone’s newest album, Glow, incorporates a full-band sound and fulfils his long-standing dream of working with producer Tony Visconti.
Pop-punk band Teenage Bottlerocket keeps it simple, stupid
For the band’s Fat Wreck Chords debut, they have toughened up the sound and tightened the songwriting.
A Conversation with Greg Dulli
“The first time I played a barebones set, I did a couple benefit shows in Seattle. I ended up recording them both and it sounded really good.”
Improv quartet Chicago Luzerne Exchange plays Thunderbird Café
“It’s definitely not narrative — our work is not, ‘OK, here’s the story, here’s the layout.’ But there is some story being told.”
Performing Arts Exchange connects Pittsburgh performers with national opportunities
“I’ve come to learn what there is to do,” says Erika May, “and I’ve met at least a couple dozen people I never would have met otherwise.”
Jennifer Jajeh and I Heart Hamas
“I was tired of explaining myself,” says Jennifer Jajeh, discussing the origins of her one-woman tragicomedy I Heart Hamas: And Other Things I’m Afraid to Tell You. The show’s national tour visits the University of Pittsburgh’s Frick Fine Art Auditorium on Sun., Oct. 24. Jajeh, a Palestinian-American born in San Francisco, had struggled with identity…
NPR story targets Pittsburgh stations
It’s taken me a few days to get to this, for reasons that will become clear in a moment, but NPR reporters visited Pittsburgh for a story aired last week on new trends in poiltical TV ads. The story discusses a phenomenon noted previously here and a zillion other places: the rise of political ads…
Blast from the past: Gina Redmond speaks out after 8 years
Courtesy of the folks at Pittsburgh Urban Media comes word that former WPXI anchor Gina Redmond — who ended up the subject of news stories after a 2002 barroom altercation — is commenting on “What Really Happened in Pittsburgh” on her own website. As Ms. Redmond tells the story: Several years ago, I was accused…
A.A. Bondy postponed; here’s what else is going on
Hey all! Sad news: the show tonight at Club Cafe featuring A.A. Bondy and Justin Andrew has been postponed, reportedly due to a hand injury. Been there. Feel better, Bondy dude! Stay tuned here for a reschedule update. Other things that are going on tonight that might keep you busy: Juston Stens and the Get…
Working Words reading at the Pump House
The year’s grittiest literary reading here will likely be one this Sat., Oct. 16. And by no accident, the event marking the publication of a new anthology of writing by and about work and workers takes place at the site of the infamous Homestead strike of 1892. The Battle of Homestead Foundation sponsors this event…
Fearing for the future on parking lots and police accountability alike
So I’ve finally been bestirred from my blogging torpor by the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the apparent death of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s plan to lease city parking facilities. The plan, which would have raised $450 million in an effort to shore up the city’s pension fund, was given a preliminary thumbs-down by council…
Sound Storytelling
In 2003, the forward-thinking little stage company called Bricolage glimpsed its future. And its future was radio’s past. That year, Bricolage Production Co. staged Biedermann and the Firebugs, a radio play from 1953, largely as a live radio play. While the show wasn’t actually broadcast, what the theater audience saw was a troupe performing Max…
Short List: Week of October 14 – 21
For political progressives, Jim Hightower is a “what he said” guy: someone who puts the cause in terms (almost) anyone can rally behind. The Austin, Texas-based Hightower is a former Texas agriculture commissioner who’s spent two decades as a nationally syndicated radio commentator, author (Swim Against The Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With…
A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
Director Zhang Yimou has done hothouse arthouse (Raise the Red Lantern) and stylized martial arts (Hero). Now he creates a unique hybrid: a retelling of an American dark comedic thriller, the Coens’ Blood Simple, through the lens of a spaghetti Western, all set a couple centuries ago in a noodle shop in a desolate stretch…
Red
As we know from TV, movies and novels with black shiny covers, retired spies never really stop working. Or stop being pursued. So, of course, former CIA agent Frank Moses’ (Bruce Willis) bland-o life in Cleveland is interrupted by a dozen or so hit men. Moses hits the road — and hits back, rounding up…
Never Let Me Go
Mark Romanek’s drama, adapted from Kazu Ishiguro’s novel, is a moody jewelbox of a film that follows the oddly circumscribed lives of three childhood friends. Tommy (Andrew Garfield), Ruth (Kiera Knightley) and Kathy (Casey Mulligan) met at a very cloistered English boarding school in the 1980s. There, they were groomed for a specific occupation that…
Mesrine Part 1: Killer Instinct
Jean-Francois Richet’s award-winning docudrama, which screens in two halves, tracks the career of France’s real-life bad boy Jacques Mesrine. Part 1: Killer Instinct follows Mesrine (Vincent Cassell) from his time as a young soldier in Algeria through his initiation into robbery and assorted thuggery in 1960s Paris. (There he is mentored by a porcine Gerard…
Life as We Know It
Just because the premise is tragic doesn’t absolve it from being idiotic: A mismatched couple wind up raising their dead friends’ baby in this rom-com from Greg Berlanti. (Believe this: The parents never even informed the two that they were the child’s appointed guardians.) Katherine Heigl is the control-freak new mommy, and Josh Duhamel plays…
The Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
The 25th annual festival returns with entertaining and provocative feature films, documentaries and shorts highlighting gay, lesbian and transgendered experiences.
Lin’s Asian Fusion
A modern interior, but an old-school Chinese-American menu
This Just In: October 14 – 21
Highlights from the local TV news: Bye, Bye, Bye!
A gift from dancer Daniel Ulbricht to his mother is now a touring “Spectacular.”
It’s a chance to see dancers from one of the world’s elite ballet companies in a bevy of stellar works.
The Los Angeles-based dance troupe that helped make Avatar comes to town.
“Do I continue dancing like nothing happened, do I run off stage and start crying, or do I run over and get the racket and get back in the game, so to speak?”
It’s October and zombies are breaking out all over — even in a new opera.
Residents are bloodied, then partially eaten — a local tradition.
The Royal Family
The Royal Family is really a love letter to the theater.
La Ronde
The characters of La Ronde are weak, sleazy and hypocritical, but they have their virtues.
Paper Politics shows there’s more than one way to shout a message.
With just a few dozen block letters, Dara Greenwald summons the complex horror of such injustices as extrajudicial detention.
A Conversation with John Perkins
John Perkins used to go into underdeveloped countries and convince them to accept a huge loan for an infrastructure project, so that the projects’ contracts would go to U.S. or affiliated companies. If the leaders refused, Perkins, a so-called “Economic Hit Man,” says CIA “jackals” would overthrow the country’s leaders. In his latest book, Hoodwinked:…
Fixed Fight
City plays hardball in battle with CPRB
Putting the “Fun” in Fungus
Learn to grow your own mushrooms
Multi-instrumentalist Sheila Liming pulls double duty — and then some
A consequence of Liming playing in both The Armadillos and Callán is musical cross-pollination between the groups.
Savage Love
I was listening to the radio yesterday, and I heard an interview with you about your It Gets Better campaign. I was saddened by your comments regarding people of faith and their perpetuation of bullying. As someone who loves the Lord and does not support gay marriage, I can honestly say I was heartbroken to…
The Ruby Suns create infectious pop that’s part commercial, party arty fringe
Bereft of any purely organic sounds, it’s at once coldly mechanical and brightly melodic, with plentiful nooks and crannies.
A former grunger, A.A. Bondy is reborn as a stellar singer-songwriter
Like Elliott Smith’s, Bondy’s voice searches for light in the midst of terrifying darkness.
The Felice Brothers put some whiskey in your whiskey at Mr. Small’s
Over the last few years, The Felice Brothers have proved themselves rightful heirs of The Band’s musical tradition.
