Buke and Gase tonight at the Smiling Moose
Photo Courtesy of Jon Wang The duo known as Buke and Gase is made up of Brooklyn-dwellers Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez. They’ve recently been pushing their creative limits in order to produce unique and strange tracks dubbed “MondayMissions” on their Soundcloud. Each week, they release a musical “sketch” created by unique instrumentation and odd…
Off the Record preview performance tonight
Today’s City Paper includes a preview item about tomorrow’s Off the Record XIV: Mysteries of Pittsburgh! , the long-running musical-comedy spoof that local stage performers, media types and even some real live politicians put on for a worthy cause (this year, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank). Another option is tonight’s special preview performance of…
Lynn Cullen Live 10/07/14
Video Archive It’s Suzday! Lynn and Susan play news roulette. Ebola comes up first. Is the panic justified? Same-sex marriage sees 80% support for under 30s. What do Obama and Spock have in common? The amazing life of Jeffrey Holder and finally, a thrilling rendition of “Old Man River”. Audio Only Archive Listen to the…
Syrian writer Osama Alomar at City of Asylum
Great reading last Tuesday by a singular expatriate voice. Alomar emigrated to the U.S. from Syria in 2008, and he’s just published his first chapbook in translation, Fullblood Arabian (New Directions). Odds are you haven’t heard of Alomar, but he’s making a name for himself. The introduction to his book was written by no less…
Attack Theatre’s Are You Still There? at the Pittsburgh Coliseum
A strong work, live music and a notable guest dancer highlight Attack’s 20th-season opener. A short review and more in Program Notes.
Attack Theatre’s Are You Still There? at the Pittsburgh Coliseum
Four performances of 20th-season opener remain
Lynn Cullen Live 10/06/14
Video Archive Technology has run away with us. Is our fast paced society driving people back to fundamentalism? How to pick out a baby boomer. Elizabeth Warren has Lynn’s vote as a true progressive. Why do the rich give to the rich, while middle class Americans are donating to those in need at a higher…
Duelling The Chair movies open tonight
Nightly screenings at Waterworks Cinemas
Lynn Cullen Live 10/03/14
Video Archive Secret Service Incompetence, Ebola patient missteps, Republican advertising targeting women voters, why fasting is good for you – personal experience, can books have negative impact on your life – yes – top 3 – Atlas Shrugged, Mein Kampf, The Bible. Audio Only Archive Listen to the Audio Archives on with our new Apple…
Planned Parenthood “War on Women” fundraiser tonight
With the midterm elections approaching, the advocates for women’s health care host an event at The Andy Warhol Museum. Danielle Fox has details in Program Notes.
Planned Parenthood “War on Women” fundraiser tonight
Cecile Richards speaks at Warhol event
Picking the new Pennsylvania governor and other important decisions in a young girl’s life
College Republicans advertisement likens the Pa. governor’s race to shopping for a wedding dress.
Tomorrow is Arts Day of Giving
Some 150 groups eligible for donations and partial matching funds
Football players sought Saturday for Will Smith movie
A production company is looking for former football players to cast in this major film. You’ll need to hit the field at Bethel Park High School this Saturday. Danielle Fox has details in Program Notes.
Will Smith movie seeks to cast former football players
Former high school and college football players, rejoice. Your glory days aren’t over just yet. Real Heaven, Inc. Extras Casting is seeking football players to portray professional and college-level players in Will Smith’s upcoming, untitled film project. The film is based off of the true story of Dr. Bennet Omalu, a forensic neuropathologist, played by…
Drug Interdiction: Will legislators let time run out on the state’s proposed medical-marijuana law?
For most of the evening, Hannah Pallas sat quietly in her wheelchair, gazing forward as her mother, Heather Shuker, and others talked about the importance of the Pennsylvania legislature passing medical-marijuana legislation this fall. In fact, some people might not have even noticed Hannah sitting at this past August’s public meeting in the Bradford Woods…
Two Faces of January
Hossein Amini’s new period drama invokes the films of Alfred Hitchcock — a psychological crime thriller, set in a sunny European tourist spot, in which seemingly perfectly nice people do perfectly ghastly things. (You may not be surprised to learn that the film has been adapted from a Patricia Highsmith novel.) Here, in 1962 Athens,…
Savage Love
A straight male friend practices sounding and has for years. I am pretty sure he does other things that he isn’t telling anyone about — not even his wife. He has some medical questions about sounding. I am a pediatric nurse, so he brought his concerns to me, but the questions are totally outside my…
VIA books big global names but remains committed to developing local talent
Now in its fifth year, the VIA Music & New Media Festival has grown into an internationally recognized event and creative collective. This year, the innovative music and arts festival joined forces with the International Cities of Advanced Sound, putting Pittsburgh on a map that includes events like Montréal’s Mutek, Seattle’s Decibel and Manchester’s Future…
Short List: October 1 – 9
SPOTLIGHT: Thu., Oct. 2 — Art Though VIA is known for its cutting-edge musical offerings, the five-year-old festival increasingly touts its visual-art component. This year, the big viz-art day is Sat., Oct. 4 (7 p.m.-2 a.m.). In Downtown’s Union Trust Building, five featured artists from Chicago-based video label Undervolt & Co. — Johnny Woods, Sabrina…
Stuff We Like
Everyday Noodles’ Soup Dumplings. These dumplings full of soup are never short of exquisite. 5875 Forbes Ave., Squirrel Hill Night Film. This psychological literary thriller from Marisha Pessl incorporates multimedia to tell the story of a journalist working to uncover the secret life of a horror-movie director. Smithfield-Liberty Parking Garage. The Parking Authority’s multilevel lot…
The Yard
The Yard 736 Bellefonte St. Shadyside. 412-709-6351 Hours: Mon.-Fri. 3 p.m.-1 a.m.; Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-1 a.m. Prices: Soups, salads, starters and sides $4-14; sandwiches, burgers and flatbreads $9-14; entrees $14-16 Liquor: Full bar The gastropub concept — a menu of upscaled pub grub to accompany a curated selection of microbrews on draft — is relatively…
Hops in whiskey, hops from an urban farm
Hops, the flowers of beautiful vines that grow like beanstalks, are used to flavor and aromatize beer. However, whiskey — which is more or less distilled beer — is traditionally made with an unhopped brew. Leave it to the restless minds at Wigle Whiskey to wonder, “What if we added the hops back?” They added…
Rent the Chicken lets you rent a chicken coop, complete with birds, for your own backyard
Husband and wife Phil and Jenn Tompkins have found a way to bring farm-fresh eggs closer to local kitchens. Their company Rent the Chicken does just that: It lets you rent a chicken coop, complete with birds, for your own backyard. “We were realizing people wanted a food source closer to their table,” explains Jenn…
A local spoken-word artist does his first full-length solo show
THE BOOK OF EZRA at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Co. Oct. 4-25 937 Liberty Ave. Downtown. $10-25. 412-687-4686 or pghplaywrights.com When Leslie Smith was 3, his mom moved back to Pittsburgh; his parents split up and his father, also named Leslie Smith, headed to California. A few years later, when Smith was in third grade, his…
Attack Theatre launches its 20th-anniversary season
Attack Theatre performs Are You Still There? Oct. 3-10. The Pittsburgh Coliseum 7310 Frankstown Ave. Homewood. $10-40. 888-718-4253 or attacktheatre.com It was 1994, and movies like Speed and Pulp Fiction were packing theaters; a Chicago law professor named Barack Obama had yet to run for state senate. And in Pittsburgh, two former Dance Alloy dancers formed…
Mike Watt keeps an open ear
IL SOGNO DEL MARINAIO (featuring MIKE WATT) with THE SICKS. 9 p.m. Tue., Oct. 7. Brillobox 4104 Penn Ave. Bloomfield. $15. 412-621-4900 or brillobox.net Bassist Mike Watt’s prolific career began in his early adolescence, when D. Boon fell from a tree as Watt was passing through the area. Strangers to one another, the two struck…
The REP’s Souvenir
SOUVENIR continues through Oct. 12. Pittsburgh Playhouse 222 Craft Ave. Oakland. $24-27 412-392-8000 or pittsburghplayhouse.com Souvenir is the natural end of the revue style of musical popularized by Mamma Mia and Rock of Ages, taking as its source music a fusion of European opera and dance-hall jazz. But this story about a phenomenally bad singer…
Brass and microtonal music are some of the unique features of this year’s Music on the Edge series at Pitt
MUSIC ON THE EDGE presents MERIDIAN ARTS ENSEMBLE 8 p.m. Fri., Oct. 3. Bellefield Auditorium Bellefield Avenue at Fillmore Street Oakland. $10-20. All ages. music.pitt.edu/mote Pittsburgh has never seen a festival of microtonal music. That probably doesn’t come as a big surprise to you, if you even know what microtonal music is. But it’s the…
Dividing the Estate at Little Lake
DIVIDING THE ESTATE continues through Oct. 11. Little Lake Theatre 500 Lakeside Drive Canonsburg $12-20. 724-745-6300 or littlelake.org Set in the 1980s, Dividing the Estate might sound like a recipe for a boring reading-of-the-will circa the Reagan years. But other than a few stray leg-warmers and talk of those arcane devices known as computers, this…
Critics’ Picks: Oct. 2 – 8
[ROCK] + THU., OCT. 2 Not many have the bona fides of Peter Case: In the music craft for 40 years now, he’s been a rocker (in bands like The Nerves, with Paul Collins, and The Plimsouls) and a solo singer-songwriter. At age 60, he still tours regularly, despite having had heart surgery five years…
Breathtakingly Basic at Gallerie Chiz
BREATHTAKINGLY BASIC continues through Oct. 11. Gallerie Chiz 5831 Ellsworth Ave. Shadyside. 412-441-6005 or galleriechiz.com The best art moves people. In some cases, it reveals the truth about the human condition; in others, it elucidates the spirit/matter conflict; and, in others still, it tells a story. Each approach is present in the Gallerie Chiz exhibit…
New Releases
The Redlines The Redlines (Swade Records) Power pop meets roots rock on The Redlines’ debut full-length. All catchy stuff, much of it echoing in form some of the best Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers material from the late ’70s. At their finest moments, the vocals here are reminiscent of Craig Finn; at weaker moments, they…
Tim and Eric return with Dr. Steve Brule
TIM AND ERIC & DR. STEVE BRULE 7 p.m., Fri., Oct. 3. Carnegie Music Hall 4400 Forbes Ave. Oakland $37.50 412-622-3131 or timanderic.com Friday, Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker — known for their innovatively bizarre Adult Swim hit Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! — bring their live performance Tim and Eric & Dr.…
Schoolyard Fight: Corbett, Wolf spar over the governor’s history of education funding
For several months, commercials for Gov. Tom Corbett’s and Tom Wolf’s campaigns have made starkly different claims about the governor’s record on education spending. “He’s increased spending in the education department — $1.5 billion from where it was when he took office,” says Corbett’s wife, Sue, in an April 2014 video. “The facts speak for…
Gone Girl
Gone Girl Starring: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike Directed by: David Fincher Starts Fri., Oct. 3 “The primal question of any marriage — what have we done to each other?” Let’s just say few marriages go as epically wrong as that of the Dunnes, once breezy Brooklyn bohos and now grumbling along in a small Missouri…
On the Record with state Sen. Jim Ferlo: Longtime legislator opens up about coming out
In the closing months of his 11-year career as a state senator, Allegheny County Democrat Jim Ferlo announced publicly for the first time that he is gay. The Sept. 23 announcement came in the middle of a press conference pushing for expanded hate-crimes legislation to cover LGBT people. It earned Ferlo the distinction of being…
The Notebook
It’s hardly news that war is not good for children (or anybody else, for that matter), but János Szász’s The Notebook casts a particularly cold eye on its effect. During the waning days of World War II in Hungary, 12-year-old twin boys are sent to live with their estranged grandmother in a small village. Villagers…
Brett Kashmere’s new film From Deep examines basketball, race, hip hop and popular culture
The provocative new docu-essay From Deep — Pittsburgh-based director Brett Kashmere likens it to a mixtape, combining professional basketball, street ball, hip hop, fashion, race and popular culture — makes its Pittsburgh premiere this week. Kashmere talked to CP via email about some of the issues of race and basketball that the film raises. What…
Finding Fela
Alex Gibney’s two-hour Fela Kuti documentary is both about the originator of Afrobeat music himself and about Bill T. Jones’s smash Broadway musical, Fela! In less capable hands, it could have been too much, but Gibney navigates Fela and Fela! deftly, using each to inform the other. While there are a few of the stock…
