Shepard Fairey’s Pittsburgh Murals
I spent 45 minutes or so Wednesday evening watching Obama “Hope” poster artist Fairey and his crew of four as they made a Downtown stop on their rounds during a week-long mural project. Fairey is a veteran street artist whose work is now the stuff of museums and sanctioned public works. Indeed, this mural initiative…
This weekend: Happy birthday 222 Ormsby!
Inclusive as we try to be, certain things fly even under our radar — the happenings at 222 Ormsby often fall under this category. Some of the bands associated with the space — American Armada, Red Team Blue Team — are ones you’ve probably heard of or seen, but the shows going on there are…
MP3 Monday: Burndowns
When last we caught up with Burndowns, we were sitting on their back porch, throwing back a couple cold ones with them, and waiting for them to say funny stuff. It came eventually, giving us our anchor for the article: “Burndowns are about killin’ it, one hundred percent, number one.” Burndowns continue to kill it…
Pittsburgh Visionary Arts Festival
Sometimes you don’t know something’s missing until it pops into place. The Pittsburgh Visionary Arts Festival feels that way. The inaugural version gathers at Schenley Plaza a few dozen local artists and artist collectives for three days of avant-garde, outsider or otherwise nonmainstream work that’s got something to say. Notwithstanding the familiar sight of white…
Short List: Week of August 6 – 13
A few years ago, Alberto Almarza began making a kind of art he (actually his young son) named pok. Hand-working clay, using hand-mixed glazes and firing his creations without electricity or gas, he crafted intriguingly primitive works from tiny pots to evocations of human mummies. He exhibited them partly through fellow Carnegie Mellon art student…
El Camino
Milton Mejia’s journey to Pittsburgh inspires a new kind of drama
Hokkaido Seafood Buffet
This buffet-style restaurant rises above the scourge of the steam table to offer some true gems among its panoply of East Asian offerings.
Summer Hours
How do we hold onto the past while still moving forward — particularly when our memories are linked to specific objects? Those queries form the heart of this low-key, talky French drama, written and directed by Olivier Assayas. Summer Hours is composed of vignettes that, while revealing the characters and their familial dynamics, seem designed…
(500) Days of Summer
“This is not a love story,” a voiceover cautions us at the beginning of Marc Webb’s seeming romantic comedy. Ohhhhh-kay … And as out-of-order scenes unfolded snapshotting the flirtation, hook-up, dating and break-up of Tom and Summer, I thought: “It sure looks like a love story, but maybe it’s not quite.”
Webb’s offbeat film does…
The Hurt Locker
Kathryn Bigelow’s lean drama begins with an epigram by journalist Chris Hedges, about war’s appeal to warriors: “War is a drug.” In Hurt Locker, the key addict is Will James (Jeremy Renner), who in 2004 reports to Baghdad to replace a bomb-squad leader killed in action. Hurt Locker is full of action and tense moments,…
Funny People
So far there have been just three actual films “by” Judd Apatow, and this is his best. Funny People revolves around George Simmons (Adam Sandler), a famous comic actor who learns that he has incurable leukemia, and who sets out to rediscover — well, something. George hires a hapless young comic Ira (Seth Rogen) to…
This Just In: August 6 – 13
Highlights from the local TV news: Brenda Takes to the Waters
36 Views
Pedestrian and trite don’t even begin to describe the nonsense she coughs up.
Reading Meters
What effect could “homeless meters” have on city panhandlers?
Security Council
City Council holds meeting on potential G-20 security plans, hazards
Hostel II
Group is raising interest, money for new city hostel
Fairywood Tale
A western city neighborhood is tired of being overlooked
CKY’s metallic openers Graveyard and ASG are well worth an early arrival
Except for the brief respite of Wolfmother, the alt-rock airwaves are no longer the open market that allowed the previous generation of grunge bands to reach millions.
New Zealand indie-pop outfit The Brunettes plays Gooski’s this Monday
“I had a 4-track cassette-tape recorder, and all these ambitions of making these albums to mimic the great productions that I loved of Spector and The Beach Boys.”
End of Trial
A poem by Nancy Krzton
A “green mural” and a “dance mural” are new wrinkles in the Moving the Lives of Kids summer art program.
Painting a larger-than-life purple goddess and vegetation of prehistoric proportions on three sides of an apartment building is a good way to get people talking. Just ask Bonnie Schindler. She’s artistic director for this nearly completed “green mural,” a new amendment to this summer’s Moving the Lives of Kids Mural Project. The two-story building, on…
The people make the pictures in the Carnegie’s Digital to Daguerreotype.
No matter how many Ansel Adams landscapes of snowcapped mountains you see, humanity is the driving force of photography.
Down on the Farm
It hurts when small farms lose their knowledge workers.
R&B singer Margot B to perform with Jason Mraz at the Amphitheatre at Station Square
Imagine you’re a hot, accomplished 21-year-old working in music in NYC, and your dad is former Steeler Craig Bingham. You are — especially to a Pittsburgher — the shit.
Savage Love
I met my girlfriend about three months ago on a social-networking Web site. The pictures made her look attractive and in shape. We texted each other nonstop for the first three months. This past weekend we met, and she didn’t look anything like her pictures. However, we did have sex twice. I’m about to start…
