Text Massaging
Inveterate punster tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE prefers not to be called an artist. If he’s making a film, you can refer to him as “sprocket scientist.” If he’s writing, don’t accuse him of poems; he’d rather be known for “concrete essays” whose form reflects their content. The longtime inhabitant of Pittsburgh’s underground…
Piccolo Forno
Location: 3801 Butler St., Lawrenceville. 412-622-0111 Hours: Mon.-Thu. 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Prices: $5.25-10 Fare: Light Italian Atmosphere: Casual bistro Liquor: BYOB; $4 corkage fee for wine, $2 for beer There’s a saying that nothing good ever comes easy, and while Shake ‘N Bake may have its fans, it’s certainly true that…
Everyday People
Yasujiro Ozu began making films in the silent era, and his style never varied much from the rudiments he learned then. He didn’t even embrace sound until 1936, and typically built his films out of long, stationary shots from a camera positioned low, as if it were just another household visitor perched on…
In the Crossfire
Why is it that when it comes to gun control these days, we’re firing so many blanks? When Gov. Ed Rendell convened his Commission to Address Gun Violence at the end of March, you might have expected the status quo to be in the crosshairs. Two weeks before, a 16-year-old was gunned down…
THE ADVENTURES OF SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL IN 3-D
From the fertile, digitally enhanced imagination of Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids) comes this loopy family action flick, in which a 10-year-old loner and his two imaginary superhero friends — Shark Boy and Lava Girl — must save a dream world from destruction. With its exuberant, fantastic sets and its child protagonist battling crazed adult authority…
Drawing on Straw
There is one primary problem with making a building out of straw. The only other example most people know about was blown down by the Big Bad Wolf. So they think straw construction symbolizes bad judgment or poor preparation. Neither attribution is true; you just have to abandon your preconceptions. And…
THE BOYS AND GIRL OF COUNTY CLARE
Set in rural Ireland in the mid-1960s, John Irvin’s light comedy/melodrama finds two long estranged brothers — the irascible Jimmy (Colm Meany), who 20 years ago fled to Liverpool, and the gentler John Joe (Bernard Hill), who remained on the family farm — taking their fight public. Each heads a traditional ceili band and hopes…
Recently I was visiting my Mom, and when driving into Churchill on Penn Avenue I saw a copper statue of Abraham Lincoln beside the road. I’m pretty sure that Honest Abe didn’t stop in Wilkinsburg while President. Why a statue of him there?
To be honest, there were times when Honest Abe barely stopped in Wilkinsburg as a statue. Made in 1916 according to a design by Alfonso Pelzer, the Lincoln sculpture has been one of Pittsburgh’s most mobile artworks. According to Discovering Pittsburgh’s Sculpture, by Marilyn Evert and Vernon Gay, the statue was…
THE HONEYMOONERS
Re: updating the classic TV series with a black cast, director John Schultz commented in a recent news article, ” If you’re going to tell a story in 2005 about a guy driving a bus and his best friend who works in a sewer, the idea that they’re [black comedians] Cedric [the Entertainer] and Mike…
We’ve Got Issues
As if my evening couldn’t get any stranger. After hanging out at my favorite Strip District bar, downing a half-dozen mojitos, I found myself caught up in the throbbing dance music of a nearby club, dancing to primal rhythms I couldn’t hear but only feel in my ribcage. Hours later, I was in someone’s living…
MONDOVINO
In some respects, this film essay about contemporary winemaking, is an antidote to Sideways. There’s no sunset casting golden light over a sublime pinot gris; instead, director Jonathan Nossiter presents a vintage rich in the bitterness of competition, the weight of family and the phony babble of marketing and globalization. Casting his lens over three…
Cagey
“These coal folks in this building are nothing but terrorists, pure and simple!” Bo Webb yelled through a bullhorn to about 60 anti-coal activists outside the David L. Lawrence Convention Center on June 7, where Longwall USA, a coal-industry convention and trade show, was being held here for the 15th year. “It’s cultural genocide!” …
ROCK SCHOOL
Rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay. It will never die. That is, not if Paul Green keeps on rockin’ in the free world. Green — the real-life edition of Jack Black’s maniacal, yet lovable, character from 2003’s School of Rock — molds the minds of a group of 9- to 17-year-olds in his Philadelphia…
A Conversation With Heather Ferri
Heather Ferri teaches tap dance, yoga and Pilates exercise classes. But she most identifies as a hoofer — a tap dancer who speaks with her feet. Ferri, 32, grew up in South Fayette. She got her first dance shoes at age 3 and has been a dancer, choreographer and soloist; she holds a…
Common
When you talk creative growth in rap music, very few names qualify. We may be talking about only Andre Benjamin (Outkast’s Andre 3000), Nasir Ben Olu Dara Jones (a.k.a. Nas) and Lonnie Rashid Lynn — Common. All three made immaculate entrances into the hip-hop arena in the early ’90s. Each has broken black urban stereotypes…
Group Wants to Queer the Gay Deal
PrideFest, the gay rights protest-turned-celebration set this year for June 18 on the North Side, will have its own counter-protesters, right inside the parade. “We do feel that the gay and lesbian community hasn’t been accepting of the queers’ perspective,” says Von Singletary, of Bloomfield. She is a member of Resyst, a group organized…
Resisting Labor Inequities in Iraq
Between trying to find a job in “free Iraq” and the daily dose of bullet-dodging, you’d think the minds of most Iraqis would be too preoccupied to think of unions. But with a national unemployment rate of 50 percent and rates topping out at a staggering 70 percent in some regions (according to U.S. Labor…
Weapons Carried Too Far
You can walk down any public street in Pennsylvania with an AK-47, M-16 or similar assault rifle and not get arrested, as long as you have a carry permit — everywhere except Philadelphia, which has its own legislated exception. “We want the same thing Philadelphia has,” says Pittsburgh Police Chief Robert W. McNeilly Jr.…
Press Release of the Week
Anime Expo® 2005 Announces: Zero Tolerance For Working Weapons Anaheim, California (June 6, 2005) — Brandishing any weapon or weapon-like item is not permissible. Brandishing is defined as the display of an item for the purpose of real or implied threat, or any act that may cause anyone to believe that the intent was there,…
Batman Begins
Our standards not being so high, a man dressing as a bat to fight crime is an idea we’re perfectly willing to accept as a summer-blockbuster premise. Yet in Batman Begins, filmmaker Christopher Nolan sees the premise as pretext: His take on the comic-book canon wants to know why. Unsurprisingly, Nolan’s…
Brothers
The Danish director Susanne Bier tells three types of stories in her aptly-cum-misleadingly titled drama Brothers, two of them highly conventional (but not necessarily unrewarding), and one of them so profound that it’s no wonder she doesn’t quite know what to do with it. The titular siblings in Bier’s film are…
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
The central comic concept of the new action thriller Mr. and Mrs. Smith — and yes, it’s a concept movie and a comedy — is that no matter how beautiful you are and no matter how successful your career, once you get married, your life will turn into an unmitigated connubial horror. …
