The Day After Tomorrow
When Bob Dylan warned that a hard rain was gonna fall, he surely didn’t have anything like this in mind. But it’s difficult to dispute that platter-sized chunks of ice falling out of the sky onto the beaches of Los Angeles is anything but very bad weather. The sort of climatic drama one should be…
The Agronomist
In the late 1960s, the Haitian agronomist Jean Dominique — raised in his country’s middle class and educated in France — took a risk, bought Radio Haiti and switched careers. He’d already been in trouble with the government of dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier: Once, Dominique believed that the cinema could help unite a…
Nosey Parker
Nosey Parker is the final film in John O’Brien’s “Tunbridge Triology,” a series of “anthropological comedies” shot in his small Vermont town. The first was 1992’s Vermont Is For Lovers, and the second, A Man with a Plan, about a farmer’s run for Congress, caused a small media sensation in the late ’90s. Each film…
Raising Helen
Helen Harris (the frothier-than-ever Kate Hudson) is jolted out of her fabulous, jet-set Manhattan life when her sister and brother-in-law are killed, and the will leaves their three children to Helen rather than her super-mom sister Jenny (played by the disappointingly bland Joan Cusack). Helen, of course, overcomes the obstacles of being pitched headfirst into…
Shaolin Soccer
Director, writer, editor and star Stephen Chow is a cinematic super-force in Hong Kong, where he kick-started the genre of mo lei tau (nonsense comedy) and became wildly successful making crazy spoofs on popular movies. In Shaolin Soccer, Chow manages to lampoon both the leaden seriousness of dogma-laden martial arts dramas and the hackneyed tale…
Frequent Flier
The day Ben Sota invented juggling, it was raining. He was 11 years old, stuck inside his parents’ house in Millvale, and wondering whether he could learn to throw a baseball with his right hand as well as his left. One room had 15-foot ceilings, and Sota messed around with high tosses. Soon both balls…
Soul Plane
In Jessy Tererro’s raucous debut feature, Nashawn (Kevin Hart) takes his multi-million-dollar court judgment (awarded after he suffered a galling indignity on a major air carrier) and damn! buys his own airline. Nashawn World Airlines (NWA) aims for the African-American market, but is strictly for the players: The craft is pimped out, with spinning rims…
All Crossed Up
“See if it says anything in there about whether I still have a job,” the school-crossing guard asked as I pulled the morning paper from the news box. “Somebody just leaned out their car window and told me I was losing my job.” A lot of city employees woke up to that uncertainty May…
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
After a dreadful summer with his Muggle relatives, 13-year-old wizard Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is ready to return to school and his magical compatriots. So ready that like any adolescent, he pitches a big fit — the bizarre consequences of which any regular teen could only dream. A convenient Knight Bus whisks Harry away, but…
Tommy the Turtle Sez …
Dear Tommy, I’m a 9-year-old Mt. Lebanon resident who runs a lemonade stand near a City of Pittsburgh swimming pool. I gross $50,000 a year — 80 percent profit — and pay the city $100 in mercantile taxes and my $10 occupational privilege tax. Now they’re talking about raising taxes. Fuckheads! Which of the…
Fact-Checking Fred
Like at least a few local left-wingers, Mike Ellis has longed to tell TV and radio talk-show host Fred Honsberger where to get off. But calling in to Honsberger’s show brought him little satisfaction. “You get 10 or 15 seconds, and then he cuts you off, and makes his point,” Ellis says. “Since you’re not…
Politically Erect
If you’ve been dying to see George W. Bush, House Speaker Dennis Hastert or even Jimmy Carter pictured wearing a condom hat — or the members of the Bush cabinet dressed as the Village Idiot People — entrants in Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania’s sixth annual condom package design contest were more than happy to…
Bush League
“Who Let bin Ladens leave U.S.?” In the days after Sept. 11, all U.S. commercial air traffic was grounded — except for the six chartered flights that carried Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, back across the pond. From the May 18 edition of The Hill (“The newspaper for and about…
Bon Air Apparent
Justin Liang had a feeling Bon Air Elementary would stay open. Although tiny Bon Air has fewer than 100 students, Liang figured the school was safe thanks to its devoted patron, board member Jean Fink. Meanwhile, Liang, who is the PTO president at another city elementary school facing closure, Miller African-Centered Academy, was helping…
Here Comes the Pride
After 30 years, the annual June PrideFest celebration of Pittsburgh’s, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community has morphed into a more-than-month-long slate of activities that includes several firsts: the debut of an Off Broadway act, a visit by a bike tour promoting same-sex marriage rights, and Pride Day at a Pirates game at PNC Park.…
Why are our colors always black and gold for our sports teams?
Well, let’s face it: We’re not the most adventurous people when it comes to fashion, and perhaps that’s why our uniforms are so … uniform. I know I’ve still got a few button-down short-sleeve office shirts, and from what I can tell so do a few of my neighbors. More than a few of us…
Various
Jimmy Martin Don’t Cry to Me Thrill Jockey The Stanley Brothers An Evening Long Ago: Live ’56 Columbia/Legacy Everyone in bluegrass — hell, everyone in Nashville, for that matter — has a Jimmy Martin story. Whether he’s propped up on the arms of his handlers, threatening photographers or rivals, cackling or roaring, Jimmy…
Various Artists
Tangle Eye Alan Lomax’s Southern Journey Remixed Zoë Records Various Artists Blue Note Revisited Blue Note Records Is it cultural piracy, a masturbatory reach back to try to extract one more hit out of music that has already played its part? Or is it a resurrection of ghosts too long out of sight…
