Oversight Oversights
It’s a rainy evening outside City Council chambers, where the Citizen Police Review Board is gathered to hear cases on April 20. Three are scheduled; none is heard. A panel of three board members has arrived to rule on complaints of police misconduct against citizens — Beltzhoover activist Richard…
Women’s History Month
Carved into a frieze atop the Carnegie Library and Museums is a roll call of the “principal writers of the world” along with the “masters of art and science,” according to a souvenir booklet distributed in 1895 at the building’s dedication. “A useful and instructive form of decoration,” the program notes approvingly. Instructive,…
Gran Canal Caffé
Location: 1021 N. Canal St., Sharpsburg. 412-781-2546. Hours: Tue.-Sat. 5:30-9:30 p.m. Prices: Dinners $12-19 Fare: Homemade Italian Atmosphere: Family-run, family-friendly Liquor: Full bar It’s so easy, so tempting, so flattering to compare Pittsburgh to Venice — all those bridges, you know. Of course, Venice is best known for its canals, but few locals know about…
Food Banks Go From Human to Humane
Not all food bank donations go to feed hungry humans. Food banks accept all donations, then find that some aren’t suitable for human consumption. They may be unlabeled, past their expiration date or, in the case of produce, beginning to fade. Disposing of this unusable generosity can actually cost a hunger agency,…
Iraq and a Hard Place
Two years after the invasion of Iraq, the biggest thing that has changed for me is this: When I go to antiwar demonstrations like the one held March 19 in Squirrel Hill and Oakland, it’s the signs held by counter-demonstrators that make the biggest impression: “Real liberals fight tyranny,” one sign read. The…
Tsunami Relief Enters New Phase: Rebuilding Families
“The only skill that I took with me,” says Nimo Tirimanne, “was that I was able to listen.” Tirimanne, 42, of Morningside, returned to his native Sri Lanka 23 years after emigrating here. He discovered that not all of his skills would help the country recover from December’s tsunami. Once thing Sri…
Terri-ing the Country Apart
They say the most important lesson of the Terri Schiavo spectacle is that everyone ought to write a living will. Wrong. The most important lesson is that religious and/or faux-religious right-wing nutbag Republicans will stop at nothing to appeal to their base, and it ought to scare the living feces out of you…
IMAGINARY HEROES
An unexpected tragic event causes an already strained suburban family to crumble further in this debut comedy-drama from writer and director Dan Harris. Mom (Sigourney Weaver) turns to drugs and rude behavior, Dad (Jeff Daniels) grows remote and high school senior Tim (Emile Hirsch) is left to tiptoe through the wreckage, as well as manage…
The Poet and the World
When he writes about his life, Samuel Hazo seems a quintessential poet of contentment. “Some say / that repetition bores. / I say / it reassures,” he writes in “Encore, Encore,” a gentle homage to domesticity that’s typical of A Flight to Elsewhere, the 76-year-old former Pennsylvania poet laureate’s new collection from Pittsburgh-based…
IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL
Jessica Yu’s documentary explores the life and secret project of Henry Darger, a Chicago janitor and recluse. Upon his death in 1973, his life’s work — 300 paintings and a lavishly illustrated 15,000-page novel — were discovered. The novel detailed a war between Christian soldiers, heathens and seven young girls, the “Vivian Girls,” with diversions…
I’ve heard that a town called Verner Town was entirely torn down to make room for Alcosan. Can you tell me anything about it?
There’s no shortage of communities sacrificed for “progress” during the region’s post-war Renaissance. Much of the storied Hill District was razed to make room for the Civic Arena, for example, and East Liberty was choked off in an effort to turn it into a pedestrian-only shopping zone. Many of these communities have been…
The Belly Curve
Hamer recalls reading that it takes about 3,000 repetitions of a movement for the body to gain “muscle memory.” A dancer experiences this as the moment when she no longer has to think the moves through. They’ve become part of her. It first happened for Maria after three years of obsessively drilling the belly-dance moves…
MISS CONGENIALTY 2: ARMED AND FABULOUS
Sandra Bullock reprises her role as the tomboyish FBI agent Gracie, who, having become famous as the beauty-queen agent, now opts to go glam as the new fashion-forward face of today’s Feds. This transformation doesn’t make a lick of sense — ass-kickin’, snortin’ Gracie’s now a latte-sippin’ Prada diva? — but it ushers in her…
OFF THE MAP
The summer of 1974 proves a watershed year for the Groden family, living off the grid in the high desert of northern New Mexico. Dad (Sam Elliott) is paralyzed with depression, to the dismay of his precocious 11-year-old daughter (Valentina de Angelis) and his nuturing wife (Joan Allen). In this gentle drama, a wayward IRS…
Moby
When it comes to waxing poetic about Moby and his often controversial, often remarkable and often embarrassingly bad back-catalog, I’m probably the least objective music journalist ever. In fact, let me just come out and say it: I never paid much attention to the guy at all until early 2000, when each one of the…
The Pittsburgh Jewish Israeli Film Festival
Wondrous OblivionHere comes the neighborhood At what point does a charming little movie about our common humanity become a cloying little movie running on the fumes of its conspicuous good intentions? In Wondrous Oblivion, it’s a difficult nexus to pinpoint, which is both a credit and a detriment to writer/director Paul Morrison’s amiable…
Kasabian
At its best, Britpop top contender Kasabian wears its influences on the sleeve of its long-sleeved hooded T-shirt: early ’90s indie-dance crossovers (Stone Roses), hirsute ’70s groupie-shaggers (Faces), progressive-house crescendo and Buddha Bar worldly head-nod. Sometimes, the results are brilliant, like on the radio hit “Club Foot,” big-beat acid trip “Cutt Off,” or gritty Madchester…
British Sea Power
Shaped by forces of nature, a sailor’s life reflects the sea that buoys his voyage much like our waking lives reflect the dream world that nourishes them. This thematic symbiosis underscores British Sea Power’s pithy sentiments about human frailty and longing. A seasick meditation on the tyranny of regret, The Decline of British Sea…
Food Fight
Stephanie Adair pulls food wrappers out of a plastic bag. The packaging makes them look just like snacks, and there is a slight fast-food smell about them two weeks after they were emptied. Adair collected the wrappers from several school lunches at Weil Technology Institute, a Pittsburgh Public school in the central Hill…
Sin City
You get the feeling it’s always nighttime in Basin City, at least in its seamy underbelly where the bad cops, psychos and hookers circulate. It may be grim to live in Sin City, but a two-hour visit, via Robert Rodriguez’s big-screen translation of Frank Miller’s graphic novels, proves exhilarating. Three of…
Sky Blue // Appleseed
In two new anime films opening this week, the future is a mess. Human existence is teetering on the brink, and only a few intrepid warriors can stop the madness. In the Korean feature Sky Blue, directed by Moon Sang Kim, it’s proletariat eco-warriors to the rescue, while Shinji Aramaki’s Appleseed, from Japan,…
