Recount: Add It Up Again
For those who sat through Election Day 2000 returns which spilled over into the wee hours, and just finally went to bed confused; for those who breathlessly checked updates in the rollercoaster month that followed the contested Florida election; for those who were left feeling duped, disappointed, outraged, convinced that democracy had ground to halt…
American Idol: My Record Sucks
I’ve pretty much guessed everything wrong this season. Big David won, and if I do say so myself, Little David looked relieved. Though “winning” seems an almost superfluous designation. Virtually everybody gets a recording contract, and some may become bona fide stars. Others may simply join the Soul Patrol — I hear there are openings.…
Budget Cuts
During a career that spanned from 1964 to 1998, Stephen Smarick got more than a few raises from his bosses at specialty-steels producer Allegheny Ludlum Corp. And whenever he did so, he recalls, he’d jokingly ask, “Is that it?” “And they would always come back with, ‘Don’t forget, you’ve got this health care,'” Smarick says.…
Neighborhoods: Not everyone is in favor of the CBA
Although the Community Benefits Agreement between Hill District residents and the Penguins passed overwhelmingly, not everyone thought it was the best deal available.
Activism: Merton Center offering a different view with lecture series
Merton Center’s Anarchist Lecture Series giving activists a different view on lives dedicated to civil disobedience.
Youth Literacy: Millvale residents get part of their library dream
After more than a year of organizing, activism and fundraising, a library will be opening in Millvale on June 2 – even though it’s not quite what its founders originally had in mind.
City Police: Police previously sued over actions of police dog
City still faces lawsuit stemming from actions of police dog killed in action earlier this month
The Maple Restaurant
Award-winning roast beef tops the menu.
Young @ Heart
Something about The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” just feels different when it’s sung by a group of 80-year-olds, who may need a wheelchair just to get to the show. The Young @ Heart Chorus, as observed by documentarian Stephen Walker, is about an unquestionably delightful group of senior singers who tackle contemporary music under…
Son of Rambow
The unhinged fictional Vietnam vet John Rambo is the unlikely glue that binds two lonely English lads in the early 1980s. Lee (Will Poulter) is a rambunctious, unparented mess, while Will (Bill Milner) lives with his widowed mum in near-complete cultural isolation as a member of a religious sect. But a video camera and the…
Let’s Get Lost
Bruce Weber’s Oscar-nominated 1988 profile of Chet Baker illuminates the jazz trumpeter’s success in the 1950s and ’60s, which contrasts starkly with contemporary footage of Baker, ravaged by years of drugs and hard living. Shot in Weber’s noted high-contrast black-and-white style, the film noodles around much like a bit of musical improv — mixing up…
American Idol: The final post-mortem
The buzz is long off American Idol, but allow me to gripe about a few things I wish the producers would note: * Kill the mosh pit. If the tweeners there can’t coordinate their hand-waving and clapping to the beat, then it’s just a big visual distraction — and another embarrassing reminder of how nobody…
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
A filmmaker making the fourth installment of a smash-hit adventure franchise — especially one whose predecessors were fantastic, or at least, good — must find it liberating: You can ease back on coherent plot and realism, and your fans will still give you a break. But apparently, director Steven Spielberg snoozed through this outing. I…
Girls Rock!
Arne Johnson and Shane King’s loose, on-the-fly doc follows four girls through their five-day stay at Portland, Ore.’s chicks-only Rock Camp. The camp, founded by female rockers, seeks to teach young women ages 8-18, many of them hampered by self-esteem issues, that it’s OK to rock out, to express anger, frustration, joy and their new-found…
Love Songs
Writer/director Christophe Honoré offers a slightly quirky French romantic drama that riffs on the mystery and melancholy of love. A happy couple take a third party, a female co-worker, into their live and bed. But, when one person dies, life – and love – shift. There’s a satisfying humanity that sneaks up on you, but…
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Back in Narnia, the four Pevensie children find much woe. They band with deposed Prince Caspian to right wrongs and restore the kingdom’s magic. This sequel, helmed by Andrew Adamson, offers the same epic scope as The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, if somewhat less wonder. But at two hours and 20 minutes, Caspian…
Pittsburgh n’@
Pittsburgh gets a music festival. And it’s only a few blocks from my apartment!
Cashing In … or Catching Up
The name sounds like a group of highly decorated veterans: Disabled Patriots of America. And in a way, they are. But instead of fighting on foreign soil, they’ve fought a string of battles in courtrooms across the country. They fight for the 18-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act. Their latest target: hotels and shopping centers in…
Lauren Weedman’s acclaimed one-woman show Bust confronts prison life, Los Angeles and more.
“I felt like I was sitting there with women facing the fact that they had made huge mistakes.”
Get Ready
Eventually voices melodiously swell and harmonize, feet start moving in matched-up time, and five guys in the cast deliver the goods with polish, great vocalizing and lively stepping.
An Ideal Husband
The most arresting aspect is how this play prefigures Earnest in the character of Lord Goring.
Two Trains Running
Not to take anything away from Wilson’s genius, but the Hill District native’s plays do have a special resonance in his hometown, and nowhere more so than at Pittsburgh Playwrights.
Rachel’s Sustainable Feast
A picnic to highlight local food and environmental issues
Savage Love
I’m writing on behalf of a 19-year-old guy with cerebral palsy. As you may know, CP is a brain affliction resulting from insufficient oxygen at birth, and it causes the part of the brain responsible for motor function to work incorrectly. Troubles for people with CP include muscle spasticity, weakness and/or painful contraction, and in…
Dead End
I knew things were getting strange when the Pennsylvania Turnpike started advertising. Maybe you haven’t seen the TV spot, which obviously wasn’t prompted by the massive competition the turnpike faces from other overpriced toll roads. The ad features a father and son talking about all the job opportunities the turnpike provides. It may be the…
This Just In: May 22 – 29
Highlights from the local TV news: With this puck, I thee wed.
Letters to the Editor: May 21 – 28
CP disrespects police dog I truly used to enjoy your publication until I read “Dumpling Ground” in the May 14 issue. It was very disheartening to read the comment in response to Chief Nate Harper’s comment about the officers losing a partner. [The feature suggested Harper rethink his statement that police officers involved in the…
Local drummer Paul Quattrone joins Brooklyn dance-rockers !!!
“It was totally sudden and out of the blue.”
John Shannon releases meditative American Mystic
Show me a good new-age songwriter.
Original lineup of L.A. punk legends X plays the Rex Theatre
Consider it a little wild gift.
The Takeover UK release debut EP It’s All Happening on Rykodisc
“You basically have to shrug off every single responsibility that normality would give you.”
Kim Beck looks all around us at Artists Image Resource.
Beck is a sublime (sub)urban Thoreau, who instead of walking to the pond, walks out her back door, past the privacy fence, down the alley, to the abandoned, dimly lit parking lot at the end of the lane.
Two new takes on Pittsburgh’s steel-making past.
The prevailing impression left by Widener’s artwork is that of wiryl, dauntless men in vintage headwear attempting to appease some molten pagan god.
Painters explore formal discord at ModernFormations.
Each canvas’ inner conflicts of color and perspective are exquisite and command viewer attention.
