Un-Abel to perform
Just FYI: word came down yesterday that Saving Abel had to cancel the rest of their tour due to health problems for singer Jared Weeks (not to be confused with Grand Buffet dude Jarrod Weeks). Weeks apparently had to head to the hospital last week after the flu, combined with diabetic issues, gave him trouble.…
Shuffle Boards
Secure in last month’s re-election victory, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl is putting his stamp on city boards. Among the casualties: Barbara Ernsberger, who has been removed from the city’s Planning Commission, where she served as secretary. But the most interesting pick may be one of Ravenstahl’s choices for the city’s ethics board. Ravenstahl has chosen attorney…
The party that everybody who is anybody (but Luke) will be at
You’ve probably heard of the “Anybody But Luke” crowd, right? Well, I can tell you where everybody who is anybody will be on the night of Dec. 3. They’ll be hanging out with city councilor Bill Peduto. Rich Lord had some of this earlier today over at the P-G’s pay site, but I figure most…
MP3 Monday: Eastern Watershed Quartet
Rather than specializing in any one narrow folk genre, the Eastern Watershed Quartet dances lightly across a range of repertoire that includes Eastern European tunes, Israeli dance music and of course klezmer — or as the band calls it, “minor mode therapy music suitable for all ages.” City Paper reviewer Manny Theiner found the long-running…
Students Take Oral Exams at City Council
As noted here earlier, today was the day for students to make a show of force against the city’s proposed “tuition tax.” Our very own Chris Young reports that some 150 did so, creating a “standing room only” crowd in city council chambers. City councilors spent some time trying to make the institutions themselves the…
Tuition tax pre-test
A little later today, we’ll be posting news of City Council’s public hearing on the tuition tax, which is underway even as I type this. Students are slated to speak, and student leaders from Pitt and CMU have issued a statement pledging to release a petition with “thousands of signatures … in opposition of the…
Short List: Week of November 26 – December 3
Returning from its midriff-baring world tour, Pittsburgh’s own Zafira Dance Company performs tonight at the Rex Theater. The troupe blends traditional belly dance, contemporary dance and vaudeville theatrics; Zafira’s Olivia Kissel promises an opulent cabaret spectacle in a show also featuring acclaimed California-based belly-dancing group The Indigo, and Phat Man Dee as emcee. “There will…
Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
Only the loosest of plot – there’s trouble among feuding clans in 17th-century Thailand — holds this martial-arts film together, and even that is doled out in a confusing nonlinear fashion. Mostly, this all-action flick is a vehicle for its star, co-writer and co-director Tony Jaa, to show off his acrobatic fighting skills. (Panna Rittikrai…
Old Dogs
Two successful middle-aged business partners, best buds and bachelors, find themselves — surprise! — caring for 7-year-old twins during the very same fortnight they need to close a huge business deal. Because this is a Disney comedy, this unexpected nightmare turns out to be character-building exercise for the self-centered dudes (John Travolta, Robin Williams). It’s…
Ninja Assassin
Cross a gloomy, bloody martial-arts story with a threadbare spy thriller and watch neither genre benefit. What John McTeigue’s actioner has going for it is its South Korean star, Rain. As a stoic ninja teaming with Interpol for revenge against the mysterious clan that made him a mercenary killer, he’s fast, fluid and pretty (even…
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Leave it to the iconoclastic Anderson to break with the mad rush toward hyper-realistic animation. Instead, his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story fondly recalls the herky-jerky stop-motion puppet animation of decades ago.
Its hero is the titular Mr. Fox, a charmingly scruffy vulpine who rocks a wide-wade corduroy blazer. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) has…
The Damned United
Think of this movie as Britain’s revenge. We send them film after film celebrating the real-life exploits of long-ago coaches and players from such mysterious-to-them sports as baseball, basketball and college football. Now, they’ve returned the favor — sending us this great story about a beloved but dusty sports personality, embroiled in the regional politics…
Twilight Saga: New Moon
Unless you’re already a committed Twihard, this New Moon may have you howling — with unintended laughter. In a broody tale of love among the humans and un-humans, that’s not a good thing. Unlike last year’s Twilight, this second outing, directed by Chris Weitz, is unable to walk that very fine line between silly subject…
The Road
Initially, the premise — a father and son trying to survive in a world devastated by nuclear war — seems oddly out of date. But at the heart of John Hillcoat’s film, based on Cormac McCarthy’s searing novel, is a feeling many of us share: Somewhere over the horizon, somebody is readying bombs that can…
Tyma’z Mediterranean House
Syrian influences highlight this Middle Eastern restaurant
The Queens
Their actions and speeches fragment into multiple directions of space and time, like out-of-orbit satellites in Chaurette’s quirky personal universe.
The Little Foxes
This Regina is a lost lamb who becomes evil only after events force her hand.
Blackbird
Actors Robin Abramson and Steve Pickering approach each other as warily as prizefighters, deftly sparring before ripping into each other like gladiators.
Hilary Masters ranges wide and delves deep in a new essay collection.
The title essay explores memory as falsehood, even dramatizing how Masters himself purposefully fleshes out his own memoirs with invented detail.
Power Plant
Program to put 400 trees on the South Side
Elliott Brood combines dark Americana and massacres on Mountain Meadows
The 2005 debut LP, Ambassador, was recorded in an abandoned slaughterhouse.
Instrumental dance-rock duo El Ten Eleven
“I used to hear the theme song from Lost In Space in our dishwasher.”
P.O.S. unites hip hop and punk-rock spirit
P.O.S.’s deft, spiraling rhyme, suggestive in tone and tenor of underground “backpacker” rap, merges with crashing guitars and ominous, clanging beats.
The Happiness Project explores the music of everyday speech
“It’s funny how musical people are without really knowing it. They might think they can’t sing, but they’re singing all the time, in the way they speak.”
Western Showdown
Is the West End big enough for two CDCs?
This Just In: November 26 – December 3
Highlights from the local TV News: Eww, Eww That Smell!
Leaving Boston
A poem by Robert Isenberg
Mediterra Bakeshop
Old World bread, from a decidedly New World setting
Chalk Dinosaur releases a charmer of a debut, with help from Harrison Wargo
Perhaps the most telling song on the album is “Scarves and Stripes,” an affirmation of awkward-but-natural suburban uncool and a wry send-up of “hip indie rockers.”
Institutionalized
Big nonprofits have the best of both worlds
A Pittsburgh first — an all-iPhone art show (including live iPhone music).
“All the things I can’t do in real life, I can do on my iPhone.”
Father and son artists evince complementary styles.
Unlike his father’s more serious, contemplative studies, Paul infuses his sculptures with deadpan wit.
Savage Love
I am a 29-year-old single straight man. Over the past year, I have become very close friends with a gay man close to my age. Four months ago, he told me that he had developed romantic feelings for me and needed a little space to save our friendship. For a couple of months, we saw…
