A NEW ROUND OF GAY FILM
No longer are gay-themed films relegated exclusively to contemporary coming-out stories and girl-meets-girl or boy-meets-boy romances. While those remain popular and universal themes (after all, who hasn’t discovered their sexuality and fallen in love?), the remarkable increase in gay-content film over the past two decades has allowed filmmakers to depict other aspects of the gay…
Goldfish Memory
The Irish romantic comedy Goldfish Memory, which opens this year’s Pittsburgh International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, has ample story content that’s appropriate to its venue: a spirited lesbian TV news reporter who hits on a protester at a St. Patrick’s Day parade; a raffish lad who returns his current lover’s toothbrush personally –…
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism
In the spirit of media fairness, let me make a full disclosure: I’m a left-leaner who enjoys a good laugh at the other side’s expense. But I’m also a longtime TV-news junkie, and Robert Greenwald’s film Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, occasionally left me shaking my head for the wrong reasons. Presented as…
THE SEAGULL’S LAUGHTER
The boredom of a small 1950s Icelandic coastal village is shattered when the formerly dumpy Freya (Margrét Vilhjálmsdóttir) returns from America, recently widowed and newly glamorous. Her forthright nature rallies the town’s women; her otherworldliness befuddles the men. Her cousin, mouthy 11-year-old Agga (Ugla Egilsdóttir), believes Freya to be a murderess, but she adores her…
SHALL WE DANCE
A happily married lawyer (Richard Gere) finds the spark that’s missing from his well-padded life when he secretly takes ballroom-dancing lessons. Peter Chelsom’s light comedy is based on the 1995 Japanese film of the same name, but its vibe is closer to the 1992 hit Strictly Ballroom. Gere is initially drawn to the dance class…
THE YES MEN
After being mistaken for WTO representatives, two artist-activists — Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno — tour the globe to speak on behalf of an organization they oppose, delightedly advocating bizarre positions. Capturing the pair in all their low-fi glory (a $20 used suit, a ready supply of corporate-speak and cheesy PowerPoint slides) are the filmmakers…
What’s the Matter With Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
Imagine a Jerry Springer audience of 300 million. There isn’t much difference between the people on stage and those in the audience: They’re all poor people getting poorer, with few opportunities except the chance to judge each other — to yell “slut!” and “fag!” at the unfortunates up on the stage. That,…
Dem Franchize Boyz
Hip-hop snobs probably didn’t lose any sleep on the night before Dem Franchize Boyz dropped, especially with the simple, bouncy “White Tee” ghetto-anthem-of-late that’s dominating airwaves to the peril of the snobs’ better cultural-preservation sensibilities. But Dem “White Tee” Boyz may be doing more to preserve the culture than they’re given credit for. A…
Tara Jane O’Neil
Tara Jane O’Neil makes unsettling ambient lullabies for people who would otherwise hate ambient lullabies. Unlike such Prozac music — featuring the soothing sounds of synthesizer effect no. 74 or a guitar-facing twit rapturously working his effects pedal — Tara Jane O’Neil is D.I.Y. rock of choice for the defiantly introverted. O’Neil earned her…
International Flight
Approach the Carnegie International from the Sculpture Garden entrance, and you’ll pass through a sort of airlock: a greenhouse built by German artist Carsten Höller that echoes the glass-walled building around it. At first, the plants inside seem on the verge of pushing their way out, a fertile energy appropriate in a piece that, Höller…
Curb Enthusiasm
Aaron Bernard of Bethel Park has been a busker in Florida and enjoyed them in other towns, but since returning recently after eight years away from Pittsburgh noticed a dearth of such troubadours. He and his two partners in the multimedia company TONeRWOODS Productions have been filming buskers – and interviewing them about their lives…
Indica Indian Bistro
Location: 257 N. Craig St., Oakland. 412-605-0500 Hours: Lunch: Tue.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; Sat. and Sun. noon-3 p.m. Dinner: Tue.-Fri. 5:30-9:30 p.m.; Sat. and Sun. 5:30-10 p.m. Prices: Weekday buffet lunch $6.99 (takeout box) and $8.99 (eat-in); weekend buffet lunch $9.99; appetizers $4.99-8.99; entrees $12.99-18.99 Fare: Indian Atmosphere: Understated elegance Liquor: Partial Bar The first…
Correction
City Paper’s recent series on autism (“When Joshua Lost His Words,” Sept. 15; “The Bill for Alexander,” Sept. 22; and “Joey Grew Up,” Sept. 29) included figures on the numbers of children receiving in-home services from the state Department of Public Welfare that were mischaracterized by the department as including autistic children only. The figures…
Were Pittsburgh’s original finished roads and streets paved with cobblestone, Belgian block or some other type of brick?
Paving roads? You mean, you can do that? It probably won’t come as a surprise that Pittsburgh’s roads were complained about as much in the early 1800s as they are today. Leland Baldwin’s Pittsburgh: The Story of a City reveals that “one newspaper editor said that he would advocate … construction of a suspension bridge…
Bush League
“The Right Wing’s Drive for ‘Tort Reform.'” Texas under George W. Bush became the nation’s standard-bearer for so-called tort reform, making it harder for plaintiffs to recover damages in civil-justice cases. Bush pushes the same line from the White House — but, as Dan Zegart explains in The Nation (Oct. 25), “the lawsuit-abuse…
Lying Down on the Job
Since all politicians are liars, does the truth matter? I was thinking about lying politicos after watching Sen. “Snarlin’ Arlen” Specter debate Rep. Joe “rhymes with duffel” Hoeffel. (“Duffel” as in duffel bag. As in this race is already in the bag for the Snarlinator.) Arlen took offense that Joe said Arlen lied about a…
A conversation with Vanessa German
Were you intimidated at all? There was so much pressure. I’m looking out into the audience and 10 feet away from me there’s [rap artist] Black Thought looking at me. [Boston political activist] Malia Luza and I became best friends on stage. They were filming a documentary, so there’s a camera right in your face.…
Red (Tape) Advisory
Ray DeMichiei talks fast. Pittsburgh’s chief of homeland security moves fast, too, even during an interview, frequently springing from his swivel chair to grab a file or point out something on a wall chart. It’s easy to see how DeMichiei would get aggravated by something like needing most of a year to get the federal…
Cash Left Behind
Under a different presidential administration, the No Child Left Behind Act — and its reams of accompanying rules and federal mandates — would be the sort of expansive big-government program Republicans love to hate. After all, by another name, No Child Left Behind — the centerpiece of federal K-12 policy — was simply the 2001…
A conversation with Sister Althea Anne Spencer
How did the clown ministry start? At St. Paul Monastery on the South Side, they used to have that big family picnic. [In] my second year, our novice was to be the clown. She ended up leaving the congregation. They just came and told me I would do it. And I was not happy about…
