- Issue Archive for
- Jun 19-25, 2008
- Vol. 18, No. 25
News+Features
Combination Schlock
Is there any reason to merge the city and county?
Changing Classes
For some students, personalized instruction may be the only way to get through certain subjects.
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Going Through the Motions
We sit through city council so you don't have to
Unnamed Resources
Trib's coverage of right-wing groups leaves out Scaife's deep ties to them
Food+Drink
Summer Beers at East End Brewery
The Homewood brewery helps beats the heat
The Capital Grille
This Downtown steakhouse plays up the VIP treatment.
Music
Johnstown's underground scene heats up with new venue 709 Railroad St.
The first art show opened on June 13, and they'll host about two concerts per week.
A Conversation with Alejandro Escovedo
I wouldn't mind if someone called me a freak; it wouldn't be insulting to me.
Germans from outer space Hanzel und Gretyl land at Mr. Small's
Fans of the band will be drawn to a huge concert in the center of Chichen Itza, where one of the pyramids will be revealed as a secret spaceship that will take the band and its followers into the sun.
Americana heroes The Avett Brothers return to the Three Rivers Arts Festival
"It can become predictable when you're always trying not to be predictable."
Alkaline Trio retains its black humor with major-label release
The band's found its own niche, releasing five records over the past decade that'd feel right playing at a comedian's funeral.
The Brothers Unconnected celebrate the Sun City Girls' far-flung legacy
May it rest in the higher levels of enlightenment.
On Screen
Alexandra
Not a single weapon is fired in this Russian anti-war film Alexandra in which the titular protagonist visits her grandson, serving in Chechnya. The bombs here are all metaphoric. And yet, there's nothing coy about Aleksandr Sokurov's contemplative drama. Quite the opposite: Toward the end, when the characters finally begin to have conversations, Sokurov makes it clear what he's up to. Fortunately that clarity revolves around the paradox of war, so it ends up being a bit of a challenge after all. As a character, Alexandra is an absorbing creation: watchful, surly and quietly acted by Galena Vishnevskaya. As a metaphor, she can't decide whether she's a grandmother or a Russian. lexandra moves seamlessly between its tenderness and its harder edge. Alexandra's meanderings seem almost dreamlike after a while, and at times she becomes pure metaphor: the old drifting among the new, like a page torn from a history book. In Russian and a little Chechen, with subtitles. Regent Square (HK) [3 out of 4 stars]
The Incredible Hulk
Louis Leterrier's actioner is yet another telling of how scientist Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) gets zapped with gamma rays and, now, when provoked, morphs into a big green, mean machine. He can dodge bullets, but not the awfulness of his new self. And now the military is looking for him, plus another super-freak warrior (Tim Roth). Hulk is two hours long and yet feels incomplete. Banner's brooding never amounts to anything substantial; and in spite of a huge Manhattan brawl, the ending feels rushed. The Hulk himself is disappointing: green sure, but also rubbery looking, ill-proportioned and noticeably crafted from CGI. In some scenes, the Hulk appears badly pasted into the scene's frantic activity, and gives the effect of a really large plastic action figure going nuts. (AH) [2 out of 4 stars]
Get Smart
The endless march of vintage television shows freshened up for big-screen outings continues unabated, despite reams of data that suggest such projects are largely unsatisfying. Get Smart was a spy spoof of Cold War vintage that made its bumbling Agent Maxwell Smart a beloved American anecdote to his sleeker British contemporaries. Peter Segal's update aims for homage, which may be one reason the jokes feel 40 years old. Tedium should set in long before this not-very-funny film grazes the two-hour mark: There is a could-care-less micro-plot about KAOS and a nuclear bomb that is mostly notable for making arch-villain (the capable Terence Stamp) boring. Steve Carrell, stepping into Smart's telephonic shoes, never finds his zing, and his comically inept spy just plods. (It's like you can see the strings on the jokes.) The best bits are courtesy of a vet and a relative newcomer: Alan Arkin blusters nicely as The Chief, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson brings some on-screen charisma. Starts Fri., June 20. (AH) [2 out of 4 stars]
The Happening
In this film, an invisible force causes millions of people to babble, walk backward and then kill themselves by the most bizarre means possible. Similarly, an invisible force causes M. Night Shyamalan to babble (have you seen his self-aggrandizing TV ad for this film?), write and direct a ponderous eco-thriller about angry trees, and potentially to wipe out any residual mojo he's been cruising on since The Sixth Sense. (Yes, this film is worse than Lady in the Water, because it at least purports to be an intelligent drama.) Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo flail about escaping from an unseen terror, while wind blows -- hint, hint -- through the trees. If you must go, see it for the unintended laughs, including a left-field, impassioned defense of hot dogs. (AH) [1 out of 4 stars]
Refusenik
Laura Bialis' film is a straightforward documentary that details a two-decade-long struggle to secure Soviet Jews the right to emigrate. Told via first-person interviews (with some archival news footage), Bialis establishes the persistent prejudices Jews faced in the Soviet Union, along with the stealthy, secretive measures they took to practice their faith. Hebrew texts were important, but so too were smuggled copies of Leon Uris' best-selling novel Exodus. By the 1970s, Soviet Jews who filed to emigrate (and were denied) became "refuseniks," cast into a wobbly existence, pursued by KGB and often imprisoned. Accounts from former refuseniks recall the grim totalitarian USSR that, perhaps inadvertently, help mold these immovable dissenters. Meanwhile, students in the United States established protest organizations, as well as providing limited support. Ultimately, larger global events helped free Soviet Jews, but tales of Midwestern housewives smuggling tapes out of Moscow during the darkest days of the Cold War are fascinating footnotes to an often fruitless struggle. Bialis' film is repetitive -- you sense the director wants everybody to get their story in -- but this is film designed more to inform than entertain. In English, and Russian and Hebrew, with subtitles. Starts Fri., June 20. Manor (AH) [2.5 out of 4 stars]
Shotgun Stories
Jeff Nichols' drama is reminiscent of those defining "indie" films of the late '80s and early '90s, when such a designation often meant a low-key but powerful family-dysfunction saga set in some backwater Southern town and starring nobody you ever heard of. This tale of feuding half-brothers in Arkansas has the requisite trappings of neo-Dixie gothic -- shabby homes, crappy cars, desultory shots over the fish farm, even a snake -- while the heart of the drama is ageless: Ancient wounds and casual slights boil over into an accelerating spiral of violence that all are powerless to halt. Like its players in the hazy heat, Stories moves a little slow. Also, the stunted manliness of its characters finds more emotions swallowed than shared, making this outing more contemplative than action-packed. Nonetheless, this is an assured debut from writer-director Nichols, who only occasionally lays on the Southern gothic too thick. Starts Mon., June 23, through Thu., June 26. (AH) [capsule review] [3 out of 4 stars]
Art
The Three Rivers Arts Festival gets the most out of its new shipping containers-cum-galleries.
Like sanctuaries, the boxes require visitors to step up, separating them from the actuality of the street.
Views
Domestic Tranquility
A gay-rights measure we can all take pride in
This Just In: June 19 - 26
Highlights from the local TV news: Kenny Chesney fans gone wild!
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Pittsburgh n'@
Dispatches from the blogosphere: Myron Cope -- to infinity and beyond!
