Turned Out

For some in foster care, turning 18 means hitting the streets

• by Adam Fleming

Uncommon Senselessness

Horacio Castellanos Moya's novel -- his first translated into English -- views atrocity through an ironic lens

• by Bill O'Driscoll

From Chapter 2 of Senselessness:

The Next Chapter

While a plea to avoid jail time may be good for a Donora woman, it's too early to tell what it could do to the First Amendment.

• by Charlie Deitch

Neighborhoods: ELDI moving forward with cohousing development

East Liberty development officials are hoping that a former drug house gets a new lease on life as a shared living paradise.

• by Chris Young

Animal Rights: New pet store near ARL getting protests

A new Petland near the Animal Rescue has activists crying foul despite the store owner's attempts to reach out.

• by Melissa Meinzer

Lunch a la Popeye: Greens and Beans

Pittsburgh offers a variety of the traditional Italian dish.

• by Heather Mull

Wai Wai

• by Angelique Bamberg and Jason Roth

For sound artist Robert Weis, it's reduce, reuse -- record

"I don't like to play live because what I do is like painting with sound, and it's time-consuming."

• by Manny Theiner

Singer-songwriter -- and farmer -- Nicole Reynolds performs at WYEP

She's the rare young folkie who actually bales hay now and then.

• by Andy Mulkerin

Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford on Nostradamus, Nostradamus and headlining the Metal Masters tour.

"I think all of us in the band are really open-minded about people who have prophesies, see the future, see ghosts, see UFOs."

• by Lissa Brennan

Shadow Lounge open mic features Minnesotan Caroline Smith

Smith shoots for a brand of indie pop that's in the neighborhood of Feist and St. Vincent, though with looser production and less contrived dramatic effects.

• by Aaron Jentzen

American Teen

Besides some scenes that appear staged for the camera, the Nanette Burstein's film stumbles in a few other ways, most notably in how it's so thoroughly unoriginal and reminiscent of just about every senior-year-of-high-school documentary you can name. It also feels uncomfortably like those silly MTV half-docs Laguna Beach and The Hills, and Burstein's cameras seem to be too lucky too often. I'm not saying that the lives of the half-dozen central characters didn't follow the arc of the story Burstein tells in the film. It just doesn't feel like we're truly watching their lives unfold. And in 95 minutes, you can't share their stories with any substance or fidelity, so American Teen finally feels like a ploy to get its target audience to plop down 10 bucks for a matinee and some Sno-Caps. It's terribly simplistic and routine between its familiar life lessons, and Burstein seems to shape her stories to suit her endings. (HK) [2 out of 4 stars]

• by Harry Kloman

Tropic Thunder

Things go horribly wrong when a group of fatuous actors believing they're on a "guerilla shoot" re-enacting a Vietnam war story end up lost in the jungle and in the crossfire of real-life and armed bad guys. Among the deluded actors: a faded action star (Ben Stiller), a crass funnyman (Jack Black) and an Australian method actor who has undergone an operation to appear black (Robert Downey Jr.). Stiller also directs, co-produced and co-wrote the story and the screenplay. Both Stiller and Black scale back – their familiar routines are best mixed in an ensemble – but it's Downey who walks away with the film, as the self-important actor who can't drop his character immersion. "I know who I am! I'm the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude!" Admittedly, poking fun at the movie business and its big, dumb action films is easy sport. But in the hazy, lazy days of summer's end, Tropic scores where it matters most: It's just plain funny, from start to finish. (AH) [3 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

Sputnik Mania

On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviets amazed the world by successfully launching a small satellite named "Sputnik" that began orbiting Earth. The Space Race – and its darker corollary, building weapons to be potentially deployed in space – was on, as the United States rushed to catch up. David Hoffman's documentary charts the year that followed Sputnik's launch, a time that found ordinary people variously awed and terrified by space technology, while in Moscow and Washington, D.C., a deadly brinksmanship rushed ahead. Stitched together from archival footage and contemporary interviews, Hoffman effectively lays out how extraordinary – and potentially dangerous – the watershed post-Sputnik year was. Modern audiences can also marvel over: kids urged to build rockets (described by one former enthusiast as "pipe bombs with fins"); home bomb-shelters; and the publicity perils of sending a cute dog into orbit. An obvious highlight here is recently released Soviet footage of Sputnik and other projects (plus some hilarious anti-U.S. propaganda) that lets Hoffman fill in the story from both sides. Starts Fri., Aug. 15, through Sun., Aug. 17. Melwood (AH) [3 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

What We Do Is Secret

Darby Crash, lead singer of 1970s Los Angeles punk band, The Germs, left the classic résumé to become a minor cult legend: Make a glorious mess, be misunderstood in your time and die young (Crash died in 1980 from an intentional drug overdose). Now, Crash's Germs days are the subject of Rodger Grossman's rather lo-fi, pseudo-documentary bio-pic. Shane West (ER) mumbles, broods and rages as Crash; he's compelling but it still comes across as play-acting. (The real-life Crash proved the cautionary highlight of Penelope Spheeris' 1981 documentary on the L.A. scene, The Decline of Western Civilization.) Ultimately, Secret doesn't shed much new light on Crash, or establish whether the long-ago, local train-wreck of a band deserves more recognition. Fans of early punk, though, may find the film an intriguing curio -- who'd have thought they'd make a movie about The Germs? Through Thu., Aug. 21. Harris (AH) [2 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

A Warhol exhibit gives short shrift to a Modernist master's historical importance.

Visitor awareness of this historical background would bring valuable eloquence to Mondrian's rigidly silent geometry.

• by Savannah Guz

Pittsburgh Center for the Arts offers a potent and diverse Pittsburgh Biennial.

Vitone's ability to capture everything from the painted-face posing of Insane Clown Posse fans to the ritualized awkwardness of a debutante ball still amazes.

• by Bill O'Driscoll

All Cauc'ed Up

National Dems come to Pittsburgh, and blow opportunity

• by Chris Potter

This Just In: August 14 - 21

Highlights from the local TV news.

• by Frances Sansig Monahan

Conversation in Tobacco

A poem by Kelly Forsythe

Questioning a local graphologist's claims about handwriting and personality.

The book's bubbly prose doesn't provide evidence for these or many other claims, which seem to rest entirely on analogy.

• by Paul Ruggiero

West Side Story

West Side Story is a musical about what happens when three geniuses write a musical.

• by Ted Hoover

With some favorite pieces and a few new dancers, Pittsburgh Ballet holds its annual free summer shows.

The free summer-evening performances have for decades brought ballet's high art to the grassroots.

• by Steve Sucato