Toppling the Ivory Tower

A guide to some of the political issues worth paying attention to on your campus

• by CP Staff

Changing Reels

Documentary follows local transman's surgical, emotional journeys

• by Melissa Meinzer

Classroom Crowding

Sprawling campuses are a boon for students and the city -- up to a point

• by Marty Levine

Development: Planned Squirrel Hill project could mean losing what's already there

A planned development could dramatically reshape the corner of Forward and Murray avenues. Its developers say it will revitalize the area, but some patrons are more worried about what Squirrel Hill might lose.

• by Adam Fleming

Flunking Civics

Students are being hit with the bill for their failure to organize

• by Chris Potter

Transportation: Rubber meets the road for labor/environmental group

Balancing the demands of a union and the environment's need for increased public transportation will be the first major test for the Blue-Green Alliance. Once it decides to get involved that is.

• by Chris Young

Incomplete Grade

With student encouragement, Duquesne takes a big step forward -- but more work is needed on LGBT issues

• by Chris Young

Bombing More Than Exams

Be mindful of military spending on campus, activists urge

• by Andy Mulkerin

Numbers Game

Do schools put money where their mouths are?

• by Charlie Deitch

Review Course

A brief look at political statements gone horribly wrong

• by Adam Fleming

Over a Barrel

Debate over guns on campus likely to continue

• by Al Hoff

Better-Maid Donut Company

Fond memories help keep a neighborhood donut shop in business

• by Colleen Van Tassell

Pangea

Small plates are a big hit at this Shadyside eatery.

• by Angelique Bamberg and Jason Roth

Billy Bob Thornton comes down from the hills to play the Rex

"Humor and tragedy were so mixed up in the lifestyle that I was raised in that it's natural for me to see them as being intertwined," says Billy Bob Thornton.

• by Ben Kharakh

Silent Years' global journey stops in Pittsburgh

While Silent Years is never as loud or panoramic as the shoegazers get, its songs frequently build to noisy, blissed-out climaxes that interrupt, and then slowly recede into, the gentle rootsy beauty of the melodies.

• by Chris Parker

Where many bands fiddle with the dynamics of guitar and rhythm tempos, Envy uses keyboards.

Long Island band Envy on the Coast joins the club.

• by Cindy Yogmas

Pittsburgh goes prog with this weekend's Three Rivers Progressive Rock Festival

Pittsburgh band Mandrake Project should fir nicely alongside some of prog-rock's current standard-bearers at the Three Rivers Progressive Rock Festival.

• by Aaron Jentzen

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Here, director Woody Allen constructs another of his sexual fantasies in the guise of a realistic romantic drama. It's the story of a love triangle -- actually, a love pentagon -- set in Spain, that revolves around two young American women (Rebecca Hall and Scarlet Johansson) and the artist (Javier Bardem) they desire, each to a different degree. Also in the mix, the artist's ex-wife (Penelope Cruz). The film is aggressively photographed in an orange glow, and here and there Allen films a provocative scene that might have been part of an authentic movie. But, Vicky also has an omniscient narrator, like the kind you find in a Victorian novel, who lays out every emotion and theme, and then the characters -- Allen's lifeless demi-creations -- repeat them. Most of his work is a lazy exegesis about the difficulty -- no, impossibility -- of having it all in the arena of love, so we settle for what we can get, which is often a lot. In English, and some Spanish, with subtitles. (HK) [2 out of 4 stars]

• by Harry Kloman

Man on Wire

On Aug. 7, 1974, a young Frenchman named Phillippe Petit, in a totally unauthorized performance, walked for nearly an hour on a tightrope wire strung between the tops of the World Trade Center's twin towers. James Marsh's fascinating documentary is more than a straightforward account of the event; it also probes the quixotic project's origins that combined art, subterfuge and public spectacle. The puckish Petit, interviewed extensively, is an enthusiastic, articulate and even poetic narrator, and the planning of execution of the act is the stuff of heist dramas. The film can't help but also play as an elegy for the WTC, even though 9/11 is never mentioned. Part of what drew Petit to the towers was their immutable solidness, and yet, how quickly they vanished, as if their permanence had really been an illusion all along. Not so Petit's wire-walk, captured on film by his co-conspirators: It remains, a stunning, almost otherworldly, beautiful public spectacle. In English, and French, with subtitles. [3 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

Bottle Shock

A great real-life story -- about an international wine contest held in 1976 that catapulted Northern California wineries out of plonk-y obscurity and into the pantheon of the Great Wines -- gets the big-screen treatment that too often feels like a TV movie. Randall Miller's low-key comedy tells the Cinderella tale of how a handful of Napa Valley wineries catch the palate of Englishman Steve Spurrier (Alan Rickman), a Paris-based wine merchant who travels to California hoping to break the stranglehold European wines have on oenophiles. But Miller too often sketches the scene with stock characters and scenarios (cue 1970s wacky California), including a gratuitous wet T-shirt scene. Any hard realities and interesting insider tales of a tough business are subsumed in endless shots of vineyards mellowing in golden sunlight. Bill Pullman is fine as a determined winery owner (though the script makes him play grumpy TV dad), and many of Rickman's asides and facial expressions are almost worth the price of admission. (His tasting foray into guacamole is note-perfect.) If only there had been less fizz with extraneous domestic subplots, and more body added to the characters that really mattered. Starts Fri., Aug. 22. AMC Loews, SouthSide Works (AH) [2 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

Henry Poole Is Here

The tetchy, moody Henry Poole (Luke Wilson) moves back to his old Los Angeles neighborhood to die in peace from a mysterious illness. He's irked when his effusive neighbor, Esperanza (Adriana Barraza), sees the face of Jesus in the water-stained stucco of his shabby home's exterior. She declares a miracle, and begins funneling the variously needy through his yard. Toss in a more comely neighbor -- a lonely single-mom neighbor (Radha Mitchell), with a weirdo, saucer-eyed kid -- a few indie-pop tunes and ponderous shots of heat-soaked L.A., and you can likely guess the outcome of this low-key, ever-so-slightly-quirky fable from Mark Pellington. Like the varied reactions to the reputed face of Jesus in a water stain, some patient and believing viewers may see a slow-moving, syrupy story that confirms the power of faith and Hallmark-movie endings. More worldly sorts will simply wait for something -- anything -- to happen in this maudlin exercise. (AH) [2 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

The Rocker

What do you get when you mix The Office's Dwight Shrute with an adorable, floppy-haired alterna-teen band? Answer: A comedy from Paul Cattaneo that isn't nasty enough for adults or bubbly enough for the young'uns. A thirtysomething peevish slacker (Rainn Wilson), who once played in a '80s hair-metal band, hooks up with his young nephew and his pals to form a new band. They hit the road ... where surprisingly few adventures and mishaps await. Also in short supply: laughs. The jokes feel like outtakes from Spinal Tap and any recent teen movie of your choice. Furthermore, Wilson never makes us care about his sad-sack of a character, Robert "Fish" Fishman, who is barely sketched out beyond infantile, irritating and not half as funny as he thinks he is. (AH) [1.5 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

Tell No One

Guilliaume Canet's thriller lays the groundwork for a taut Hitchcockian exercise, dressed up with an all-star French cast. For some time, Tell No One is reminiscent of those classics, in which a seemingly innocent man finds himself accused and on the run, and forced to take the law into his own hands. Eight years after his wife was murdered, a Paris pediatrician Dr. Beck (Francois Cluzet) thinks he is now receiving e-mails from her. As sure as graves can be dug up, family and colleagues start acting peculiar, there are other deaths, and "facts" about the long-ago murder begin unraveling. It's not a bad mystery, and throughout much the film, director Canet keeps the increasingly complicated plot well juggled. (He also stages a cracking foot-chase.) But eventually, the film splinters into too many subplots -- and even drops its central query: Did Beck murder his wife? Any earlier tensions drain away, particularly during the last reel's lengthy expository monologue. In French, with subtitles. Starts Fri., Aug. 22. Manor, SouthSide Works (AH) [2.5 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

Up the Yangtze

Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang takes his cameras to China's Yangtze River to document the enormous changes wrought since his grandfather made his home along the venerable waterway. Today, the river -- and life along it -- is irrevocably altered by the Three Gorges hydro-electric dam, the largest in the world. In this essay-like documentary, Chang, with limited narration, lets several intertwined stories play out the sad and occasionally humorous paradoxes of modern China. As one poor peasant loses his tiny farm to the rising waters, his disappointed teen-age daughter leaves school to work on the luxury cruise ships that take affluent Westerners "up the Yangtze" to see "old China" before it is submerged. The film also follows a self-interested, Westernized young man from a more affluent Chinese family. Community, individualism, money, family, tradition, the value of history, the necessity of progress, the embrace of the West, the disparity between the rich and poor -- it all plays out in a bittersweet tangle for these few players, standing in for the millions affected by the dam, and the billions likewise struggling to "go modern" throughout China. In English, and Mandarin, with subtitles. Starts Fri., Aug. 22. Harris (AH) [3 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

Glass and Steel: Art Transcends Industry tells a story of change at Pittsburgh Glass Center.

What is most heartening about this exhibition is that it reveals art to be -- like the urban pioneer -- a genuine catalyst for revitalization.

• by Savannah Guz

Project planners and the public meet to discuss proposed new development in Squirrel Hill

When a group of developers and architects voluntarily makes its plans public, and asks for community feedback, the public should take encouragement.

• by Charles Rosenblum

Lemieux's Ruse

Laying a bad foundation at the arena groundbreaking

• by Chris Potter

Letters to the Editor: August 20 - 27

Feedback from our readers:

This Just In: August 21 - 28

Highlights from the local TV news.

• by Frances Sansig Monahan

Anna's Brooklyn Promise

Just to rub salt in the wound, Anna's Brooklyn Promise ends with a little life lesson to think about at home ... provided, of course, you don't intentionally drive into an oncoming truck before you get there

• by Ted Hoover

For Christian Finnegan, standup comedy beats the classroom ... for now.

Everyone thinks they want funny, but they really want amusement.

• by Ben Kharakh