Activists say voting-machine software needs a dry run before November

• by Marty Levine

How the Rusyns Could Save Civilization

• by Chris Potter

Green Light

Planting evergreen trees in rows on the north side of your home creates a windbreak for winter winds.

• by Laura Vrcek

What the Flux? Future of traveling art event unclear

• by Matt Stroud

Neighborhoods: Burghers and their dogs share stories of hope

• by Adam Fleming

Taza 21

Slow-roasted meat is the focus of Middle-Eastern take-out.

• by Colleen Van Tassell

Richard Chen

• by Angelique Bamberg and Jason Roth

Bellevue venue The Key Room ordered to cease and desist

"Drinking and rollerskating is always a weird pitch."

• by Aaron Jentzen

Scottish singer Julie Fowlis brings Gaelic tradition into the pop world

"There used to be this image of the folk musician," says Fowlis -- "a big beard, carrying a banjo, wearing a thick jumper."

• by Justin Hopper

Punchline releases Just Say Yes on its own poppy terms

The slickest straight-up pop record to come out of Pittsburgh so far this year.

• by Aaron Jentzen

Get grebo with Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction

Zodiac's salacious lyrics and psychedelic-Nazi-hoodlum appearance could be taken as tongue-in-cheek, or as outright offensive.

• by Manny Theiner

Your Days Are Numbered in the House of Assassins

The group also evokes early PiL and L.A. country-punks the Gun Club, the latter especially when Baldinger occasionally misses his intended note.

• by Mike Shanley

Toubab Krewe fuses Western with West African

While a few white guys from Asheville playing African music might not come off as genuine, the musicians here have genuine intentions -- and genuine talent.

• by Andy Mulkerin

Frozen River

In director Courtney Hunt's drama, Leo is as authentic as she's ever been. Her character, Ray Eddy, is a single mom in a New York state town, bordering Quebec. Desperate for cash, she gets involved in a scheme to smuggle Chinese men across Mohawk Indian territory. Then something happens, something so horrifying that it should throb with anguish. But these people are depleted, so there's mostly just silence. Rife with symbolism and sadness, Hunt's debut film is more interesting for its characters and milieu than for the story it tells. Frozen River takes us to a forgotten place, something few movies do any more with fidelity. Still, Hunt's climax works a little too hard to stir things up and then wrap them up. She tries to redefine family, and she ends with hope. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that, although it does make it easier to believe that things will always turn out all right. Regent Square Theater [2.5 out of 4 starts]

• by Harry Kloman

Nights in Rodanthe

The best scene in this drama of love, loss and forgiveness, from a story by novelist Nicholas Sparks, actually isn't between romantic leads Gere and Lane, who play divorced people trying to get their lives back together. It's between Gere and veteran character actor Scott Glenn, as the widowed husband of a woman who died on surgeon Gere's operating table. But don't let that anomaly stop you from seeing the big-screen directorial debut of Broadway icon George C.Wolfe. For while the story is as contrived as you can get -- for starters, it's set on a beautiful North Carolina beach in hurricane season -- countless scenes between Gere and Lane are exceptional, their characters believable, powerful, likable and vulnerable. Yes, this is a chick flick through and through. But it's a really good one with great performances and enough substance to satisfy anyone. [3 out of 4 stars]

• by Charlie Deitch

Battle in Seattle

The unrest in the streets of Seattle during the World Trade Organization conference would be a good subject for a thoughtful documentary. The issues it raised about globalization are still relevant, and the events spawned provocative questions about protest itself. Instead, we get a docudrama from actor-turned-writer/director Stuart Townsend. Despite its all-sides approach, Battle is heavily slanted toward photogenic youthful agitators, and its claims to veracity are seriously undermined by soap-operatic threads about romance, pregnancy and a news bimbo who goes rogue. The ensemble cast includes Ray Liotta, Woody Harrelson, Charlize Theron, Martin Henderson and Andre Benjamin, but in quickly sketched roles, further neutered by making-a-point-here lifeless dialogue. Benjamin brings a little spark, but even this dapper dresser can't rise above the endangered-sea-turtle outfit he's trapped in. Townsend begins and ends his film with heavy critique of the WTO, but the amateurish filler likely won't inspire much meaningful action. Starts Fri., Sept. 26. SouthSide Works (AH) [2 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

In Search of a Midnight Kiss

Besides Valentine's Day, the worst day to be single is New Year's Eve. Desperation prompts Wilson (Scoot McNairy) to place an online ad for a Dec. 31 blind date, and spurs Vivian (Sara Simmonds) to answer it. The two late-twentysomethings -- each a recent Los Angeles transplant looking to break into showbiz -- wander downtown L.A., sparring, laughing and going a little loco, before finally connecting. Writer-director Alex Holdridge's bittersweet, black-and-white indie feature is a talk-fest (against moody urban backdrops), but the dialogue feels authentic. Also, Holdridge is clearly enamored of the other L.A., the old city center which most movies speed through, if at all. Thus, as the pair amble through L.A.'s odd mix of new and old, noting the quirks of city life from the sidewalk, it's clear Search offers at least one rarity: a tour of L.A. by foot. Starts Fri., Sept. 26 (no screening Mon., Sept. 29). Harris (AH) [3 stars out of 4]

• by Al Hoff

The Lucky Ones

Three Iraq War soldiers on leave share a van from New York City to Las Vegas. As expected, the strangers -- older reservist Cheever (Tim Robbins), career Army man T.K. (Michael Peña) and lost-soul-turned-girl-soldier Colee (Rachel McAdams) -- become buddies, and perhaps even catalysts: All are in need of life-changing directives, if not changes in career. Each has been injured, and T.K. has done three tours in Iraq. Director and co-writer Neil Burger (The Illusionist) doesn't break much new ground in the road-trip genre, but Lucky is a companionable ride-along. Burger mostly keeps the roadside wackiness in check -- most of the story happens in Anyplace, USA -- though there's an unforgivable deus ex machina in the shape of a tornado. Nor does Lucky get preachy one way or the other about the war; nonetheless, the undercurrent of real events grounds the narrative's more dramatic aspects. The film's title and ending are ironic -- or not; you're free to choose. Starts Fri., Sept. 26. (AH) [2.5 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

A Mattress Factory exhibit challenges the walls of its own galleries.

The scene, framed for us by Oppenheimer, instills a sense of vertigo -- but it also makes us feel, unpleasantly, like voyeurs, spying on the unsuspecting neighbors.

• by Melissa Kuntz

A gallery show connects mediation, astrophysics and art.

"We are all interconnected, and looking at the stars is for me a way of getting back to the beginning, to recognize our need for meditation, and live spiritually."

• by Jessica Lam

This Just In: September 24 - October 1

Highlights from the local TV news: Panic in Ligonier!

• by Frances Sansig Monahan

Author Nancy Nichols' new book looks for the man-made causes of cancer.

It's a thoughtful examination of the risks faced by bodies made by nature in a world fabricated by technology.

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Ice Water, Here on Earth

Excerpt of writing by Damian Dressick

Soul

As usual, O'Donnell and crew give their audience an evening of theater about as far away from Neil Simon and Rodgers & Hammerstein as you can get.

• by Ted Hoover

It's one woman, many characters in Dael Orlandersmith's Stoop Stories.

"I'm going to my outside guys."

• by Bill O'Driscoll