Campus Insecurity

Duquesne University president gets high marks for burnishing his campus' reputation -- but critics give his management style a "D"

• by Chris Young

Creative Accounting

"We're cut to the bone. Now we're cutting marrow." -- Beth Corning

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Reverse Payout

Could the plan to legalize video poker force the state to pay back casinos?

• by Charlie Deitch

Gang Warfare

Casey introduces gang-violence bill focusing on prevention

• by Melissa Meinzer

Taking It Outside

"We have to be careful, because virtual experiences ... that's what kids are living with all the time."

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Greek Stop

Traditional preparations of familiar Greek dishes mark this attractive eatery.

• by Angelique Bamberg and Jason Roth

Voluto Coffee

A new coffee shop livens up the Penn Avenue Arts Corridor.

• by Melissa Meinzer

Local music highlights for the coming weeks

With March come a few anticipated local releases, follow-ups from artists we've covered in recent years.

• by Aaron Jentzen

Tokyo Police Club return to Mr. Small's on its victory lap

"Mostly we're gonna just yuk it up and enjoy ourselves."

• by Aaron Jentzen

East Liberty's AVA Lounge is a haven for jazz heads on Monday nights

The audience members chat but mostly listen, nodding their heads like 1950s bebop fans, staring at the musicians and studying the notes as much as hearing them.

• by Steve Hallock

Low Water revisits old Pittsburgh stomping grounds

Straightforward, rootsy pop with a thoughtful lyrical bent and a fondness for subtle trimmings that give the music extra depth.

• by Mike Shanley

Faces of Realism

Cinematic truth is the theme of this year's CMU International Film festival

• by Al Hoff

The Black Balloon

The family of four here is not like every other family, although for the sake of honoring their struggle, it's tempting to say that they are. Most get along fine, but it's Charlie (Luke Ford) who creates havoc: He's autistic, and severely so. In American hands, The Black Balloon would probably have been a more pat and clinical drama. But Down, like her cast (which includes the always-superb Toni Collette), is Australian, and that leads her film to slightly more challenging highs and lows: Australian cinema is especially good at casting very dark shadows over bright sunny days. Down never once tries to explain Charlie's behavior. It's simply how he is. This family, like every other family coping with autism, is sui generis. The drama's climax, where Charlie's younger brother reaches his breaking point, is organic and harrowing -- the moment we anticipate as we witness their stressful lives. And then, to end, sunshine again, perhaps a bit unbelievably, as life goes on. (HK) [3 out of 4 stars]

• by Harry Kloman

Fanboys

Take your basic road-trip premise -- four squabbling buddies head west on an impossible quest -- and juice it up with Star Wars in-jokes. Thus, your appreciation for Kyle Newman's comedy will depend on both your tolerance for the same old comic journey --and what you know about Chewbacca's home planet. (My tolerance is low on both counts.) Proving that even nerds are sentimentalists, the adventure kicks off in 1998, when the gang decides to drive from Ohio to George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in California, so that their dying buddy can screen Episode One: The Phantom Menace. If you guessed that along the way there would be trouble with cars, girls, drugs and Trekkies, you'd be right. But Fanboys is relatively amiable, if too often flat, and there are enough celebrity cameos to garner a knowing chuckle or two. Starts Fri., Feb. 27. (AH) [2 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

Remarkable Power!

A number of seemingly unrelated threads intertwine in Brandon Beckner's wacky ensemble comedy that pokes fun at a bunch of wannabe somebodies in Los Angeles. From the murder of a struggling TV talk-show host (Kevin Nealon) and a self-improvement program called Remarkable Power! to a Jewish gangster with a taste for baseball and a private investigator (Tom Arnold) who sees more than he should -- drugs, cash, video and an inconvenient death all tumble together. There's not much fresh ground broken here -- the plot supports a single ridiculous idea ya gotta believe in -- and a few laughs notwithstanding, TV, drug-dealers and self-improvement scams are pretty easy targets. Mon., March 2, through Sat., March 7. Carmike 10, South Hills Village; and Wynnsong 12, Delmont. (AH) [2 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

A Secret

Claude Miller's handsomely filmed drama jumps between the 1950s, 1980s and 1940s to show how one extended Jewish family in France was undone and re-configured by the horrors of World War II. For young Francois, born after the war, the revelation of concealed histories spurs a complete re-assessment of his family and his place in it. Flashbacks reveal the entire story to us, though virtually none of it will come as a surprise to the astute viewer. Miller's goal is not to shock, but to explain -- particularly how powerful the truth can be: For some, it's devastating, for others, liberating. Then, there's the collective knowledge of France's Jewish survivors, with various unresolved burdens of shame, guilt, sadness and anger. Miller shoots the recalled pre-war past in gloriously lit color (even the scenes of tragedy sparkle) while the present-day sequences are black-and-white, downbeat -- and ultimately fail to coalesce well with the more sharply observed scenes from the past. Regardless, the film is well acted, and if its themes are familiar, they're well served by the intimate scale. In French and some Yiddish, with subtitles. Starts Fri., Feb. 27. Squirrel Hill (AH) [2.5 out of 4]

• by Al Hoff

Two Lovers

Joaquin Phoenix says this is his last movie, and if indeed it's the end of his acting career, his role in James Gray's low-key drama isn't a bad finish. Phoenix plays Leonard, a troubled, aimless man who still bunks with his parents in New York's insular Brighton Beach. Out of kindness, he dates the nice Jewish girl (Vinessa Shaw) whom his parents like, but his yearning, romantic heart is won by a new neighbor (Gwyneth Paltrow), a messed-up beauty who uses Leonard as a foil in her ongoing affair with a married man. Gray's two previous films (The Yards, We Own the Night) have tried to penetrate the broody vastness of New York's outer boroughs, but in those films he fell back on crime plots. Here, it's simply Leonard (in a soulful turn by Phoenix), who in spite of all his caginess, personifies the sprawling city's tensions between shiny affluence, wild abandon and deep-rooted stability, as well as the unbearable smallness of one person's sadness when it's cast against all those other people. Starts Fri., Feb. 27. Manor (AH) [3 out of 4 stars]

• by Al Hoff

A new exhibit showcases the remarkable work of Mexican architect Fernando Romero.

For all of the insistence on function, process and study, plenty of these works achieve the status of transcendent visual art as well.

• by Charles Rosenblum

This Just In: February 26 - March 5

Highlights from the local TV news: A DUI report that is less than sober.

• by Frances Monahan

Letters to the Editor: February 25 - March 4

Encyclopedia Destructica's Flying Destructicate, by artist Jonathan Brodsky and others, is more a kit than a book.

The PowerPoint pamphlets explore the possibilities and push the boundaries of this communication genre more typically associated with the fluorescent buzz of office parks.

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Poet Kristofer Collins and others read at a Six Gallery Press showcase.

Collins is prolific enough that this becomes poetry as journalism, as diary, as the idiosyncratic memoir of a town.

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Angels in America: Millennium Approaches

Because Kushner's a genius is why, telling something no less than what it means to be an American in the second half of the 20^th century in this sweeping, epic drama.

• by Ted Hoover

The London Cuckolds

Cuckolds really is a raunchy show.

• by Robert Isenberg