- Issue Archive for
- Apr 30 - May 6, 2009
- Vol. 19, No. 17
News+Features
Hablando de Inmigración
Pittsburgh starts talking about the importance of immigration to the region
Pressing a Cause
As old media struggles, is a new breed of journalists up to the job of replacing it?
The Wrestler
Veteran local grappler gets pros to lace up their boots for charity
Fading Print
How to bring the best of paid journalism into an environment where no one is getting paid?
Running Map
Organizers hope small course change won't have big impact on marathon
Sussing Sustainability
Picking the better of two environmentally bad choices doesn't make you sustainable.
Food+Drink
d'Vine Wine Bar and Lounge
A lively, yet urbane suburban outpost, with inventive small plates and a spot for all comers
Pub and Grub in Dormont
Day or night, this South Hills community is worth a stop
Music
This Friday, get locked in with cutting-edge dance music from Berlin ... and Pittsburgh
The main attraction is a super-rare appearance by Berlin-based techno pioneer Stewart Walker.
Philly merrymakers Man Man open for Cursive at Diesel this week
"I started playing music on the side as sort of a therapy," frontman Honus Honus says. "Then I made some poor life decisions and it became my full-time thing."
Japanese psych collective Ghost returns to the Warhol
"You don't need any drug with us."
Toad the Wet Sprocket cuts costs and soldiers on
How does a has-been act with no plans to create any new material manage to avoid day jobs?
Electro duo Adult. proves it's no 'clash-in-the-pan
Detroit band Adult. was one of the harbingers of the turn-of-the-millennium electro and post-punk revival.
On Screen
The Soloist
Directed by Joe Wright, and based on a true story with an only partially happy ending, The Soloist features strong performances, tight storytelling and a social conscience that takes on several themes at once. The film centers on the remarkably sad life of Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a mentally ill musical prodigy who lives anonymously on the street until Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.), a Los Angeles Times reporter, encounters him. His friendship invariably helps and harms Nathaniel, and it draws Lopez into a negotiation with himself about whether anything he's ever done as a reporter has made any difference. There's a character study at the heart of The Soloist, but in the need to tell it to the widest possible audience, it's presented more like exegesis. Much better are the moments that capture the chaos and cacophony of life among the homeless; rather than use actors, Wright cast actual denizens of L.A.'s Skid Row. When The Soloist lets them speak, we see disquieting flashes of complexity in them -- so much so that I stopped caring about Lopez's privileged ethical dilemma. And while the movie makes clear that homelessness is horrifying and a significant problem, it finally places its emphasis on the feel-better story of two men finding their way. (HK) [3out of 4 stars]
Everlasting Moments
Jan Troell's film is a temperate drama with the redolence of the familiar -- part Ibsen, part Bergman. In the tale, Maria is married to Sigfrid, a laborer and a mean drunk, and living in his native Sweden in the early 20th century. But in between raising her family, Maria takes photos, and Everlasting Moments moves from the quietly conventional to the quietly philosophical. Cameras are new to people of this place and time. Her photographs tell stories about the milieu in which she lives, and as the 20th century emerges, the family enters the middle class. Why does the camera drift in and out of her life in the decades that follow? With seven children to raise, she has a load of everlasting responsibility. You don't need a Ph.D. to extract themes from this -- to understand that these still and moving images transform our lives and our culture. So Everlasting Moments (the title refers as much to memory as to photography) is art cinema light: handsome, thoughtful, and with just enough heft to get you through dinner conversation afterward. In Swedish, with subtitles. Manor (HK) [3 out of 4 stars]
The 2009 Russian Film Symposium
A dozen new films from Russian highlight this week of screenings and discussions
Absurdistan
In a not-quite-real country between Europe and Asia lies a small village inhabited by just 14 families, all of whom rely on one creaky water pipe. Poor plumbing leads to an all-out war between the town's men and women. Veit Helmer's film -- shot in Azerbaijan, with an international cast -- is a whimsical fable that can be enjoyed as a slightly madcap, slightly surreal battle-of-the-sexes comedy. But it's also a wry allegory commenting on similar (and larger) stagnant cultures, where bright youth take off for greener pastures, leaving the insular elders to grind even harder into their self-serving (if ultimately self-defeating) old ways. Here, for instance, the men would rather drink and brag of their sexual prowess than do any work. The women shoulder the burdens -- someone has to, however unfairly -- until their cooperation literally dries up with the water supply. The men shrug, the women initiate a sex strike (no more until the pipe gets fixed), and both sides turn the dusty village into a battleground. Only a pair of teen-age sweethearts seeks solutions. There's very little dialogue; a few voiceovers tell the few facts we need. But the large and small problems in Absurdistan are universal, making this offbeat charmer easily accessible. In Russian, with subtitles. Starts Fri., May 1. Harris (AH) [3 out of 4 stars]
Battle for Terra 3D
This animated 3-D space adventure comes with the goofy glasses but seriously, it should come with a bong. See, somewhere in outer space there is a planet inhabited by tadpole people, who swim through the air above a perpetual snow storm. They live in Myst-like tree-houses, and seem very mellow, into cool fabrics and wooden bowls. Then some advancing bright lights start sucking the tadpoles out of the air. These light turn out to contain what's left of the humans, looking for a new planet after trashing Earth (and Mars and Venus.) A bright teen-girl tadpole and a human pilot become friends and spend the rest of the film trying to get their respective incompatible races to work together. And while there is a "battle" in the last reel, filled with each side's flying armaments (humans fly X-shaped planes, while the tadpoles strap into bird frames), Aristomenis Tsirbas' visually striking film isn't your typical starfighter blast-o-rama. The narrative is straightforward, but there's something loopy and a little bit dream-like about the whole affair, which the 3-D animation only intensifies. (At times I felt we were traveling deep, deep within the sleeve artwork of a 1970s prog-rock concept album.) I also dug how all the weird stuff wasn't explained -- hey, there goes a whale -- it just was. Thus, not for the Transformer set, too complicated for little kids and potentially too simplistic for adults. I think an 11-year-old nerd girl who prefers reading or doodling to caring about the Jonas Brothers would be a great fit. Which is to say: I liked it, even with just the glasses on. Starts Fri., May 1. (AH) [2.5 stars out of 4]
Sin Nombre
Cary Joji Fukanaga's film is a hybrid -- part gang story, part coming-of-age tale (with a smidgen of romantic awakening) and part docu-drama about the arduous journey illegal immigrants from Latin America undertake to reach the U.S. The film follows two teen-age protagonists whom later circumstances intertwine. Willy is a member of a violent gang in southern Mexico. Meanwhile, in Honduras, Sayra leaves with her father and uncle, traveling atop railcars north through Mexico en route to (hopefully) New Jersey, where her recently deported father has another family. Willy, escaping from the gang, winds up on Sayra's railcar, and the two displaced souls form a bond of survival and friendship.
This is Fukanaga's debut feature and he directs with a sure hand, weaving several threads together, into a neo-realist drama that draw real power from its hardscrabble locales and its largely nonprofessional cast.
This unsentimental film takes no stand on the contentious political squabbling over immigration, but the film's title -- "without name" -- flags the director's larger sympathies. Even if we learn only fragments about these characters -- they are, even within the narrative, primarily strangers traveling in shadows across borders -- they are nonetheless individuals and not simply part of a faceless monolith tagged "illegals."
And their earnest belief that life elsewhere must be better is both laudable (who shouldn't strive for opportunity?) and heartbreaking (we know many outcomes will be bitter). You'll hope for Willy and Sayra, even as the film suggests its characters have little chance of escaping their current lives. Sin Nombre opens with a gorgeous shot of country lane bedecked with fall colors. But the camera shifts to reveal that it is Willy's wallpaper: It's an open road in a dream country, and no matter how hard he stares at it, this road is still a wall. In Spanish, with subtitles. Starts Fri., May 1. Manor (AH) [3 out of 4 stars]
