- Issue Archive for
- Aug 13-19, 2009
- Vol. 19, No. 32
News+Features
Coloring a New Future
Local man gives up everything to help children
Pulling Up Roots and Moving to Pittsburgh
Never mind the G-20: For progressives across the country, the data streams converge in Pittsburgh this week.
Netting the Big Names
Guess who's coming to Pittsburgh?
Welcome to Ballhalla
Street hockey takes on a new attitude in VikingBall
Separation Anxiety
Netroots panel to discuss idea of unifying church and state
A Little More to the Left
Ferlo wishes Netroots gathering was more progressive
More Harm Than Good?
City plans to restrict protesters might have opposite effect
Dissent Plans
G-20 activists release protest info
Food+Drink
Red, Ripe and Roasted
Phipps Conservatory's annual celebration of tomatoes and garlic makes for a tasty afternoon.
Wild Rosemary
The restaurant's growing reputation and diminutive size mean that you should make your reservation well in advance, but it's worth the wait.
Music
Stoner rock has a local champion with record label Oppressive Sound System Releases
"Hearing the songs that people can write in that state of mind is really moving."
A Conversation with Jessica Hopper
For girls who want to rock on their own terms, Hopper's book The Girls' Guide to Rocking offers a straightforward, encouraging roadmap.
Father-and-son jazz saxophonists reunite for a free concert Tuesday
When the Aliquos play together, both admit that each expects a good deal from the other, performance-wise, and they push each other toward a higher level during solos.
Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers bring mournful Americana to South Park
Despite her youth, Crain sings and writes with a confidence that betrays maturity.
The Duke & The King mine mellow gold on Nothing Gold Can Stay
It's deserving of notice by fans of bedroom Americana, and those who've rediscovered the pleasures of the soft-rock ballad.
On Screen
Julie & Julia
One half of Nora Ephron's bio-pic/light comedy hybrid is a sunny, thoroughly entertaining portrait of renown cook Julia Child and her embrace of French cuisine in Paris after the war. The other is a contemporary account of Julie Powell's (Amy Adams) obsession with cooking all the recipes in Child's influential cookbook and blogging about it. Ephron repeatedly hammers us with the similarities between the two women. But despite broad shared experiences, I found the two intertwined stories an uneasy fit. Powell's tale is considerably less compelling: We see Child was an interesting woman, while Powell is depicted as a woman who did an interesting thing. But if there are two reasons to see this film, it's the glimpses of Julia Child's fascinating life, and Meryl Streep portraying her. Streep infuses Child with such infectious enthusiasm -- for food, learning, life, love and a jolly good challenge -- that you'll be utterly smitten. And Ephron does such a great job depicting home cooking as a fun adventure (bungles and all). Powell, Child and Ephron are positively united on this point, and even inspirational: Yes, you can cook French food. Admittedly, others may not find the Powell portion of the film to be as predictable and grating as I did. Regardless, the delicious Julia Child portion makes this late-summer charmer worth gobbling up. (AH) [2.5 out of 4 stars]
District 9
For 20 years, space aliens, of unknown purpose, have been held in Johannesburg neighborhood known as District 9, a fenced-off, overcrowded shanty town. Now, 1.8 million of them -- nicknamed "prawns" -- are to be moved to a new "alien relocation camp." Things get even uglier in writer-director Neill Blomkamp's geopolitical-ish sci-fi thriller when one of the evictors is contaminated, and begins to turn "prawn." Blomkamp has taken some of the most basic elements of a sci-fi thriller -- an invasion with no discernible purpose; a scheming global corporation; a reluctant everyman hero; and a battle royale in which many bodies are gloriously pulverized -- and made them into a smart, well-paced, enjoyable action film. Despite its familiar parts, it feels fresh. The film has just the right dash of edgy dystopia, plus a current-events trigger (our free-floating anxiety about aliens among us who might attack), an easy-grab lesson about cultures repeating past mistakes and less-than-noble humans. (District 9 is indistinguishable from South Africa's Apartheid-era townships, or other sites where "others" are imprisoned.) Action-oriented sci-fi thrillers that aren't sequels, remakes or designed to sell toys are rare these days. If you're still jonesing for a satisfying summer movie, head for District 9. In English, and "prawn," with subtitles. Starts Fri., Aug. 14. (AH) [3 out of 4 stars]
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
I attended this film ignorant of everything about G.I. Joe, though I recall that in his 10-inch form, he sometimes would accompany Barbie on dates when Ken was unavailable. So whether this nonstop action-o-rama bears any relation to Joe's decades-long struggle to mete out global justice with the imprimatur of the military is lost to me. Not, I think, that it matters.
Stephen Sommer's film isn't about plot nuances. Essentially, a bunch of good guys (i.e. "alpha dogs") with cool names like Ripcord, Heavy Duty and Gen. Hawk, take on a bunch of bad guys, including such perennial faves as a megalomaniacal arms merchant, a mad scientist and a deeply disturbed ninja. Most everybody gets cool costumes, and is really fit: The men go shirtless and the ladies wear skin-tight cat suits.
The film impressively spans huge swaths of space and time, beginning in 1641 France and ending up in the future under the polar ice cap. (At least it's still there!) Sommer clearly blew the budget buying every single possible accessory: The film is a parade of machines, weapons and headquarters that if they aren't already Hasbro toys, they soon will be. (Perhaps in an unintended commentary on over-consumption, the primary menace in this film are micro-bots that eat everything -- from a tank to the Eiffel Tower to man's center of reason.)
Your capacity for lines like "When all else fails, we don't," loads of bloodless violence and nonstop hurtling computer-generated action -- Pulsating lasers! Super-duper-sonic jets! Men running really fast! -- will determine your ultimate enjoyment. (AH) [2 out of 4 stars]
Tulpan
Fresh from two years in the Russian navy, young Askhat (Askhat Kuchencherekov) returns to his native land, the steppes of Kazakhstan. In this remote, desolate spot, he hopes to marry the only girl around, the titular Tulpan, and settle down to a life of sheep-herding. But, in documentarian Sergei Dvortsevoy's dramedy, the courtship goes poorly, despite Askhat's remarkable knowledge of how to defeat a man-eating octopus.
So, it's back to the cramped quarters of his sister's yurt, where Askhat endures his brother-in-law's refusal to let him have his own herd. Adding to the family tension is a string of still-born lambs -- and, though it's never clearly articulated -- the pull of the modern city some hundreds of miles distant.
The film is a coming-of-age story folded into the grand sweep of a nature documentary, complete with sweeping vistas, adventures in sheep husbandry and snapshots of daily life for the traditional Kazakh shepherd. But Dvortsevoy also succumbs to the incongruous, if legitimate visual, whether it's Askhat's formal naval uniform, replete with gold braid, or the sight of an injured camel crammed into a motorcycle sidecar.
It's a hard life on the steppes, but not without beauty and joy. Folks who were charmed by the 2004 Mongolian docu-feature The Story of the Weeping Camel should find this similarly engaging. In Kazakh, with subtitles. Starts Fri., Aug. 14. Regent Square (AH) [3 out of 4 stars]
