Pay Daze

Despite not working, cops in Miles case seeing extra cash 

• by Chris Young

Commercial Use

Are the county controller's new ads an election tool or a public service?

• by Lauren Daley and Shawn Klocek

Pedaling North

Community group wants to bring bicyclists into the North Side

• by Andrew Moore

Pi knows pizza to several decimal places.

As a guy who usually leaves remnants of crust on the plate, I didn't leave a speck.

• by Charlie Deitch

Village Tavern & Trattoria

This warm, welcoming, and satisfying Italian restaurant is a reason to brave the West End Circle

• by Angelique Bamberg and Jason Roth

A Conversation with Dave Davison of Maps & Atlases 

"I think there's a quality of amplifying really small details of everyday things and everyday life, and framing them in a song."

• by Aaron Jentzen

The Rivers Casino's Wheelhouse takes a gamble on local musicians

I move in for a closer look, and Gene Simmons asks me if I'm 21, with the weary indifference of a true rock star. 

• by Margaret Welsh

We Are Scientists offer dancey hooks and dating advice on their latest release

"Are your legs tired? Because you've been running from wolves in my mind all day."

• by Aaron Jentzen

The Other Guys

Adam McKay's comedy starts out as a refreshingly satirical takedown of buddy-cop action flicks. Will Ferrell, as a milquetoast desk jockey, is an especially good baffle for the parodic testosterone deluge. Trouble is, how long can you mock a genre that's long since devolved into self-parody? Much of what works best in Other Guys recalls Jerry Zucker's wacky Naked Gun movies. But where those films rigorously sustained their absurdity, Other Guys simply tries everything, from aspiring to be The Office for Lethal Weapon fans to being indistinguishable from an unironic action flick. Moreover, for most of the film, the dynamic between Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, who plays his overamped partner, barely changes: Ferrell says something nerdy, Wahlberg yells "Shut up!" and two scenes later, it happens again. Still, Other Guys is good-hearted enough, and boasts a handful of hilarious scenes (including a very quiet fistfight at a funeral). At the least, it's an amusing footnote to a tiresome genre. (BO) [2 out of 4 stars]

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Trash Humpers

Harmony Korine's new film is repulsive, baffling -- and entirely worth the trouble.

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Ajami

The jigsaw structure of this otherwise neo-realistic film requires attention, but the patient viewer will be rewarded.

• by Al Hoff

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Director Edgar Wright has created an alterna-rom-com for a frenzied, intertextual, pop-culture world.

• by Aaron Jentzen

Stonewall Uprising

If younger people, gay or straight, don't know this history, Uprising offers an eye-opening, if perfunctory, lesson.

• by Al Hoff

Winnebago Man

Texas filmmaker Ben Steinbauer struggles to make this film anything more than a shaggy, not very illuminating look at one angry man.

• by Al Hoff

Variety keeps the Associated Artists show Interplay interesting.

The vivid images and figures in "Deep Woods Silkie" led me to wonder how real real needs to be.

• by Chuck Lanigan

This Just In: August 12 - 19

Highlights from the local TV news: Baby Down!

• by Frances Sansig Monahan

The Effluent Society

• by Bill O'Driscoll

On the Way to Jimmy's

A poem by Jerome Crooks.

A new book explores a 118-year-old bicycling mystery with its roots in Pittsburgh.

Lenz's story provides a rare glimpse into the early history of bicycling in Pittsburgh.

• by Chris Briem

The Dumb Waiter & Betrayal

Pinter doesn't show us a heart breaking; he supplies us with the knowledge that it is, while forcing his characters to act as though it were not.

• by Ted Hoover

Cash on Delivery!

Such farces are hard to pull off, but as long as the jokes get told, that's what matters.

• by Robert Isenberg

Short List: Week of August 12 - 19