Groups offering alternatives to costly instant refunds

"If you can just wait a week [for your refund], it saves you 300-and-some dollars."

• by Kate Giammarise

On the Record with Indiana University of Pennsylvania criminology professor Rosemary Gido

• by Chris Young

Crossing Lines

• by Emily Nagin

On the record with social-media expert Lee Rainie

• by Lauren Daley

Backstage at Point Park, it's not just what you say -- it's how you say it.

"Them bitches," the tipsy young priest spits when his underage athletic charges are mentioned. They neither listen nor win, and his frustration is palpable -- and wildly funny.

• by Abby Mendelson

Executive Decision: Race to replace Onorato heating up on both sides of the ballot

• by Charlie Deitch

Reporting Practices: LGBT community rallying after 'transphobic' news report

• by Lauren Daley

News Flash: P-G newsroom icon takes job with Corbett

"I've known some reporters who could write like a dream, and others who were the toughest investigators in town. But I've never known anyone who could do them both with the skill Dennis has."

• by Chris Potter

Salt of the Earth

Kevin Sousa's long-awaited new restaurant is an all-round winner

• by Angelique Bamberg and Jason Roth

Taking It Krautside

This cabbage practically "cooks" itself

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Tapping Expertise at Full Pint

• by Brian Tierney

Handwired and Homegrown

• by Aaron Jentzen

Critics' Picks: Deerhoof, Jimmy Eat World, Black Milk and Dr. Dog

Music highlights the week of Feb. 10-17, from Black Milk's Motor City hip hop to spending Valentine's with a beloved emo band.

Funk outfit Galactic jams with guests from Living Colour and Rebirth Brass Band

New Orleans' Galactic took a decidedly different approach with its 2010 album Ya-Ka-May, a fusion of funk, bouncy hip hop and electronica.

• by T. Ballard Lesemann
• Tags: Music Features, Galactic, Rebirth Brass Band, Living Colour, funk

Forever Now: Veteran rockers Shade mark 13 years with a new release

• by Patrick Bowman

Lovely Recordings catalyzed the city's underground scene

"We saw Pittsburgh had the fan base and the band base to really make an independent label like this work."

• by Patrick Bowman

Up all night with the funky Pimps of Joytime

A song by The Pimps of Joytime might segue from an Afrobeat groove to an electronic club beat with sitar -- but it's all pretty damn funky.

• by Stratton Lawrence
• Tags: Music Features, Pimps of Joytime, funk, jam band

A brief guide to Pittsburgh music labels and creative communities

While such labels seldom last more than a few years, some remain memorable while others are just so many broken links.

• by Aaron Jentzen

Pittsburgh rockers Shade, through the eyes of a cultural historian, fan -- and friend

"Shade's artistic impact was incalculable and they set an ideal for living -- perhaps a happier one than what Joy Division imagined."

• by Csaba Toth

Interview: Kid Congo Powers

Five questions with Kid Congo Powers, of seminal bands The Gun Club, The Cramps and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. 

• by Mike Shanley

The Eagle

Kevin MacDonald's film set in long-ago Roman-occupied England is a lackluster swords-and-sandals actioner. It's epic-lite (perhaps because it's adapted from a kids' story), with only a handful of characters and a meager quest. Is there any doubt our Roman hero (Channing Tatum) will best the native Seal People and restore his family's honor? It's the sort of brain-be-damned film where men on horseback are pursued for days -- and caught -- by other men running on foot. There's not even a perfunctory romance, though the final scene suggests that the truest love is between a man and his former slave. (Al Hoff)

• by Al Hoff

The Company Men

John Wells' drama is a well-intentioned blunder: a tone-deaf tale set in these tough times that asks us to feel sorry for very wealthy people who lose their jobs and are forced to live like slightly less-wealthy people.

Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper and Ben Affleck -- in descending order of executiveness -- all work at a Boston-based conglomerate and are laid off to better balance the books. Set adrift, each adopts a singular emotion: Cooper grows depressed; Affleck turns pissy; and Jones gets angry. These are not bad performances, so much as thinly written roles.

Not to diminish the pain anybody feels losing a job, but it's a trifle hard to get sniffly when characters have to give up a Porsche. Kevin Costner plays the film's "regular guy," a struggling contractor who gives his brother-in-law Affleck a job. Costner gets in a few digs at "suits," but this film pulls its punches on the devastating effects boardroom actions can have on hundreds of thousands -- not just these three. 

What could have been a trenchant study about the ill health of the American Dream is too timid, and its domestic crises too rarefied. Lastly, the film winds up in a place of utter fantasy that anybody living in the real world will rightly groan at. Starts Fri., Feb. 11. (Al Hoff)

• by Al Hoff

Barney's Version

Barney Panofsky (Paul Giamatti) has lived a messy, semi-successful life: He's well off but dissatisfied; abrasive but sentimental; desperate for romantic stability but not very good at it. Now, growing old and lonely in Montreal, he reflects on his life -- his libertine youth in Italy, three wives, two kids and innumerable cigars, whiskeys and hockey games. I really enjoyed the first half of Richard J. Lewis' film which was a dark comedy, with a slate of entertaining (if stereotypical) characters. Dustin Hoffman has a ball playing Barney's cheerfully low-rent, ex-cop dad; Minnie Driver is wife No. 2, a rich Jewish housewife; and Barney himself is mordantly funny. But once Barney shifts gears into settled domesticity, the film begins a slow slide into treacly material, played out with the film's least-interesting characters. Thus, Barney's Version is imperfect, if still mostly entertaining. It's a shame it loses its brio midway, but if you're a fan of Giamatti, you can't go wrong. It's his movie, and he makes the terribly flawed Barney considerably more sympathetic than he likely deserves to be. Starts Fri., Feb. 11. Manor (Al Hoff)

• by Al Hoff

Gnomeo and Juliet

That said, it's cute without being goopy, amusing without being snarky and even manages to finesse the admittedly happier ending. This time out, our warring families are gnomes in the gardens of feuding neighbors. Handsome Gnomeo (voiced by James McAvoy) falls for plucky Juliet (Emily Blunt), even as around them rage battles over lawnmowers, flowers and fountains. The small setting helps keep the story grounded (sorry!), and lets director Kelly Asbury have fun with all the various statuary of the over-embellished backyard. But this is no Toy Story. Despite its lofty antecedents, this is a small story, with stock characters. But it was engaging enough to keep the kiddies in their seats, and the digital animation is bright and lively. The film screens in 3-D in select theaters, but looks just fine in 2-D. Starts Fri., Feb. 11. (Al Hoff)

• by Al Hoff

The Silver Lining: Even without a title, Steelers' season had plenty of highlights

If No. 7 is still weighing heavily on your mind, here is a septuplet of happier moments from the Steelers' almost-championship season:

• by Jim Shearer

Rust Belted: Can media obsession with Braddock's John Fetterman be over now?

• by Chris Potter

Strength in What Remains author Tracy Kidder visits to talk about writing -- and his editor, Richard Todd.

"To the extent that I think clearly about anything, I think clearly through stories."

• by Aaron Jentzen

Performance writer Caroline Bergvall makes one of her two U.S. stops in Pittsburgh.

Just as Bergvall's poetics seek to free language, performance writing seeks to free writing from textual exile.

• by Justin Hopper

Local novelist Heather Terrell tries her hand at the burgeoning young-adult supernatural genre.

"She's like, 'Hello, where are you living? Vampires are huge!'"

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Pittsburgh Ballet reminds us that before Twilight -- and after twilight -- there was Dracula.

The company hopes to capitalize on pop culture's current vampire obsession with Stevenson's neo-Romantic ballet.

• by Steve Sucato

Pittsburgh Playwrights accepts the challenge of staging noted playwright Frank Gagliano's Voodoo Trilogy.

"When an artist is stretching like that, an audience's imagination is going to be stretched."

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet

McCraney has done a remarkable job capturing the small hidden moments and occasions for grand passion constantly battering a sexually awakening young man.

• by Ted Hoover

Camelot

Director Ted Pappas delivers the work's gleaming surface and dark shadows -- yet still fails to overcome the challenges in Alan Jay Lerner's flawed script.

• by Gordon Spencer

Short List: Week of February 10 - 17