Crossing a Thin Blue Line: Cyclist at heart of unusual Pittsburgh police dispute

"Usually officers will support their brother or sister officers no matter what happens. But this is a really unusual story."

• by Chris Young

Daze of Future Past

Tomorrow's Hill District preservation battle -- today!

Clinical Issues: Planned Parenthood, family planning advocates say bill would make abortions 'inaccessible'

"Women without resources ... will be driven to ... unscrupulous facilities."

• by Lauren Daley

On the Bubble

Exploring the mystery of sparkling wine 

• by Brian Tierney

Kaleidoscope Café

Kaleidoscope's intriguing menu refracts contemporary trends in sophisticated casual dining

• by Angelique Bamberg and Jason Roth

South Side's Schwartz Market seeks community input for a greener future.

"Living-building" status, sustainable food are owner Elisa Beck's goals. 

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Acrassicauda: From Baghdad to the 'Burgh

The band from Heavy Metal in Baghdad comes to town

• by Margaret Welsh
• Tags: Music Features, Smiling Moose

Boca Chica takes Europe

Local indie-folk band winds up with two European "micro labels."

• by Patrick Bowman

Critics' Picks

Local appearances by Zachary Cale, Mr. Dream, Ronnie Laws, Eclectic Laboratory Chamber Orchestra, and three experimental solo acts.

Hardcore scene vets form Killer of Sheep

"Anger isn't even a real thing to me anymore; it's just wasted emotion, something you feel because you don't know how to figure shit out for yourself."

• by Andy Mulkerin

On the Record With Jason Isbell

"I like to say it's like -- when you go home with somebody you don't really know, and you wake up and you really have to take a shit. If it's gonna come out, it's gonna come out, but it's way better to wait 'til you get home so you can leave the door open."

• by Andy Mulkerin

Something Borrowed, Jumping the Broom and Bridesmaids

Tis the season for comedies about weddings that go wrong before they go right

• by Al Hoff

Thor

Another Marvel hero hits the big screen in this entertaining outing

• by Harry Kloman

Silk Screen Asian American Film Festival

The sixth annual festival continues through Sun., May 15.

• by Al Hoff

Everything Must Go

From the outset, you should know: This is not your typical Will Ferrell comedy filled with pratfalls, but one of those darker, slower character pieces that the normally goofy actor occasionally indulges in. 

Dan Rush's dramedy is an adaptation of a Raymond Carver story: It starts in a dark place, but moves toward the light. When we meet Nick (Ferrell), an all-American everyman in a downward spiral, he's just been fired, and his wife has left him, locking him -- and all his possessions -- out on his tidy suburban lawn. Nick makes the now-cluttered lawn his new home, boozing and raging, until two new friendships help him re-focus. Across the road is a new neighbor (Rebecca Hall), and happening by out of boredom is Kenny (Christopher Wallace, son of the late rapper Biggie Smalls), a lonely kid undaunted by Nick's pettiness. 

There's nothing particularly revelatory in Nick's journey: He has to hit bottom; check himself; divest of the past in order to have a future (there will be a convenient soul-cleansing yard sale); and forgive and move on. And, in this virtually single-set study, each character will teach the other something.

Yet Everything is engaging enough: Nick's situation is relatable -- he's lived as expected, while neither being satisfied nor noticing how off track he's veered -- and the role is not a bad fit for Ferrell. Nick could be where some of his sunnier characters find themselves when life and immaturity trip them up. Starts Fri., May 13. Manor (Al Hoff) CP Approved

• by Al Hoff

Winter in Wartime

For 14-year-old towhead Michiel, war is something between a child's game and a reality. In January 1945, he lives in a village in the Netherlands, and he watches the war and the Nazi occupiers from his bedroom window, too young to join the resistance. One night, an RAF plane crash creates a spectacular fireball near his home. And so begins his war game, which of course turns spectacularly real. Writer/director Martin Koolhoven keeps Winter in Wartime lean, intimate and quietly unsettling. When Michiel discovers Jack, the RAF pilot -- barely older then he is -- who survived the crash, he helps him recover in his woodland lair. He trusts no one, except his beloved Uncle Ben, and certainly not his father, the town mayor, who collaborates with the occupiers, or so it seems to a boy who wants a taste of war without knowing how bitter it can be. Koolhoven tells his story with palpable tension, although his last half hour is over-plotted, and his climax is an improbable mess. But until it goes bad, his Bildungsroman makes its point effectively, and it's still one worth making, especially in these patriotic times. In English, and Dutch and German, with subtitles. Starts Fri., May 13. Harris (Harry Kloman) CP Approved

• by Harry Kloman

A Korean artist's riff on Call of Duty asks us to reflect on warfare.

Where is the impersonal, unfailingly heroic aura assigned to soldiers in recruitment and propaganda videos?

• by Savannah Schroll Guz

Turf War

City's two women's football teams to collide

• by Jim Shearer

The newMoves Contemporary Dance Festival branches out.

A full-length work complements shorter new pieces by both local and visiting choreographers.

• by Steve Sucato

The curtain rises on City Theater's Louder Faster, Prime Stage's Antigone and a new touring version of West Side Story.

The comedy gives legendary Pittsburgh-born playwright George S. Kaufman writer's block and plops him back into his childhood home.

• by Bill O'Driscoll and Lucy Steigerwald

Shining City

Great direction and acting elevate a dramatically lax work.

• by Robert Isenberg

Antony and Cleopatra

With director James Christy the real attractions are sex, violence, betrayal and more sex.

• by Michelle Pilecki

Hairspray

Pittsburgh Musical Theater hits all the right notes in this frothy show.

• by Ted Hoover

Short List: Week of May 12 - 19