Friends for Fugees
While traveling with Semester at Sea in 2003, Cohen opted out of the scheduled African safari to visit Kigoma in Tanzania, thanks to a charter flight organized by shipmate Kjerstin Erickson. “The plane lands and I’m in Mars,” he says. “I thought I was on the pages of National Geographic.” Cohen and 18 other…
Enviros Tan Industry’s Hyde
The Chamber of Commerce and environmental group Clean Water Action have faced off in front of Allegheny County Council before. But on April 20, the environmentalists finally won one. The subject was the controversial nomination of Leslie Hyde, a Koppers Inc. pollution lawyer, to the county Board of Health. The nine-member board sets pollution…
Casting the Second Stone
Mormons were the latest target of Ron McRae, leader of the Street Preachers’ Fellowship, based in rural Somerset County. McRae (center) and street preacher Larry Craft of New York (right) speak with a Salt Lake City police officer in front of the church conference center during its April 3-4 conference, which attracted a dozen SPF…
Bush League
“The Path to War.” If W. keeps insisting Saddam Hussein was a huge threat to world security, say this for him: At least he’s been consistently misleading. In a massive Vanity Fair article (May), Bryan Burrough, Evgenia Peretz, David Rose and David Wise track the decision to invade Iraq from its ideological roots in the…
Having a Ball
Ding, dong, Pat Toomey’s dead, Arlen Specter won instead, ding, dong, the right-wing nutbag’s dead! OK, the Pennsylvania congressman is still alive, but his political career is definitely worm food. Let me be the first to congratulate Snarlin’ Arlen on beating back the butter-churners from the black hole of conservatism known as the T.…
Who designed most of the buildings Downtown? Was there one prominent architect?
Maybe the skyline in some little jerkwater cities could be the work of a couple guys alone. Take London, for example: After a huge fire razed much of the town, 17th-century architect Christopher Wren was responsible for designing so many replacement buildings that an inscription on his tomb reads, “Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice,” which…
Pleasure Technicians
Pittsburgh’s Pleasure Technicians make music that walks a fine line: perhaps too machine-oriented for the rock folks, too guitar-heavy for the electronica obsessive. But that in-between is fertile ground — the rock-influenced ’90s big beat of the Chemical Brothers and various Skint Records outfits, and the post-show clubs where U2 and Paul Oakenfold first met.…
Various
It”s a lifestyle and music genre more heavily populated than you’d likely imagine, and growing every day: the eccentric Brit who lives in a revamped castle, reading Wilde and Kerouac, writing songs packed with deeply rewarding melancholia. A genre that’s not only alive and kicking, but perhaps stronger than ever, with two of its finest…
Dogville
After three hours of bleak drama — set on a threadbare stage, and sometimes filmed with a jerky, close-up, hand-held camera whose movements feel more like tics than visual style — the credits of Lars von Trier’s Dogville roll by over a series of scolding archival photographs that depict America’s 20th century of poverty and…
Mean Girls
It may be that a smart, funny film produced by Lorne Michaels and peppered with some of his SNL-ers may be one of the Signs of the Apocalypse, but I say, bring it on. Besides, for girls that have survived the social tortures of high school, Armageddon will surely be a cakewalk. Take Cady,…
Touchez Pas au Grisbi
In the 72 hours during which Touchez Pas au Grisbi unfolds, we learn all we need to know about Max, the seemingly uncomplicated central figure of Jacques Becker’s 1954 gangster thriller, which draws on the American cinema that came before it and unfurls a red carpet for Bob le Flambeur, Jean-Pierre Melville’s more stylish and…
Russia’s New Film Capital
The University of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Filmmakers present the sixth annual Russian Film Symposium, “Prophets and Gains: New Russian Cinema,” Mon., May 3, through Sat., May 8, with films and discussions scheduled on the Oakland campus and at the Melwood Screening Room. While previous sessions have examined themes within cinema such as imperial fatigue and…
Game On
The Resurrection Game starts with a great premise: For whatever reason, zombies are now everywhere; they’ve simply become part of the landscape, as annoying as any other vermin. Local filmmaker Mike Watt, who also wrote the script for The Resurrection Game, admits that film history led him to this fresh approach: “Everyone making a…
Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of the Independent Film
Reviewed by: AL HOFF In the 1990s, independent films burst out of the art-house ghetto and stomped across the land, breaking new stars and directors, creating new fortunes and firmly establishing “indie” as a marketable brand. Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of the Independent Film is a dense,…
Rare Bird
Earl C. Schriver is standing casually at one end of his perchful of birds. He’s waiting for the kids. Schriver has tethered a peregine falcon, a gyrfalcon, a red-tailed hawk and a golden eagle to the sturdy, 15-foot-long wooden perch, and he’s almost shoulder-to-shoulder with the big eagle. At 73, he’s even got something of…
Crimson Gold
From its stunning first scene to its deliberate delineation of a single, ill-fated life, Jafar Panahi’s Crimson Gold is another in a long line of socially conscious dramas from Iran. The focus here, though, isn’t the repression of women Panahi mapped so thoroughly in The Circle, but rather the growing rift between the rich and…
You Must Be Joe King
The recent furor over the city’s contract with its firefighters is reminiscent a bit of Texas political lore: A businessman gives a political hack $500 in exchange for his vote on an upcoming bill. The pol gladly accepts the money, but votes against the bill anyway. The businessman demands to know what happened, whereupon the…
Divan
In this low-key documentary, filmmaker Pearl Gluck, a 30-something New Yorker, tries to determine her comfort level with her Hassidic background. She makes her personal journey a literal one, traveling to Hungary in pursuit of a certain divan — a couch passed from successive generations in her family and revered for the number, and quality,…
A Sip of Kucinichino
Dennis Kucinich, super-underdog Democratic presidential candidate, climbed out of a blue minivan in front of Craig Street’s Kiva Han on April 25 to tremendous applause from a small group of supporters, who packed the coffeehouse and spilled out into the rain. “We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” said Ceci Wheeler, coordinator…
Man On Fire
In which an alcoholic ex-mercenary (Denzel Washington) finds redemption by brutally killing a mess o’ dirty Mexicans who have the temerity to kidnap a perfect, rich, blonde American child (Dakota Fanning). It’s hard to decide on Man on Fire’s worst flaw — its abhorrent race politics; its greeting-card sentiments embodied by teddy bears and St.…
