Dysfunctional Relationship
If Pittsburgh were a girl, she’d be both breathtakingly beautiful and hopelessly annoying. You wouldn’t want to leave her because she’s pretty and endearingly old-fashioned, but you’d consider dumping her because she’s stubborn and stuck in the past. When she’s in a good mood there’s no one else you’d rather be around. When she gets…
Zatoichi
Zatoichi is a blind itinerant masseur whose cane conceals a samurai sword he wields faster than the eye; driven by self-preservation, revenge and a sense of justice, the hunched, shuffling and white-haired elder nonetheless leaves a trail of bloodied bodies in rural 19th-century Japan. Add a couple lethal, grudge-bearing geishas and some gang warfare, though,…
I Love You, I Love You Knotweed
“We’re using them for an exhibit, but really, I think they’re using us,” says architect and Ground Zero volunteer Christine Brill as she attends to an innocent-seeming knotweed plant growing in a window of the six-foot-wide Skinny Building Downtown. Several dozen knotweed plants in five-gallon buckets line up like a belligerent, ragtag militia against…
Criminal Checks Cleared
For almost two years, Renee Wilson has headed People Against Police Violence, one of the most outspoken and active organizations addressing cases of brutality and homicide by police. For the past year, the Allegheny County district attorney’s office has made it The People v. Renee Wilson. Wilson and her ex-husband, along with Wilson’s daughter,…
Communist Rot
You may have thought the 2004 election was about the economy, or fighting terrorism. But judging by the utterances of some high-profile Republicans, it’s really about … fighting Commies! First, an Aug. 8 Tribune-Review editorial alleged that by holding concerts to support Democrat John Kerry, rocker Bruce Springsteen was helping “the resurgent … socialist/Marxist…
Press Releases of the Week
From registerandvote2004.org: Register and Vote 2004 asked young adults across the U.S. to submit ideas and vote on a pop-culture term to define the powerful 18-to-24-year-old voting bloc. The young adults who voted selected “Wired Networkers” as the winning name to describe their voting demographic. The new term won with 46 percent of the…
Bush League
“Baghdad Year Zero.” The Bushies’ problem in post-invasion Iraq wasn’t that they didn’t have a plan; it was that their plan was an ideological tar pit. The grand scheme wasn’t just to reward American contractors with juicy no-bid deals — it was also to sell off Iraq’s assets to private (usually non-Iraqi) corporations and write…
A Conversation With Jason Fate
Interviewer/Photographer: Heather Mull Last year, at the South Side’s LUXX boutique, this interviewer purchased a black and white wool jacket, the front of which is silk-screened with a mysterious numerical design. Everywhere the jacket has been worn — from the wilds of West Virginia to the streets of New York City to the Reeperbahn…
Terror Squad
Joey Crack season has returned. Many know him as the blimp-sized, PordaReecan emcee who was recently on MTV performing topless over Ashanti and R.Kelly’s bubblegum hip-hop beats. For some, he’s just the guy who used to hold the umbrella up for Big Pun — the only other emcee who could overshadow Joe in his own…
A Girl Called Eddy
A black cab pulls up to the corner in heavy rain and its trenchcoated passenger jumps out, newspaper over head, collar up against the autumn wind; a woman in a weathered checkered dress stares out of a café window, wondering whether she’ll get across the channel to Paris in this weather, and whether her mother,…
Sun After Dark
For Americans these days, international travel has become at least mildly subversive. Leaving and entering the country are both a bit harder — a lot harder if the corresponding nation is, say, Cuba — and much of the news we get is filtered through the crudely politicized mesh of the war on terror. Either that,…
Open Water
When your holiday goes sour and some screw-up leaves you stranded at the airport, you probably don’t think: At least I’m not floating out in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of sharks for company. That’s exactly what happens to the bad-luck couple in Open Water, and it’s the sort of insurmountable setback…
Touch of Pink
Two continents, two cultures, two parties, and one frantic international family disaster waiting to happen. In Toronto, in an affluent home, a large family of immigrants (Pakistanis by way of Kenya) celebrates the impending nuptials of a favorite son. The music is classical, and the attire is strictly suits, saris and a touch of…
Nó³i
Nothing much ever happens in the snow-sodden village that Icelandic writer/director Dagur Kári chose for the setting of his film Nói. So naturally, not much happens in the film, which revolves around a high-IQ 17-year-old who spends his days shooting at icicles, throwing rocks at rainbows, quietly defying authority and daydreaming of a way to…
Notes from Underground
Today, we speed through on interstates; the ritual of stopping along back roads to see the World’s Largest You-Name-It is giving way to the convenience of off-ramp emporiums. Yet folks lured by billboards still pull over and descend into show caves to marvel at nature’s strangeness. Unlike other roadside attractions whose lure may have been…
Garden State
The NBC situation dramedy Scrubs is a plucky little show that hangs on each year by a durable tether and keeps coming back for more. After three seasons, its winsome lead, Zach Braff, doesn’t need to prove himself as an actor of considerable range. So during his time off, he decided to prove himself as…
Grass Rootless
This may be all you need to know about Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign: The crusading attorney who fought corporate America on behalf of the working stiff is being sued. By a labor lawyer representing the homeless. In order to get on the Pennsylvania ballot this November, Nader’s Philadelphia campaign office employed homeless people to…
Broadway: The Golden Age
“In America we had the American theater, which is the only thing we invented in this country — except for jazz — and it’s gone.” The speaker is Kitty Carlise Hart in Rick McKay’s documentary about Broadway’s Golden Age. McKay wanted to find out if it was truly gone and, in fact, if it had…
Many Pittsburgh-area neighborhoods have nature-oriented names, such as Squirrel Hill, Fox Chapel, Beechview and Oakmont. But one area — the Mount Lebanon/Bethel Park region — has only religious names. This is a pretty good observation, isn’t it?
Well, yes and no. I mean, it’s not like those other neighborhoods you mentioned were filled with nature-worshipping heathens who dance naked around oak trees on Midsummer’s Eve or anything. That description really only applies to Fox Chapel. And neither Bethel Park nor Mount Lebanon was founded as a spiritual retreat — which is just…
Without a Paddle
Three childhood buddies — Seth Green, Matthew Lillard and Dax Shepard — pay tribute to their dead pal by embarking on quest through the backwoods of Oregon for lost treasure (specifically, D.B. Cooper’s stash — a historical reference surely nobody in this film’s preferred under-20 demographic could possibly be aware of). Along the way, director…
