A Conversation with Jerry Grcevich
Jerry Grcevich is a master of Croatian string music, or tamburitza, his skills celebrated both in the U.S. and Croatia. The Pittsburgh-area native and longtime resident of North Huntington performs regularly with The Jerry Grcevich Orchestra, and every Tuesday night with his Gypsy Strings at the South Side’s Gypsy Café. In September, Grcevich,…
Casanova
When you seduce as many women as Giacomo Casanova did, and when you publish a 12-volume memoir in French about your antics, you sort of have to expect they’re going to make movies about you. In the delightful La Nuit de Varennes, set during the French revolution, Marcello Mastroianni played the…
Best of 2005
Can you believe it? You’re all a year older, and another year at the movies has grown old with you. The older you get, the more selective you become about the movies you see. Been there, done that — you know the drill. Hollywood, foreign, indie, digital video: Movies come from…
Top 10 film experiences of 2005
Filmmaker, curator and educator 1. Robert Breer at the Carnegie Lecture Hall (part of the Carnegie International artist lecture series). Breer’s films are the best examples of painterly techniques extended into film animation. 2. “Valentin de las Sierras” (1967), by Bruce Baillie. This ethnographic experimental film made in Mexico is one…
Archaeological Doug
It sounds like a wrestling move, or an outré sex act. But the local underground-art mini-phenomenon known as Negative Douglas began with relative innocence: As a banal circa-1970s grade-school class photo, swiped off the Internet and e-mailed to a friend. The sender, Lloyd Canada, labeled the image “Douglas” and shipped it…
Group Hopes for Leverage on Lever-Machine Successors
Unhappy with Westmoreland County Commissioners, who selected the county’s new electronic touch-screen voting machine on Dec. 29 without offering public demonstrations of any possible choices, voting activists have formed the watchdog 10-County Citizens’ Coalition For Voter Verified Paper Ballots. Marybeth Kuznik of Penn Township in Westmoreland County, whose Web site (www.votePA.us) tracks voting issues…
Gaming: Preventing More from Saying ‘Hit Me Again’
Bill Kearney hates gambling and the destruction he says it brings to families. So it’s a little strange that the recovering self-described “degenerate gambler” was glad when the state gaming board finished accepting applications for the state’s five proposed stand-alone casinos. “I’m glad because I knew they were coming all along,” he explains.…
Crime: He’s the Rapper, I’m the Thief
In rapper-turned-Oscar-nominated-actor Will Smith’s first movie, 1993’s Six Degrees of Separation, he played Paul, a con man faking the identity of actor Sidney Poitier’s son to gain access to the uppercrust Manhattan gentry — and make a few bucks. Fewer than 10 years of separation later, Carlos Lomax of Duquesne would be put in jail…
He’s Not That Sort of Doctor, But He Plays One on TV
Quick quiz: For which 2005 statement will televangelist Pat Robertson be best remembered? a. “If [Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez] thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it.” b. “I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover [Pennsylvania]: if there is a disaster…
Suggestions for 2006
Perhaps it’s a tribute to former Mayor Tom Murphy: Pittsburgh may lack a lot of things these days, but big ideas aren’t among them. For better and worse, during his 12-year administration Murphy was a big-picture guy. He was frequently criticized, of course, because the pictures were sometimes so big that they crowded everyone else…
Bantu featuring Adewale Ayuba
Legend has it that Fuji — the Arab-music-inflected sounds of Nigeria’s dance clubs — was named for Japan’s Mount Fujiyama not because of any spiritual association with Japan, but simply for the mysterious grandeur and braggadocio that Fuji music’s founders saw in photos of the mountain. Which fits perfectly with the swaggering sound…
Twink
It’s good that Bostonian mad scientist Mike Langlie, under the typically lulling moniker Twink, has chosen to make avant-garde children’s records rather than pursue any of the other options available to someone with his mindset — such as death-ray invention, secret-island-lair plotting, or stealing all of the Earth’s supply of some certain precious…
LOGGERHEADS
Writer/director Tim Kirkman’s gentle drama set in North Carolina tracks between three stories, each set a couple years apart, that eventually coalesce into one integrated narrative. In the earliest thread, a somewhat lost young gay man, Mark (Kip Pardue), befriends a motel owner (Michael Kelly) at a beach while trying to save loggerhead turtles; set…
Firehouse Lounge
Location: 2216 Penn Ave., Strip District; 412-434-1230 Hours: Tue.-Sat. 5 p.m.-midnight Prices: Small plates $5-10 Fare: Creative club grub Atmosphere: Lamp-lit lounge Liquor: Full bar As parents of an almost-2-year-old, allow us to confirm something you may have long suspected about small children: They’re bad business for nightclubs. Their parents, former possessors of flattering wardrobes…
Tom Marches On
There’s nothing more entertaining than a loudmouth populist rabble-rouser, and Tom Flaherty specialized in rousing the rabble. Politicians and pundits regularly derided his bombast: Former County Executive Jim Roddey thought Flaherty was so unpopular he used Flaherty’s image in campaign advertisements, even though Roddey’s opponent was Dan Onorato. But you won’t have Tom Flaherty –…
Tom Murphy’s End-of-Term Exam
“… Mayor Murphy also announced that he will teach an undergraduate course at Chatham College focusing on environmental policy and urban redevelopment. … ‘I am delighted to have the opportunity to give back to Chatham and to help educate the leaders of tomorrow …'” — Dec. 27 press release ENV 355: ENVIRONMENTAL AND POLICY CONSIDERATIONS…
