Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution
Jackie Robinson’s breaking of baseball’s color line has long been seen as a singular, unrepeatable moment in American cultural history — especially because baseball really was the national pastime in 1947. But two new books demonstrate that for race in baseball, as for race in America, Robinson’s moment was neither a simple culmination nor a…
The Mural of the Story
It’s a dark, cloudy Tuesday morning and it’s threatening to rain on Kyle Holbrook. He and his friend Jayme Bailey are washing and priming a huge Prudential Rock-shaped wall in Wilkinsburg, part of the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway “park and ride” portal. Holbrook has been plotting on it since at least last year,…
The Manchurian Candidate
When Akira Kurosawa made Throne of Blood, he didn’t deny that his thoroughly compelling film was influenced by Shakespeare’s Macbeth. A generation later he did it again, turning King Lear into his towering Ran. But in each case Kurosawa came up with his own title, which would have been a good lesson for Jonathan…
Roland’s Seafood Grill
Location: 1904 Penn Ave, Strip District. 412-261-3401 Hours: Mon.-Thu. 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-midnight; Sun. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Prices: Pizza, $8-10; pasta, $12-17; entrees, $16-30 Fare: Seafood, pasta and pizza Atmosphere: Indoor/outdoor, meet & greet, surf & turf Liquor: Full bar One of life’s simpler pastimes is people-watching. Whether speculating about the lives or…
The Village
Writer and director M. Night Shyamalan has made his reputation with moody thrillers that pack twist endings. He caused us to re-think dead people (The Sixth Sense), superheroes (Unbreakable) and aliens (Signs). And here, in The Village, Shyamalan invites us to speculate about monsters in the deep forest, and it’s not giving anything away to…
Kerry-ed Away
It’s no surprise that a hatchet man for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has trouble relating to a strong-willed woman like Teresa Heinz Kerry: Trib publisher Richard Mellon Scaife, after all, once called a female reporter a “fucking Communist cunt.” But what’s the rest of the media’s excuse for its coverage of the shove heard ’round the…
Seducing Dr. Lewis
In St.-Marie-de-Mauderne, an island village of just 120 people somewhere in watery upper Canada, the fish have long ago gone out to sea, taking the town’s economy with them. In the good old days, the men would begin work at dawn, come home in the evening to a hearty fish dinner, and then crawl…
What are those silver structures at the curb in front of the US Steel Tower on Grant Street? They look like Art Deco bicycle racks, or the first two of an intended row of … flowers?
You know, one of the compensations of my job is the chance to be present when history is being created. I, for one, will never forget the way the hair stood up on my arms when Jeff Goldblum Day was recently decreed by City Council. And I was present back in early April of this…
Road Movies
The films of Roger Beebe and Bill Brown sometimes constitute sociology by other means. Take Beebe’s The Strip Mall Trilogy (2000), his nine-minute whack at coming to terms with the antic banality of the built environment of what was then his new home in Gainesville, Fla. A rapid montage of commercial-strip signage, cut to the…
When Push Comes to Shove
I love the floppy, sloppy, somewhat moppy hair on Teresa Heinz Kerry’s head. It says, “Hey, I might be a little bit edgy if you push me, so watch it.” Sorry to those of you who want another Stepford first lady, but Teresa rocks. And yes, my rock ‘n’ roll Teresa told a Pittsburgh…
The Corporation
With an approach that is part Michael Moore, part Adbusters magazine, filmmakers Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan seek to challenge the control corporations have over us, from our DNA on up. It’s an ambitious task: Any one of the film’s topics — like the creepy tactics of “guerilla marketing” or a battle over…
Playing Catbird and Mouse
Pittsburgh council had a lot of questions July 28, as it started debating how much governing power to cede to the state-appointed oversight board. Examples: How much tax revenue would the oversight board control? Would the city be allowed to tweak its budget in mid-year? And what, exactly, is a catbird, and who is in…
Donnie Darko
In the fall of 2001, writer/director Richard Kelly made an auspicious debut with a hard-to-categorize film that few people saw. Now re-released in a director’s cut with 20 extra minutes, Kelly’s tale of doomed teen, Donnie Darko, makes a little more sense but remains unsettling. Over 28 days, Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) struggles to make sense…
Two Varieties
Heinz — the food company H.J. — has been studiously nonpartisan in its public statements during this political season. Heinz — the Democrats’ First Lady nominee Teresa H. Kerry — reportedly likes the pickle pin she received with “Kerry” in the place occupied by “Heinz” for the past 111 years. The latter –…
The Door In the Floor
Rumpled Ted Cole (Jeff Bridges) — a successful children’s author, albeit a serial boozer and philanderer — hires a prep-school kid Eddie (Jon Foster) to be his assistant. Eddie becomes enmeshed in the Cole family troubles — Ted’s marriage to Marion (Kim Basinger) is collapsing — and both manipulate the naïve Eddie for their own…
And the Survey Says
The county has $25 million burning a hole in its pocket. Want to help them spend it? Buying 50 million candy bars is out — the money, from the federal Housing and Urban Development department, is supposed to go to affordable housing and community economic development projects, such as improvements to roads, sidewalks, sewer…
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
This documentary from Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger (HBO’s Paradise Lost films) follows heavy metal band Metallica through the two tumultuous years it took to produce its 2003 album St. Anger. The band has lost a bassist, but gained a therapist: It’s your chance to be a fly on the wall, not for all the…
Sweeping Changes
To know it’s summer in the city, you don’t have to listen for the tinny song of the ice-cream truck, or smell tar melting in the sun. Just look up your street on, say, the third Thursday of the month, and watch the street-sweeping tickets fluttering on the dashboards of the forgetful. You’d think…
The Mother
Recently widowed May (Anne Reid) moves in with her oh-so-contemporary grown children in London, and embarks on an affair with her daughter’s lover, a dissolute, if charming carpenter. While May finds the relationship liberating, its existence becomes a time bomb in an already fragile family. This film, directed by Roger Michell from a script by…
Overground Bikeroad
“Why would we think that cycling has somehow escaped the racism that has affected other parts of our society?” says Dr. Steven B. Thomas, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Minority Health. “We want to get African Americans linked to cycling by showing them their history in it.” Thomas and the Center…
Springtime In a Small Town
Tian Zhuangzhuang (The Blue Kite) directs this remake of the classic 1949 Chinese film, an elegant drama with just five characters. Set in post-war 1946 within the walls of a formerly well-tended home, young wife Yu Wen (Hu Jingfan) ministers to her sickly husband Li-yan (Wu Jun), her frustration barely concealed by the obligations of…
Press release of the week
Free for the Families that have lost a Loved One Overseas. Introducing letters “Direct from God,” honoring our troops and their families. Upon request, we will send a personalized letter “Direct from God,” free of charge, to the parents or spouse who have lost a loved one in the line of duty. To view this…
A Conversation with Anita Kulina
Who were you writing this book for? My goal was that some grandmother would have this book on her coffee table and her 7-year-old grandson would pick it up and be interested. I think it’s really the story of any town — the ethnic groups might be different but you find the same stories and…
Graham Coxon
Graham Coxon, the singer-songwriter who is best known as the bespectacled, speaker-shredding guitarist for Blur, has always been something of an underachiever. After spending more than 12 years in the shadow of foppish front-man Damon Albarn, Coxon left the suburban Britpop wonders in 2002 with four self-released solo albums under his belt in as many…
Kevin Finn
In an age of laptops, cell phones and global positioning systems, some who seek balance — a naturalist yang to the futurist yin — find it in organic foods, Buddhist meditation or rootsy folk music. How else to explain the exploding resurgence of acoustic genres, whether it’s the boomers with their carefully packaged alterna-folk or…
The Have Nots
Mixing styles of music isn’t anything new, but Pittsburgh octet The Have Nots blends punk, metal and ska into an unpredictable and relentless powerhouse, topped off with a full horn section. Formed from the ashes of three former steel-town bands — Social Outcast, Mudcat and Speedkill — the Have Nots have just released their…
