On the Brink: Could Polish Hill be on a verge of an upswing?
Slightly higher demand, very little supply and bargain prices are making for a desirable housing market in Polish Hill.
Vanaja
The effervescent 15-year-old fisherman’s daughter Vanaja (Mamatha) dreams of dancing, and considers it a lucky break to have secured a servant’s position with the wealthy landlady Rama Devi (Urmila Dammannagari). Rama Devi agrees to teach Vanaja classic dancing, and the girl’s virtuosity offers hope for better future than her prescribed lower-caste life. But class barriers…
Dance Alloy Theater’s eclectic beat drives A Different Drummer.
“I never know if a dance work is going to funny or not,” says Parker. “I don’t intend it to be, really; it is audiences and performers that connect with it in some way that makes people laugh.”
This Just In: Dec 5 – 12
Highlights from the local TV news: WTAE explores the spirit world … Sonni Abatta’s good vibrations
Rising dancer and choreographer Kyle Abraham premieres his first evening-length work in his hometown.
“I just thought, ‘Wow, he has really grown as a choreographer,'” says Ritchie.
Pipe Dreams
Ryan Praskovich reaches up over his shoulder to fine-tune his bagpipes; he’s adjusting the pitch of the drones, which give bagpipes their characteristic low humming accompaniment. They need to be perfectly in tune, and steady as a rock. As the 14-year-old Green Tree native stands on the intimidating stage of Oakland’s Mellon Institute Auditorium in…
Guys and Dolls
Director Steve Cosson knows exactly what makes an old musical like this “sing,” and drives the production with pace and polish.
A Conversation with William Lassek
Dr. William Lassek is an unlikely celebrity: He’s a soft-spoken adjunct at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Epidemiology. But he also co-authored a widely publicized recent study, “Waist-hip ratio and cognitive ability: Is gluteofemoral fat a privileged store of neurodevelopmental resources?” According to its findings, men prefer women with narrow waists and wider hips…
A photo exhibit at the Carnegie shows how we were Picturing Childhood a century ago.
In Munhall’s gelatin silver print “Edgar Munhall Drawing” (ca. 1938-1941), the small boy is shown totally absorbed in his work, in a very touching moment of intimacy.
The spirit of the season fires the Boilermaker Jazz Band’s new CD
A reminder that the black-and-white era was lived in vibrant color.
Jane Bernstein’s Rachel in the World describes the challenges facing developmentally delayed adults and their families.
Rachel in the World is also interesting as an expression of that peculiarly American notion of the pursuit of happiness.
Satanic Bat’s latest a heavy high(light) for the local metal scene
Takes you on a long-distance journey whether you’re smoking the “Sweet Leaf” or not.
Forgetting Our Roots
I don’t live in the lawn-obsessed suburbs or a college dorm with a bong-wielding slacker, but everywhere I go, grass is all anybody talks about. Ever since the Nov. 26 Monday-night game against the Dolphins, you can’t swing a Terrible Towel without hitting a nerve about Heinz Field and its much-maligned turf. The uproar led…
Letters to the Editor: Dec 5 – 12
Feedback from our readers: Getting a clue in the Wecht/Buchanan battle … bad choices on abortion stories
Savage Love
Dan! I can’t believe you wrote that response to Hawt And Royally Depressed! He wrote because his wife of 10 years had “let herself go.” Men and women were hitting on him and he had to resort to stoning before he could be with her. And you told this asshole to “be honest with her.”…
Sakura Teppanyaki & Sushi
There is a whole set of simple, warm, tasty and healthy Japanese dishes that has rarely, if ever, reached Pittsburgh’s tables. Sakura, which means “cherry blossom” in Japanese, begins to put this omission to rights.
Fast Talk at Schenley High
Saving Schenley High School is as much about preserving our future as it is about preserving our past. Given that this asbestos-ridden structure is an historic landmark, it cannot be demolished. So will it simply be abandoned, along with the hopes and dreams of students, parents and teachers? Renovating Schenley would cost $64 million,…
Business: East End Food Co-Op cafe downplays vegan menu
The change from a vegan-centered menu at the East End Food Co-op’s café has left some customers and employees with a sour taste in their mouths.
Eat n ‘At
You won’t find Marsha Dugan Kolbe and Gail Nesbitt Jones huffing and puffing at Curves on a Saturday afternoon. Their passion for Pittsburgh food outweighs their desire for a size-four skirt. The authors of Where We Like to Eat n ‘At: Celebrating Pittsburgh’s Neighborhoods, a recent book that chronicles their gastronomic gadabouts, spend as much…
Cultures: “Grandmothers” come from all over the world to help heal Pittsburgh
If it’s one thing Pittsburgh has a lot of, it’s grandmothers. Who knew they’d apparently be the key to the future?
Locals Life in Bed license self-released album … to Japan
But just how big is “big in Japan”?
Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
The film reinforces the myths that made The Clash “the only band that mattered” even as it reveals Strummer to be a complex and conflicted man. Yet as much as Strummer was driven and undone by ambition and fame, he held certain truths — a love of music; the desire to reach people; a healthy…
How Many Dumb Americans Can Fit In My Sony Flatscreen TV
A poem by Karen Manion.
Ira and Abby
Robert Cary’s romantic comedy follows a familiar path: a meet-cute between neurotic Jewish guy and an amusingly screwed-up girl, followed by an awkward courtship — troubles with family and ex-lovers, misunderstandings, the limits of psychotherapy — to be wrapped up tidily with a wedding. Yet Ira and Abby still has its own sly sparkle; the…
Pop chameleon Todd Rundgren plays the Rex Theatre
“That, to me, is what matters — leveraging your success, however great or small it may be, to make musical advances.”
A scheme to deliver a trick play to the Steelers motivates the comedic documentary The Steal Phantom.
Fandom itself is the subject of The Steal Phantom, a comedic documentary about Georgiades trying to get the Steelers, during their 2006 season, to consider a trick play he’d designed. The 65-minute movie, by Georgiades and Trevar Cushing, screens at the Tue., Dec. 11, installment of the Film Kitchen series (a CP-sponsored event). Also screening…
Iron Lung unleashes the power violence at Roboto
When your songs are 40 seconds long, quite a few fit on a 7-inch, and an LP is quite an undertaking.
Delirious
In this comedy, a grungy, homeless wannabe actor (Michael Pitt) is torn between the hangdog New York paparrazo (Steve Buscemi) who befriends him and the coddled blonde pop star he’d like to more-than-befriend. Buscemi makes his character’s flop sweat palpable, but DiCillo is as funny and even sympathetic mocking celeb lifestyles as he is sketching…
Rasputina’s cello-rock visits the Rex Theatre
Another chapter in Rasputina’s dusty tome of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, cellos and corsets.
Redacted
Through a collection of “acquired footage” — from a French documentary, soldiers’ personal cameras, security cameras, an Arab TV news team and Web sites — we piece together what precipitated a terrible event: the rape and murder of an Iraqi teen-ager by U.S. soldiers, and its subsequent cover-up. De Palma, who also scripted, casts his…
