Robot rock
When a venue’s run and booked by a rotating cast of members, there are bound to be ebbs and flows in the kind of music booked there. The Mr. Roboto Project, being collectively run, hosts a variety of different types of show, nearly all somewhere along the loose lines that (perhaps fail to) define “punk.”…
Oprah’s Big Give
Touched by Oprah: Her Big Give is a big dud.
Bad Sign
On the one hand, it’s just a sign. Nobody is going to get gunned down by it. Neighborhoods aren’t going to be consumed by orgiastic acts of public violence. But the contentious debate over a planned electronic billboard on Grant Street’s Greyhound station/parking lot is going to have consequences. Even though the only thing that…
Getting the Picture
When Bruce Schneier hears that millions of dollars are coming to Pittsburgh from the federal government to put surveillance cameras on our bridges, buildings and highways, “I just sigh and think, ‘More money wasted,'” says the California security-tech expert. “What are the cameras supposed to do?” The simple answer: They’re supposed to protect our rivers…
Semi-Pro
If you loved Ferrell as a hapless, self-absorbed, tantrum-throwing vulgar frat boy (Old School), newscaster (Anchorman), NASCAR driver (Talladega Nights) or figure skater (Blades of Glory), you’ll thrill to Kent Alterman’s mid-1970s-set period comedy. In it, Ferrell portrays Jackie Moon, owner/manager/player of a struggling Flint, Mich., semi-pro basketball team, aspiring to an NBA berth. It’s…
Penelope
Marl Palansky’s contemporary fairy tale set in London revisits a common problem: Having been born into a cursed family, pretty, bright Penelope (Christina Ricci) is disfigured by having the nose and ears of a pig (albeit a pretty cute pig). Only the love of a true-hearted suitor can magically dispel her porcine features. The likely…
City of Men
Acerola and Laranjinha are teen-age best friends, raised in the same hillside favela above Rio de Janiero. Each struggles to stay clear of the neighborhood’s violent drug gangs, but the two young fatherless men may be doomed by inescapable circumstances. But like its similar, but flashier predecessor City of God (whose director produced this film),…
Pierrot le fou
In it, a husband and father Fernando (Jean-Paul Belmondo) becomes disconnected from the banalities of his privileged life. Fernando’s life — and Godard’s film — changes after Fernando bumps into Marianne (Anna Karina). When he finds a corpse at her flat, they go on the lam, using movie tricks and clichés to escape. They talk…
Vantage Point
It’s an intriguing set-up: See the president’s shooting and subsequent melee through the eyes of several individuals on the scene. Each story is incomplete, but having seen all sides, an intelligent movie-goer will neatly assemble the puzzle pieces into the complete picture. Unfortunately, the frantic and sketchily plotted Vantage Point quickly devolves into tedium, gimmickry…
Letters to the Editor: Feb 27 – Mar 5
WTAE-TV responds to story on coverage of transwoman rescue.
Pittsburgh n’@
Local blogging highlights
It’s the Playhouse Dance Company’s big annual weekend at the Byham
“It’s about hate and it is pretty relentless.”
Environment
If you’re building a home with URA funds, it must now meet federal energy-saving standards.
Housing: Ministry wants to keep apartments out of universities’ hands
The Oakland Planning and Development Corporation is working to make sure that a low-income apartment building stays that way.
Animal Rights: Crying Fowl
A bill currently in committee at the state House of Representatives would make it illegal to use live birds or animals tethered or launched mechanically as targets for shooting. Proponents of House Bill 2130 say it will end what they call the inherent cruelty of pigeon shoots, where gunslingers take aim at birds that are…
Bodies of Evidence
“Real Human Bodies,” boast the billboards all over Pittsburgh, assuring us that the corpses in Bodies … The Exhibition, at the Carnegie Science Center, were once living beings. Surely that’s a large part of the allure for this hit show. So when Premier Exhibitions Inc., the company that created Bodies, got the plastinated cadavers shipped…
Reynold’s on Bryant
The menu reveals an intriguing lean toward Portuguese specialties, as well as Indian preparations.
Shtreiml combines klezmer, fusion and harmonica wizardry
Most of us don’t have an exhaustive knowledge of the history of harmonica playing.
Drag City multi-instrumentalist Baby Dee performs at Pitt
There’s a religious, or perhaps spiritual, bent to much of Baby Dee’s work.
Seminal instrumental rock group Tone has local roots
Beginning early this century, the second wave of post-rock became huge in the underground scene, as kids flocked to bands such as Explosions in the Sky, Mono and Russian Circles. Yet very few know that one of the seminal groups in the instrumental rock movement had its roots right here. And no, I’m not talking…
A Conversation with Ani DiFranco
“I always thought it was a drag that musicians would jump in bed with business people as a necessity for a successful career.”
Author Elizabeth Kolbert shares her Field Notes From a Catastrophe.
“The really incredibly dangerous thing about climate change is the time lag in the system — the time it takes for the climate to react to the greenhouse gas that you already have.”
A Conversation with Kirsten Womack and Donna M. Baxter
Kirsten Womack and Donna M. Baxter run “2 Tech Divas,” (www.myspace.com/2techdivas) a Web-based consulting business specializing in helping small and women-owned businesses harness the power of the Internet. Womack, 44, of Turtle Creek, runs a virtual-assistant business called Im-mack-ulate Impressions. Baxter, 39, of Bloomfield, is CEO and Webmistress of thesoulpitt.com and has a book coming…
Save a seat at Gooski’s for fIREHOSE guitarist Ed Crawford
“I went to Steelers, Pirates and Pens games, taking advantage of the good times.”
The American Clock
Today, we may be hovering on the edge of renewed economic hard times, but Miller’s rarely eloquent text makes few substantive points about our society’s ills then or now.
Of Mice and Men
To make this story live up to its sad and tragic potential, Keitel needs to find a way to have his principal actors go deeper — not an easy assignment.
The Piano Lesson
This production is all about fascinating stories told by wonderfully “human” people.
BoxSpring Café
The victuals served at this museum café often mirror the art exhibits.
Sign of the Times
“Just because you can’t see a process,” URA Executive Director Pat Ford was saying, “doesn’t mean it’s not transparent.” After a while in this business, you learn to appreciate statements like that. They are like passages from the Tao Te Ching, or riddles about trees falling in empty forests. Ponder them enough, and you may…
Savage Love
At first glance, I am the guy your mother wants you to marry: successful, sweet, clean-shaven. Below the surface, I am the guy your mother warned you about: pierced tongue, tattoos, a ton of kinks. A couple of months ago, I met a woman who wanted to be a sex slave. We talked about relationship…
At Space, Hot Metal puts the thermometer through its paces
The warmth they produce gives the sense of standing next to a living thing.
Suzie Silver surveys the stars at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts
If NASA had moved mission control to Studio 54 in 1982, it would have looked and felt like this.
