Lady in the Water
Oh, but it’s a troubled world we live in. Our long-lost neighbors from beneath the seas … apparently a wiser and more peaceful lot … keep trying to guide us toward betterment, sending emissaries whom we ignore. In writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s contemporary fairy tale The Lady in the Water, one of these aquatic facilitators…
Look Both Ways
Death is everywhere in Australian writer/director Sarah Watt’s Look Both Ways … especially in the mind of its protagonist, Meryl, a bored and restless landscape illustrator who imagines the worst all around her. We meet Meryl (Justine Clarke) right after her father’s funeral. During her ride home, some quick animated cutaways, in the style of…
My Super Ex-Girlfriend
About 15 minutes from the end of My Super Ex-Girlfriend, a benign summer romantic-comedy with Luke Wilson and, in the titular role, Uma Thurman, I finally “got” what it was supposed to be: a parody of superhero movies (that much I knew already); a quasi-feminist tract on talented, capable women who define themselves through their…
LEONARD COHEN: I’M YOUR MAN
In January 2005, Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright, Beth Orton, Teddy Thompson, Jarvis Cocker and many others performed the songs of Leonard Cohen in the Sydney Opera House. Captured on film, their tribute became the basis for the documentary I’m Your Man. The film alternates between the concert footage, testimonials from several of the artists and…
The Connie & Bonnie Show
In calling their traveling video-shorts program Films About Nothing, the women of The Connie & Bonnie Show are too modest. OK, maybe the one where stuttering clips of Godzilla, aerobicizers, figure skaters and Western-swing dancers are all made to boogie to a garage-R&B number is just for giggles. And maybe “Pez…
Mill Site Tavern
Location: 2512 E. Carson St., South Side. 412-432-7118 Hours: Tue.-Wed. 5 p.m.-2 a.m; Thu.-Sat. 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Prices: Starters $2-7, sandwiches and burgers $5-6.50, salads $3-7 Fare: Sandwiches, burgers and deep-fried pub grub Atmosphere: Old-school steel bar Liquor: Full bar Smoking: Permitted throughout Back when the SouthSide Works was the site of production, not just…
Small Screen Millennium Mambo
With a string of films in the 1980s and ’90s, Taiwan’s Hao Hsiao-Hsien leapt into the ranks of world cinema’s most acclaimed filmmakers. But his work … A Time to Live and A Time to Die; Goodbye South, Goodbye … rarely reached American theaters. One reason was surely their contemplative quality, often expressed…
Medical Night-mayor
I can’t believe Bob O’Connor’s bad luck. It is, of course, horrible when anyone gets cancer, but Mayor Bob’s cancer is like winning some horrible lottery of diseases. As you know by now, he’s suffering from a very rare type of lymphoma of the primary central nervous system. Or, put less delicately, brain cancer. It’s…
CLERKS II
In Kevin Smith’s follow-up to his breakout 1994 cult hit, Clerks, we catch up with that film’s hapless pair, Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randall (Jeff Anderson). Now in their 30s, they’re grinding away at a burger joint. Smith’s genially vulgar film snapshots one day, as the two harass customers, squabble, riff on pop culture and…
Clemente Was One for the Books
I’m too young to remember Roberto Clemente. I mean to really remember him. I “remember” his greatness in the same way I “remember” the Immaculate Reception — filtered through the recollections of family members, through interviews and film clips and writers who watched him play. So I recently read with great interest David Maraniss’ book,…
THE GREAT NEW WONDERFUL
New York City, September 2002: In Danny Leiner’s dramedy, the previous autumn’s events are a fog through which his characters must fumble while awaiting some cathartic moment that will free their grief and rage, and propel them forward. Among the protagonists of five intercut narratives are an ambitious cake-designer (Maggie Gyllenhaal); the parents of a…
Is it true that the Jehovah’s Witnesses was founded in Pittsburgh?
Pittsburghers have always had a desperate need to believe: Just ask the thousands of Pirates season-ticket holders. And indeed, as regards Jehovah’s Witnesses, “Pittsburgh may justly be considered the base of origin for this group,” writes O.M. Walton in his 1958 Story of Religion in the Pittsburgh Area. “Few Pittsburghers are aware of the conspicuous…
MONSTER HOUSE
A tween trio attempts to save their neighborhood from a mysterious human- and dog-eating house in this latest motion-capture animated film. Fresh-out-of-film-school director Gil Kenan is in your face with animation techniques that work wonders for the house’s rich textures as it devours and crumbles; unfortunately, it takes a good hour to actually get inside. It’s…
Waging War for the Minimum Wage
There’s a smug saying you may have heard about Pennsylvania. As a smug Pennsylvanian, I may have uttered it myself. “Pennsylvania,” the old saw goes, “is Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other — and Alabama in between.” It’s catchy, I’ll admit. But it turns out that on some issues, “Alabama” voters may be…
Private Dick
Richard Mellon Scaife’s divorce could be one of the “nastiest divorces in American history,” according to New York Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove. But you’re not likely to hear much about the legal proceedings in the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review … or anywhere else. Recent news items about the Tribune-Review publisher’s dealings with second wife…
East End Runaround
For many workers at the East End Food Co-op, the road to union recognition gets longer with every step they trudge. Although union supporters say a majority of workers have voted in favor of a union, the co-op is declining to recognize the election, in part because of a rival union…
NeighborhoodsFifteen Minutes Unframed
Don Lane is hoping one bit of Hazelwood that he’s salvaged turns out to be something more valuable than old bricks and lumber: He believes he’s got an original Andy Warhol. Lane, a former car salesman from Squirrel Hill, and his domestic partner, Rachel Stein, bought a late 19th-century house and an attached apartment building…
Positively Transported
There was cheering among young people for County Executive Dan Onorato last week, and the source of their excitement was … his transportation policy. At a July 13 forum hosted by the League of Young Voters and held at the Union Project in Highland Park, Onorato drew applause from the capacity crowd, which consisted…
Homelessness Two Strikes and We’re Out Again
The use of two temporary shelters during the run-up to last week’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game demonstrates the rift between perception and reality when it comes to the city’s homeless. One, set up by traditional service providers and volunteers, was teeming with homeless people who simply wished to keep their place in town until…
Terror Incognita
From all appearances … and for all we know … the University of Pittsburgh’s Posvar Hall could be one of Dick Cheney’s “undisclosed locations.” A squat concrete bunker that glowers over Schenley Plaza, it looks like it could withstand a direct bomb strike (and maybe be improved by one). It’s architecture of a style known…
A Conversation with Eddie Rose
Like other martial-arts enthusiasts of his generation, Edward C. Rose III was first inspired by watching Bruce Lee kick butt as Kato on the old Green Hornet TV show. But few stuck with it like Rose, a 48-year-old deputy in the Allegheny County sheriff’s department. The North Sider and life-long Pittsburgher went on…
David Bernabo
Dave Bernabo is a quiet giant. Unobtrusively striding about his business, he churns out volumes of subdued, left-field pop without making much fuss, except for a smattering of regional coverage. Touring with local alt-country act Boxstep straight out of high school, Bernabo broke off with Boxstep’s drummer, Greg Cislon, to form prolific indie-popsters Vale and…
Jack
Jack’s press-kit photo depicts five ordinary-looking, educated Pittsburgh guys and gals hanging out on a porch. They obviously listen to WYEP, like the Indigo Girls, Jayhawks, Slaid Cleaves, and possibly a bit of Neil Young or Bob Dylan. They have regular jobs … creative-writing professor, robotics scientist, social worker … and aren’t in…
Overlord
In America, young men have gone off to our last few wars with a sense of duty, honor and adventure. That’s because they knew about war only from newsreels, television or, if they read much, from books. But Tom Beddoes (Brian Stirner), who comes from a middle-class family, knows a little…
You, Me and Dupree / Little Man
It’s a comic premise as old as man himself: Somebody moves into a place of domestic tranquility and proceeds to wreak havoc. (It was a duplicitous snake that busted up the first happy home.) In due time, all parties involved learn a valuable lesson about life, love or how not to throw a…
