Three Times
The new film from Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao Hsien tells three love stories set in three different eras, with the same actors (Chang Chen, Shu Qi) playing the leads in each segment. Written correspondence is important, sometimes heartbreakingly so, in all three relationships … and in each one, awkward, exigent or unrequited love…
Phat Fish & Chix
Location: 4052 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield. 412-682-3474 Hours: Seven days, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Prices: Sandwiches, $4-9; combos, $7-13 Fare: Fried fish and chicken, with some surprises Atmosphere: Cheerful fast food Liquor: BYOB Smoking: None permitted We’ll confess that we were slow to catch on to the name. Perhaps we were distracted by the trendy spelling of…
Remains of the Day
The feds are rooting around a horse farm up in Michigan, looking for Jimmy Hoffa. A Detroit TV station alleges the FBI got a tip from Donovan Wells, a 75-year-old convict at the Federal Medical Facility in Lexington, Kentucky. Wells has a 2012 release date he must not be figuring he’ll make: He’s probably hoping…
Pirates Bring Down the House
Anybody who owns an old house knows that it takes a special kind of love to care for it. Anybody who owns an old house on a tight budget, meanwhile, knows what it feels like to be a Pirates fan. It tests you at every step. Things fall apart faster than you can keep up…
I found a commemorative plate for “Pittsburgh Welcome Week.” What was Welcome Week? What happened to it?
It’s one of the ironies of Pittsburgh’s postwar history: As we produced less and less stuff for the world, we made a bigger and bigger production out of ourselves. As the steel industry waned, local PR efforts increased … and the fewer people lived here, the more we boasted about how “livable” Pittsburgh was. It’s…
Gay Rights/Politics Stonewall Dems Gather to Rock Country
It’s no coincidence that the mug of Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is featured on the Stonewall Democrats’ national convention poster this year. The gay political group is headed here June 2-4 for its semi-annual gathering partly because the Penn Hills Republican is a top Democratic target in this fall’s election. Much of the days’…
City LifeNew Tunes for Old Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh should be unwrapping a Labor Day weekend music festival for its 250th birthday party in 2008. “Every major city has a specifically music-only festival that draws in an enormous amount of economic impact,” says Ryan Walsh, program director for the Coro Center for Civic Leadership. While events such as the Three Rivers Arts Festival…
A Conversation with Joshua Bakaitus
With the motto “Serving thousands since 2000,” Bridgeport Entertainment (www.bridgeportent.com) has brought hundreds of indie and major-label bands into the Charleroi and Pittsburgh areas for concerts. It also designs Web sites and releases records, and has dabbled in fashion and band management. Wearing all these hats is founder 19-year-old Joshua Bakaitus, a Charleroi…
Mountain Folk
Ally Reeves’ comic-strip story “Onward! For the Ephemeral” is set in an isolated communal village where everyone wears animal masks. “The masks gave us new freedoms!,” says the narrator. “We forgot who people were before … and masks are fun!” “Our masks,” concludes the narrator, “were part of a utopia we…
Taking the Long View on Mayview
It could easily be mistaken for a college campus, or a gated suburban housing development. Freshly cut grass gleams in the spring sun. A group of residents chatters away in one of the gazebos that dot the sprawling South Hills landscape, where low-slung red-brick buildings spread across the verdant expanse. Geraniums and other florals peek…
Tom Breiding and American SonTime to RollAmerison Records
When you think of it, roots rock trades in some pretty weird ideas. For starters, being “real” replaces imagination and skill as the all-important virtue, a reverence for authenticity extending to mythical underdogs and nostalgia for a hard-luck, hard-livin’ past … dubbed “simpler days.” Coupled with a Grapes of Wrath value system, you…
X-Men: The Last Stand
1 It’s superheroic eye candy, sure, but the real pull of the X-Men movies lies in their taffylike metaphors. The good guys, hyper-talented freaks, are “born that way,” and with storylines focusing on their misfit status and government repression, the “mutant” X-folk can represent any persecuted group you like: ethnic, religious or sexual…
