ValentíÂn
In the year that Neil Armstrong took one giant leap for mankind, 8-year-old Valentín takes one small step for literature. Cross-eyed, bespectacled, and wise way beyond his years (or so he thinks), Valentín lives in a world of his own design. Part of this world is hope — he wants to be an astronaut,…
Baadasssss!
In 1971, director Melvin Van Peeples, who had just completed the studio comedy Watermelon Man, did the unthinkable: He made an independently produced film that was profane, had low-low-budget on-screen values, and in an incendiary social moment, boasted a black ghetto revolutionary hero who was taking no more no shit from the white man. No…
Piccadilly
At the ultra-snazzy Piccadilly Club in London, where the elite meet to eat, drink and be entertained, Valentine, the club’s oily manager, has a pencil-thin mustache and an eye for Mabel, the flashy dance sensation who performs with her partner, Victor, who believes she’s in love with him. But Valentine made Mabel’s career — and…
The Chronicles of Riddick
In Pitch Black, the silver-eyed, night-visioned convict Riddick (Vin Diesel) was the anti-hero, the untrustworthy guy driven to good by interplanetary beasties. In The Chronicles of Riddick, director David Twohy again asks Riddick “to save or not to save”: The Necromongers are going planet to planet, mongering muchos necro, and nobody can stop ’em –…
The Terminal
Eastern European Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), through some bureaucratic snafu, ends up stuck in JFK’s international terminal in this marginally sappy, light comedy from Steven Spielberg. Viktor befriends various airport workers, and makes a new life for himself at Gate 67. The best parts of the film unearth the alternate reality of the terminal’s work…
Appraising Grace
When the police came for Grace Keller on May 6, they found her hiding in the rafters of her dream house. Since last fall, Keller had been living like the Swiss Family Robinson with several housemates in a ramshackle yet still sturdy vacant house at the woodsy end of Beelen, a short, isolated street on…
Power Switch
Last week Pittsburghers were treated to an all-too-rare spectacle: Mayor Tom Murphy acting with prudence, restraint, and diplomacy. So now we’re probably really screwed. In recent months, Murphy has struggled with both the city’s financial crisis and with the Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, a panel appointed by state legislators to help solve it. But…
Hip Hop Bloc Party
“We’re about to see what happens when groups come together,” says Will Mega, looking like Mr. Clean in white linen and a mop-waxed bald dome. He’s the head of the Philadelphia “Dream Team” of six delegates to the National Hip Hop Political Convention in Newark, N.J., that ended June 19. Members of Philadelphia’s delegation, none…
Curtailing Kurtz
On June 15, 50 people gathered near the steps of the Federal Building Downtown in support of former Carnegie Mellon University art professor Steve Kurtz, who faces indictment by a federal grand jury for possession of benign biological agents related to his artwork. Kurtz’s case has mobilized artists in Pittsburgh, Buffalo — where he teaches art…
Bush League
“Economy of Scale.” Republicans flatter small-business owners as the economic backbone of the nation, and these entrepreneurs tend to respond in kind, with campaign contributions at least double those benefiting Dems. But Joshua Kurlantzick reports that George W. Bush has been a disaster for American small businesses, which employ more than half the private-sector workforce.…
The first stop on the East Busway leaving Downtown is called “Herron Avenue.” Did those long-legged birds once inhabit that area?
Three things make me suspect the answer is no. First, the blue heron dwells mostly alongside rivers and other bodies of water. Second, its name is spelled with just one “r.” Third, the Pittsburgh Penguins are the only waterfowl in the city that gets to determine naming rights. In fact, the Penguins’ nesting place…
A Sporting Chance
Mark Madden is one pissed-off fired sports columnist. The Tasmanian devil of Pittsburgh sports reporters still has his ESPN afternoon radio talk show, but the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette decided his act was too crazy for them to continue his sports column. At least that’s what I think. The official line is that they got rid of…
A Conversation with Glenn Granderson
Why’d you open an art gallery? Actually I started collecting art years ago. I was just trying to collect one or two pieces for the crib. But once I started buying it, it became really intriguing learning about the pieces and about African culture, especially with the African masks. Once I started learning about the…
David Mead
David Mead’s heartfelt and intimate songs are the antithesis of today’s Total Request Live music world. David Mead is the next David Gray. David Mead’s music says something in an age in which saying something seems to have gone out of style. David Mead’s songs can be more powerful with just an acoustic guitar and…
Citizen You!
Like the namesake vegetable of the publication that employs them, Citizen You!, co-written by staffers of The Onion, has unexpectedly many layers. The oversized paperback’s red, white and blue cover, its ferociously grinning suburbanite models backgrounded by a fighter jet streaking across a huge stars-and-stripes, promises “The Ultimate Patriotic Handbook.” It sure is, loyal…
Fahrenheit 9/11
In Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore created a haunting centerpiece, an eye in the storm over gun violence, out of silent, grainy surveillance footage from that ill-fated Colorado high school. There’s a similar moment in Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore’s gleeful evisceration of the Bush Administration, but it’s not the one you might guess. Moore recalls…
