A conversation with Bridget Weedn
Fox Chapel etiquette consultant Bridget Weedn says everyone could use more polishing, and threatens her big bouncing boxer dog, Bevo, with doggie-manners school when he leaps cheerfully at guests. She works with children and teens, and helps businesspeople navigate manners and protocols the world over. What makes a parent call you?…
Environment: Bucks to Breed Hybrids Stop Here — Temporarily
A program to encourage Pennsylvanians to drive fuel-efficient cars has guzzled the last of its funding two months ahead of time, and next year’s budget is likely to be smaller. The Department of Environmental Protection program, offering $500 rebates to people who bought hybrid cars or cars running on alternative fuels, will likely burn…
For Witch It Stands
His résumé brims with satirical speculative fiction — such as Towing Jehovah, in which God’s two-mile-long corpse is found afloat in the Atlantic — and he’s often compared to Kurt Vonnegut. But State College-based writer James Morrow’s ninth novel is a riff on the past, exploring the struggle between reason and superstition. Set…
The Notorious Big Phill
Just in case you were wondering why he’s Big Phill — as opposed to Li’l Phill or Medium Phill — anyone who’s spent time with Phillip Thompson knows it’s his big ideas, big opinions, big connections … and he’s kinda tall. DJs are normally quiet people in public, preferring to do their talking…
The 2006 Pulitzer Award Preview
For journalists, this is award season — the time when the media engages in an orgy of self-congratulation. For the past few months, a slew of professional associations (few of which you’ve ever heard of) have been reviewing work submitted by local journalists. The results are now beginning to filter in, and reporters celebrate every…
Inside Man
Howard Hawks’ famous 1946 detective thriller The Big Sleep tells a story so convoluted that even its author, Raymond Chandler, doesn’t know who committed one of its murders. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey leaves so many questions unanswered that Arthur C. Clarke had to write a novel to explain it. …
Tsotsi
One way to die slowly in South Africa is AIDS. Another way is to be Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae), a young thug from a township of shotgun shacks who commits his crimes in nearby Johannesburg. We meet him and his three droogs as they surround a flush fellow on a crowded subway and reach into his…
The Pittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film Festival
The 13th annual Pittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film Festival concludes its program of international and domestic films representing Jewish experiences. Films screen through Sun., April 2, at the SouthSide Works, on the South Side (412-381-7335). Tickets are $8 for adults, $7 for seniors and $5 for students. For tickets and more information, see www.pjiff.net or…
ASK THE DUST
From its dreadful title right through to its hackneyed ending (a memento left on a desert grave), Robert Towne’s adaptation of John Fante’s novel of Depression-era Los Angeles is dull and uninspiring. A down-and-out, emotionally blinkered writer (a miscast Colin Farrell, painted brown to look Italian-American) taps away on his Underwood between sparring matches with…
FIND ME GUILTY
Sidney Lumet’s cockeyed courtroom Mafia drama, based on a real RICO case involving New Jersey’s Lucchese family, has the misfortune to open just as Tony Soprano is back in our living rooms. Comparisons are inevitable, and while Lumet tries to craft a humanistic drama out of the story of one colorful mobster – Jackie DiNorscio,…
Vivo
Location: 565 Lincoln Ave., Bellevue. 412-761-9500 Hours: Wed.-Sat. 5-9 p.m. Prices: Appetizers $8-12; entrées $25-40 Fare: Rarified Italian Atmosphere: Urban villa Liquor: BYOB Smoking: None Live. Worship. Shop. So reads the 1950s-era sign welcoming motorists from Ohio River Boulevard into Bellevue, a bedroom community 20 minutes from Downtown. Yet more than the other small towns…
GO FOR ZUCKER!
An unrepentant gambler, boozer and failed family man, East Berliner Jaeckie Zucker, must reunite with his long-estranged Orthodox brother in order for either brother to claim their inheritance. Both families pitch in to help – Jaeckie’s Gentile wife buys an instruction book on Judaism – but deep-rooted family quarrels keep the two brothers from reconciling:…
Amongst Their Weaponry …
“Advance easily through a hail of rocks, bottles and insults with Imperial Advanced Tactical Gear from Damascus!” says an on-line police equipment catalog (ChiefSupply.com) that features an officer modeling body armor. “Imperial protective gear is the perfect choice for crowd control, cell extractions and other tactical situations.” Thank God police work is just one more…
ICE AGE: THE MELTDOWN
The animal crew is back, having survived one Ice Age and now confronting the melting of the polar caps. In Carlos Saldanha’s animated family comedy, big manly mammoth Manny (voice of Ray Romano) can’t find a mate and thus fears extinction. The female mammoth he does find, Ellie (voice of Queen Latifah), thinks she’s a…
Caped Capers
Faster than a speeding mullet! More powerful than a local yokel! Able to stare at tall buildings while standing his ground! It’s … Super Bob! Yes, Pittsburgh Mayor Bob O’Connor is developing quite a reputation as a crime-fighting superhero. When the Golden Triangle was paralyzed by a pigeon-shooter thought to be a terrorist, Super Bob…
LARRY THE CABLE GUY: HEALTH INSPECTOR
Immediately we’re treated to a close-up of a hairy butt crack. Trent Cooper’s softhearted but vulgar comedy then works that ass out but good courtesy of its proud owner, comedian Larry the Cable Guy. Inexplicably, Larry — a Moon Pie-eating, PBR-guzzling, Dixie-fried goober — works as a restaurant health inspector. Turns out the turd-obsessed Larry…
For Pirates Fans, Hope Springs Eternal
Everywhere I turn, it seems, some national media type is pointing to the Pirates as a baseball team to watch. And I want to believe. I do. But you can’t blame Pirates fans if we adopt an “I’ll believe it when I see it” stance. Sports media outlets are so competitive that the heat is…
39 POUNDS OF LOVE
Tel Aviv resident Ami Ankilewitz is 34 years, weighs 39 pounds, and is paralyzed with muscular dystrophy (he can speak and move one finger). Yet, as Dani Menkin’s documentary establishes, Ami’s unflinching enthusiasm to participate questions what it means to be disabled. Reeling from a broken heart, Ami, with the filmmaker and some pals in…
Pushing a Needle-Exchange Agenda
County councilor Vince Gastgeb isn’t sure that giving needles to drug addicts is a good idea. But there’s one point the Bethel Park Republican does want to share. “I’m not on this crusade because I’m a neophyte homophobe from the suburbs,” he says. It might be tempting to think otherwise. The South Hills haven’t been…
WINTER PASSING
The playwright Adam Rapp makes his cinematic debut with this downbeat and quirky family drama that finds a struggling actress, Reese (Zooey Deschanel), returning to Michigan to visit her estranged father, Don (Ed Harris), a reclusive novelist. The story, written by Rapp, unfolds with few surprises — ultimately, it’s a familiar story of reconciliation, hindered…
Freed to Reduce Sentences, Courts Add Time More Often
A year after a Supreme Court ruling that defense attorneys, federal defendants and their advocates hoped would reduce prison time for federal convicts, the new rules have actually allowed longer sentences more often. And the local district now complies with the old guidelines even more often than does the average federal court nationwide. Before…
ZIZEK!
What’s up with our superego telling us to enjoy? In Buenos Aires and Manhattan, asking just such questions, sweaty, bearish, bearded and rumpled Slavoj Zizek (gee-jek) draws crowds that would gladden any indie rock band. In his books, articles and TV appearances (and even a 1990 run for his country’s presidency), the fiftysomething Slovenian philosopher…
Neophytes to the Finish
With two weeks to go before their special election face-off on April 11, the two candidates seeking to replace state Rep. Jeff Habay have sought to run relatively low-key campaigns. Were it not for some personal revelations, they might have succeeded completely. The 30th district encompasses Shaler, O’Hara, Hampton, Fox Chapel…
Anti-War: Recruiting for Anti-Recruitment Forces Goes National
Anti-military-recruitment protesters around the country who hope to copy Pittsburgh’s counter-recruitment movement are headed here for a national conference — and organizers hope the event will breed more protest actions nationwide. “It’s probably going to be the biggest gathering of people who are working on the counter-recruitment movement yet,” says Bridget Colvin, who is…
