Secret Things
How seriously should we take a film like Secret Things, Jean-Claude Brisseau’s erotic slice-of-life-cum-morality-tale about two working-class women who use sex to achieve power in the corporate world? Seriously enough — once you strip away its decorations and get down to the bone. The way I’ve just described Brisseau’s film doesn’t begin to touch…
Bad-Faith Discussion
When the United Methodist Church held its national convention here a few weeks ago, church elders wrestled with the plight of a long-suffering minority. Their faith demanded they take a stand on the fate of society’s outcasts, unfortunates who have suffered endless persecution, their existence an open secret many of us can barely acknowledge. …
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring
On a small lake, encircled by steep wooded mountains, floats a one-room Buddhist monastery, accessible only by a rowboat. In it live an Old Monk (Oh Young-soo) and his disciple, Child Monk (Kim Jong-ho), a boy of perhaps 7 years. It is spring, and the lad explores his small world under the watchful eye of…
Miller Time
A classroom of empty desks in the Hill District’s Miller African-Centered Academy would seem to prove the city school board’s point: The district has too many unused seats. Schools need to close. Writing on the chalkboard, however, shows the room is still being used: “Hello, my name is Dunia. I come from Somalia, I…
‘Strip Mining
In Brian Dewan’s 11-minute filmstrip “A Little Girl and Boy,” two orphaned siblings are thrust into unwanted adventure. They are kidnapped, chased with a gun, arrested, sent to reform school — it’s a deadpan nightmare, illustrated with neat but child-like single-frame drawings and narrated by a calming, authoritative voice. Each frame is advanced by an…
City Councilor: Give Pittsburgh Liberty or Give it Debts
“I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” That was Revolutionary War orator Patrick Henry in 1775, referring to British rule of the American colonies. “Somebody has to fight in defense of the city, the city residents, and the city taxpayers. They are…
Mad Cowboy Disease
Ellen James and Berry Steiner are robots, not pirates. They’d rather be pirates, of course — I mean, who wouldn’t, right? — but have resigned themselves to a robot’s life peppered with the odd “Aaargh, me matey,” a frilly shirt or two, and Salt, the quarterly journal that the pair edits and publishes. But even…
Mayor to Overseers: Give Me Levies or Give Me Death
Rarely has the buck been passed so rapidly as on May 21, when Pittsburgh’s five state-appointed fiscal overseers and Mayor Tom Murphy continued their hot-potato treatment of the city’s budget meltdown. At 12:03 — three minutes into their meeting and without any discussion — the oversight board rejected Murphy’s five-year budget plan. They distributed…
Spike & Mike’s Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation
It is what it is, only moreso: From the graphic assassination of a children’s TV icon to a charming illustrated ditty titled “My First Boner,” this year’s compendium for the 18-and-over crowd lives up to its title by regularly living down to it. In other words, “Peepshow,” in which marshmallow bunnies procreate prolifically, is cutely…
Jobs on the Cutting-Room Floor
For years, it looked like Pittsburgh Filmmakers would never slow down, moving into bigger, newly renovated digs, opening three theaters, growing its academic offerings to accommodate hordes of new students, and entering the digital age with banks of sleek new computers. But on May 13 Filmmakers gave an outward sign that times can get tough…
Einstürzende Neubauten
With MTV’s suburban mallscape being bombarded by a noisome barrage of manipulated, overproduced teenpop, gangsta rap and nu-metal for the past few years, various segments of the underground have crafted intelligent responses (smarter, at least, than punk rock’s answer to overblown arena rock was in the mid-’70s). Indie rockers have gone folk and alt-country, art-rockers…
Degree Decrees
After several years of activism, community organizer Rochelle Jackson is upbeat, enjoying one of the few victories that have come along for her constituency — mostly female, mostly single-parent welfare recipients. Last December, Jackson’s organization, the Welfare Justice Project of economic-justice nonprofit Just Harvest, won a change in Pennsylvania state policy that will allow…
Ghost Riders in the ‘Burgh
On the morning of March 20, Shannon Mominee was riding his bicycle to work down Verona Road in the East End. As he descended the hill toward the intersection with Graham Boulevard, he picked up speed. Suddenly, a Ford F-350 truck coming the opposite way crossed over into his lane while making a left turn.…
Benefit Costs
With attendance shrinking over the past three years, the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force declared its 10th annual AIDS Walk will also be its last. Long-time Walk volunteer Bob Michelucci labels walks “passé” and tedious due to overuse. PATF Teams Coordinator Kira Mamula agrees, saying walks were something to do way back in the early…
A Conversation with Mamie Stein
What constitutes a fiasco for a prop master? Opening night at Cafe Puttanesca I was in the audience way at the back of the house right in dead-center. There’s a valise that Jill Ringle’s character was supposed to open up, and the contents coming out of the valise kicked off the next three songs. It…
Rock of Ages
“I am not a prophet or a Stone Age man,” intoned David Bowie at the Benedum, in a remarkable show that Post-Gazette critic Ed Masley dubbed a “religious experience.” But there’s always some semblance of the Stone Age when yinzers go to concerts in Pittsburgh, and God did I want to kill the two Stone…
I recently found myself driving through what I believe is called the Westinghouse Tunnel: a short, narrow but tall tunnel connecting the Lower Hill with the Mon River. Why would anyone spend the small fortune required to tunnel underneath Duquesne?
Well, you got the name wrong — it’s the Armstrong Tunnel — but you did notice it was narrow. That puts you one up on some of the region’s top law-enforcement officers, at least. For years they never questioned the story of a Housing Authority officer, John Charmo, who in 1995 claimed he shot black…
!!!
As captains of the indie dance-party explosion of the past few years, Sacramento groove-punk outfit !!! (pronounced, most commonly, “chk chk chk”) made a name for itself primarily as a live act, incorporating healthy doses of funk and electronica-inspired riddims into its post-punk growl. But as Gang of Four-inspired dance- and disco-punk bands spread, multiply…
Your Negro Tour Guide: Truths in Black and White
Reviewer: BRENTIN MOCK If Negro Cincinnati columnist Kathy Wilson ever visited Pittsburgh she’d realize: Cincinnati’s record-breaking 65 total homicides in 2002 don’t touch the 122 homicides we saw county-wide, nor the 74 we saw city-wide in 2003 — at least 63 of whom were black; that we too had a 12-year-old black killed in…
Super Size Me
Remember when those two girls sued McDonald’s alleging that the restaurant was liable in making them obese? New York-based filmmaker Morgan Spurlock’s attention was caught by one key phrase in the court’s ultimate decision to toss the case out: whether the fare McDonald’s sold was “unnecessarily dangerous.” So Spurlock decided to test this criterion –…
The Same River Twice
Even then, they weren’t really kids: It was 1978, and the young men thin and muscular as whippets and the bright, vivacious women with their perfect skin were pushing 30, or past it. But they worked as river guides where the Colorado flowed and roared through the Grand Canyon. They lived communally, with little time…
