Mayor of the Sunset Strip
Los Angeles scenester Rodney Bingenheimer, an amalgam of hanger-on, fanboy, hit-maker and California oddball, certainly achieved a measurable degree of renown. But as the profile Mayor of the Sunset Strip reveals, his pursuit of the most slippery of all celebrity — fame by association — proves a hollow victory. Only child Rodney is introduced…
Godsend
So far we haven’t seen a wave of movies that seek to capitalize on our fears about cloning a human being. I suspect that’s because nobody right now is afraid it will happen. But if, as some say, human cloning is an act of the morally bankrupt, then Godsend is an act of the creatively…
Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius
From its opening shot — a sweeping vista of a hallowed golf course, scored by James Horner with tremulous tin whistles — through the concluding round-robin of congratulatory hugs, there are few surprises in Rowdy Herrington’s bio-pic about Bobby Jones, America’s first golf star, who plunked a lot of small white balls into slightly larger…
Apply Yourself
FILM KITCHEN APPLIANCE FILMS Short-film-and-video contest with live judging, cash prizes and audience award Appliance Film invitational featuring work by five local artists 8 p.m. Tue., May 11 (7 p.m. reception). Melwood Screening Room, Oakland. $4. 412-316-3342, x178 Here’s how you make a movie: You write a script and then you go out and shoot…
Envy
Everyman Ben Stiller suffers when his goofy best friend and next-door neighbor Jack Black grows insanely rich after inventing “Va-Poo-Rizer,” a miracle consumer product that evaporates excrement — until a chance encounter with a crackpot (Christopher Walken) convinces Stiller to seek revenge against Black’s success. It’s an easy premise but director Barry Levinson can’t wring…
Mary Beth Buchanan Makes Her Case
The things government does openly don’t much scare the two dozen civil libertarians attending Pittsburgh City Council on April 26; what scares them more is what they think it’s doing behind closed doors. So it may seem ominous that Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, is nowhere to be…
Jame’s Journey to Jerusalem
The title character of this gently bittersweet Israeli drama, written and directed by Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, is young Zulu man of devout Christian reverence, sent on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land by his village, after which he’ll return to become its pastor. When James (Siyabonga Melongisi Shibe) arrives in Israel, he’s mistaken for a migrant…
Mere Image
“The N-double-don’t-do-nothing-C-P?” That’s Darrick Payton’s response to a question about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the 2003 documentary film, The New Black Plague: Homicides in Pittsburgh. “They don’t do anything,” he continues. “They’re nothing. They’re defunct. I mean … they still call themselves colored people.” Payton, 34, works…
Laws of Attraction
In this light screwball comedy, Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore portray two top New York divorce lawyers. They circle each other in court — and after hours — bantering their way to the inevitable match-up after a silly detour to the Irish countryside. Peter Howitt’s film is inoffensive if wholly predictable (it seems tailor-made for…
Right on Target
It’s no surprise that Republican Sen. Arlen Specter is trying to woo Democrats days after barely besting a challenger in the April 27 primary. News reports indicate that it took Specter just a day to shift from George W. Bush’s puppy to, in the senator’s words, an “independent voice” who wasn’t elected “to be a…
Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself
Gloomy Glaswegian Wilbur (Jamie Sives) bungles another suicide attempt and returns to the care of his older brother Harbour (Adrian Rawlins), who manages their late father’s cluttered old bookshop. A kind soul, Harbour soon takes in a young single mother (Shirley Henderson) and her 9-year-old daughter. The four manage an odd sort of household-in-disarray until…
Art Attack
These days, given the demands of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation for lessons in hardcore basics, it seems the only important “arts” skill for elementary kids is to fill in ovals attractively. “[The arts] are marginalized,” says city schools Elementary Director Richard Mascari. Pittsburgh Public Schools hopes to remedy this at the…
Off the Records
As the court cases involving the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act continue their almost inevitable journey to the U.S. Supreme Court, the confidential medical records of Mrs. Smith won’t be going to Washington soon. Last week, the federal Department of Justice’s quest for the medical records of several hundred abortion patients officially ended when…
Kerry for Bush
The sixth version of the condom-package design contest — a fund-raiser for the local Planned Parenthood chapter’s Action Fund for political lobbying and voter education — has an entry deadline of May 14. This year’s theme is “Presidential Condoms — When Politics Makes For Strange Bedfellows,” and spokeswoman Jodi Hirsh sees fertile ground. Last year’s…
Heads Above Water
Save Our Summer, the corporate and foundation reps who have raised $800,000 so far to reopen 16 closed pools and seven recreation centers in the city by mid-June, is holding a Save Our Summer party May 7 at Sanctuary in the Strip District to raise the remaining $50,000 needed for the project. For “a…
Bush League
“Bush’s New Iraq Viceroy.” For the ultra-sensitive job of the first American ambassador to post-Saddam Iraq, you’d think you’d want someone whose resume was above suspicion. But you wouldn’t be the Bush White House. Bush has nominated U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte, who as Honduras ambassador in the 1980s participated in a Reagan Administration scheme wherein…
A Conversation With Eric and Mandi Odier-Fink
You were interested in this issue since you met? Mandi: We were always talking about how difficult it is to find union-made clothing. The advent of the Internet made it a little bit easier, but it’s still so hard to find. So Eric and I became this resource for our friends, who were like-minded people…
Black Moth Super Rainbow
Each of the wafers is topped by a small microchip, the kind used in ’80s iconography to denote super-modern living, and on each microchip is a thin, invisible layer of lysergic acid diethylamide. We swallow the wafers — chip and all — and then return to our seats in the Volkswagon micro-bus: It’s not that…
The Magnetic Fields
I can hear the critical backlash already, the hordes of homespun critics and studied rock scribes alike, collectively clucking their tongues, and saying things like: It’s no 69 Love Songs, is it? But let’s back up a minute. The Magnetic Fields, for the uninitiated, is a synth-pop band with seven albums to its credit, although…
