Surviving the Odyssey
The three members of Surviving the Odyssey may not have navigated past Scylla and Charybdis, but the Pittsburgh-based group is a result of some intense creative wandering. How else do you end up with three outlandishly clad musicians playing a mélange of electronic and pop music, who answer to the names Odd, Indigo and Krimson?…
A building design for the South Side takes some chances.
A speculative design: the Quantum IV building. Image courtesy of The Design Alliance If you really want to appreciate the mixed-use retail-and-residential development at the SouthSide Works, go first to, say, the Waterworks, at the edge of Fox Chapel. Like its many brethren, this place is nearly the worst thing possible, designed, if at all,…
Size Matters at Fe Gallery
The exhibit entitled Size Matters asks: In our Supersize-It society, is bigger necessarily better when it comes to art? What were you thinking the title meant? Local and national artists have contributed work on large and small scales to a Fe Gallery show confronting the importance of size in art while exploring such disparate matters…
Decibully
A lot of writers seem to want to throw the “alt country” tag on Decibully’s records. One magazine goes so far as to suggest that the music on Sing Out America! somehow sounds like Wilco of an AM vintage when, if anything, it sounds more like the kind of records Wilco started making after ditching…
Pure Faith
Israeli “ethnographical photographer” Harel Stanton, 38, is making his second trip to Pittsburgh to present his exhibition Pure Faith, images of sacred religious rites and ethnic traditions around the globe. His tableau-like insights into Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism will be on display at The Framery starting Fri., Nov. 3. Stanton spoke with City Paper…
Pernice Brothers
Joe Pernice is that rare breed of modern-day power-pop icon whose appeal is such that even Pitchfork-lurking indie types can cozy up to what he does.
Somehow, We Still Feel Used by Hart Campaign Flyer
Melissa Hart’s re-election campaign has managed to use a CP columnist’s prediction that she will unfairly tag opponent Jason Altmire as a tax-and-spend Democrat … to tag Altmire unfairly as a tax-and-spend Democrat. The Republican congresswoman has spent the past several weeks killing thousands of trees in an effort to discredit her 4th Congressional District…
Police Review Board gains citizen attention again
Anger over one incident has galvanized an informal coalition to police the police.
Zoning Change Aspires to Shorten Top Building Heights
In most city neighborhoods, historic churches with soaring spires sit harmoniously alongside low-slung homes — until a bulky high-rise gets wedged in between, using the top of the church spire as the only city-imposed height limit. It’s a zoning quirk city officials are now trying to eliminate. Three years ago, neighbors of St. Mary’s of…
Downtown’s Davids Vs. Goliaths
Downtown’s business district has always been dominated by the big boys who own the banks and the high-rise buildings. Now a group of small-business owners is trying to fight a proposed increase in real-estate fees favored by such prominent players as PNC and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Nearly 100 small-business owners in Downtown have signed…
Young Preservationists Look Forward to Preservation Conference
As the only preservation organization in the nation to reach out specifically to young people, Pittsburgh’s Young Preservationists Association has a chance to show its stuff — and Pittsburgh’s — at a national preservation conference in town this week. In a city that is always looking for ways to keep its younger set, YPA founder…
The Crucible
Appropriate to a company whose chief mission is educational, Prime Stage Theatre’s new production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible places a special focus on the play’s youngest characters: the girls and young women of 17th-century Salem who call out their townspeople as witches. The play opens, of course, with Betty Parris, niece of Rev. Parris,…
The Douglass Brothers
Holy shit, this record’s wild. Local newcomers The Douglass Brothers kick off Still in the Basement with a slab of saturated guitars eerily reminiscent of early Stooges … before downshifting into a different groove altogether. Recorded by Joe Bartolotta at Machine Age studios, the disc’s a reverberating, raunchy romp through ’70s blues-rock, Melvins meatiness, slacker…
Dead Reckonings
If the past century’s most notorious victimization is the Holocaust, among its least noted victims are the Sonderkommando: a group of Hungarian Jews who helped the Nazis exterminate their fellow death-camp prisoners in exchange for better treatment and a few more months alive. Among the few dramatic portraits of the Sonderkommando are The Grey Zone,…
Missing Pages
Cue the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. West Mifflin-based Missing Pages has upped the ante with an ambitious DVD — a live concert film shot by Jimm Needle at Mr. Small’s in April 2005. Slickly produced, filmed and packaged, Modus Operandi captures a local group drawing heavily on Dave Matthews and Maroon 5: all…
Tickets
The splendid Tickets, new on video, is a set of three short films sharing an Italian rail-car setting, by an international trio of renowned veteran directors. It’s also a sort of hope sandwich: two pieces about overcoming narcisissm and selfishness wrapped around a mordant comedy about death. The opener, by Ermanno Olmi, follows an elderly…
Random Dance goes to extremes in its Pittsburgh debut.
His company’s name notwithstanding, there is little random about choreographer Wayne McGregor’s approach to dance. Since founding Random Dance in 1992, McGregor has known steady success fusing dance and elements of technology. He has won multiple awards, garnered numerous commissions to create works for Europe’s leading companies, and had his own company become a resident…
Brawl Games
Few things in life are as much fun as carrying a harmless grudge or feeling morally superior. So I’m sure all Pitt fans and Big East devotees got a Jerry Falwell-sized dose of self-righteousness when the University of Miami football players behaved just as we expect them to in a game against their cross-state rivals,…
From Corpus to Corpse
Last week, when President Bush signed the Military Commission Act of 2006, he sounded the death knell of the Great Writ, habeas corpus. The right of the imprisoned to challenge their detention in front of a judge isn’t mentioned in the Constitution because habeas corpus has been recognized since the Magna Carta. But losing access…
Under the Wire
Modern music is the bastard stepchild of the Pittsburgh’s nonprofit arts scene. Most museums and galleries here employ music as an afterthought to boost turnstile numbers — often the milquetoast adult-folk, trad-jazz, classical and world-music genres that affluent public-radio baby-boomers can stomach. The only bright spot in this grim scenario is The Warhol. Curator Ben…
The Three Rivers Film Festival
The 25th annual Three Rivers Film Festival, presented by Pittsburgh Filmmakers, runs from Thu., Nov. 2, through Nov. 16. The program of more than 40 films includes foreign-language works, American independents, documentaries, experimental cinema and two silent classics, as well as new short works from local filmmakers. Tickets for most films are $7 each; exceptions…
BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN.
Fearless British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen (Da Ali G Show) suits up as Borat, the Kazakhstani television commentator, who leaves his woefully backward land (fake but funny) for a journey across America. In a genius move surely never to be repeated, Cohen tricked hundreds of gullible and self-righteous Americans into believing he was a genuine…
Running With Scissors
Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of Augusten Burroughs’ disturbing, uncanny and grimly funny memoir of growing up in what will probably become the first family admitted to the Museum of Dysfunction is wrong in every way a film can be.
FLUSHED AWAY.
A pampered pet mouse, flushed down the toilet, discovers a subterranean world populated by working-class rodents, singing slugs, French ninja frogs and an evil toad. This family comedy, co-directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell, merges the talents of two studios, Dreamworks Animation (Shrek) and Ardmore (Wallace and Gromit), resulting in a computer animation that…
Death of a President
This British-made drama tells the story of the assassination of the current President George Bush one year from now, and it’s an absorbing procedural about the mechanics of 21st-century American life.
Truer Words
Creative Nonfiction Literary Festival A Kinder, Gentler Approach to Literature Chuck Kinder Once, the easiest way to elicit cynical laughter over the word “ethics” was to use it in the same sentence as “politician.” Lately, another profession might serve nearly as well: writer. Our pundits are paid for opinions, not factual accuracy; memoirists are revealed…
Isaly’s West View
Under a pressed-tin ceiling, memorabilia and photos evoke nostalgia among locals and old-timers. But the traditional menu of hot and cold deli sandwiches, including reubens, chipped ham, steak and cheese, and burgers, should be familiar to anyone who grew up in North America.
Creative Nonfiction Literary Festival
Lee Gutkind has long claimed Pittsburgh as an epicenter of creative nonfiction, a writing discipline the University of Pittsburgh instructor has spent more than three decades promoting in venues including the journal he edits, Creative Nonfiction. And if retaining that distinction means birthing more competition for writers already in the field, so be it. Last…
Letters to the Editor: Nov. 1-8
Self-Serving Nonsense After reading Gregory M. Knepp’s hostile review of the In To My Self show at SPACE [Oct. 25], one wonders (to paraphrase Knepp) how such half-baked observations generate any critical import. I find it all the more astonishing that Knepp, a writer who is ostensibly supporting the arts, can produce (let alone take…
A Kinder, Gentler Approach to Literature
What’s the difference between homage and simply ripping someone off? Just the blatancy with which you do it? Beginning with this issue, City Paper adds a new feature: a weekly installment of serialized fiction written by local authors. We begin with a month’s worth of “lost episodes” from Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale. Previously unpublished, the…
This Just In: Nov. 1 – Nov. 8
No Holy Water Here Summary: A water-main break forces Catholic religious education classes at one school to be — gasp — canceled! Station: WTAE Channel 4 Reporter: Janelle Hall When It Aired: Oct. 28 Running Time: 12 seconds Visuals: A graphic of water gushing from a pipe. Highlights: * When Hall reports, “A water-main break…
“Ghosts of Salmon”
The following is one of the “lost chapters” excised from the published version of Honeymooners, Chuck Kinder’s 2002 novel based on his friendship with writer Raymond Carver. Pared down from an original 3,000 pages, Honeymooners depicts the literary exploits of Jim and Ralph — fictional stand-ins for Kinder and Carver, respectively — and their troubled…
