Blackout
“Kerry will suffer,” says Dorothy Leavell, chairperson of Amalgamated Publishers, Inc, a black-owned company that places ads for more than 200 black newspapers nationwide. She and other black press executives believed a July 14 press release from the campaign of Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards, promoting a “$2 million buy on African American media”…
Red Lights
Cédric Kahn’s Red Lights is the kind of movie French cinema does well, times two: It’s a domestic drama that revolves around a slowly simmering middle-aged marriage; and it’s based on a book by the prolific Belgian-born detective author Georges Simenon, whose novels and stories, written in French, have been adapted into more…
A Conversation with “Monongahela Sal”
When Sally Ann Denmead strummed her “Can-O-Lele” and sang pre-swing era jazz standards in her former home, New York City, she used the name “Brooklyn Sal,” but a move to Pittsburgh last January (with husband, poet Jonah Winter) necessitated a change of monikers, and an old riverboat song “Monongahela Gal,” provided a perfect cue. Denmead,…
The Forgotten
The fantasy thriller The Forgotten purports to celebrate the power of motherly love. But I began suspecting its real mission a moment after Julianne Moore’s first smile. The actress plays Telly, an educated, affluent New Yorker whose compulsion to fondle the memory of her dead 10-year-old son has her in therapy, and in…
Tom Waits
“And I want to know / the same thing / everyone wants to know / how’s it going to end?” Tom Waits’ rhetorical question on “How’s It Gonna End” is the same one we’ve been asking about Waits’ celebrated musical career for ages: When does the steam run out? Where’s the…
Shark Tale
Setting a mob comedy underwater — sharks are The Family, natch — is a kinda cute idea. But DreamWorks’ animated feature Shark Tale, co-directed by Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron and Rob Letterman, feels like a lot of effort toward a fairly small end — a mob parody starring fish, ha ha. Our piscine…
Client
So I was wrong about Client and what they meant for electroclash, the short-lived electro revival spawned in New York City’s bored-as-fuck club scene. It seemed at first that Client, the duo’s 2003 debut, was head-to-toe cliché: from the thumb-and-pinky keyboard octaves to the bored-sexy vocals and anonymous identities of the two women of Client.…
FIRST DAUGHTER
Forest Whitaker directs this romantic comedy about the President’s daughter, Sam (Katie Holmes), who tries to attend college like any other normal gal. Apple-cheeked Holmes is a cutie pie, but not much can save this muddled tale of female independence vs. daddy love vs. the re-election. Sam starts out like good girl Chelsea Clinton, but…
By a Landslide
Two shelves of political books at Jay’s Bookstall in Oakland await an ignoble demise. “The day after the election they’re all going to be remaindered,” says owner Jay Dantry, as though speaking of loutish relatives who have overstayed a holiday visit. “Within the first three days after a book comes out people might…
GOING UPRIVER: THE LONG WAR OF JOHN KERRY
If, dear swing-state voter, you can chance hearing another word about Sen. John Kerry’s time during and immediately after the Vietnam War, you’ll find George Butler’s hagiography based on Douglas Brinkley’s biography, Tour of Duty, surprisingly compelling. When the film focuses exclusively on Kerry, it’s admittedly as warm and fuzzy as a campaign commercial, but…
The Cheesecake Factory
Location: 415 S. 27th St., South Side. 412-431-7800. Hours: Mon.-Thu. 11:30 a.m.-11:00 p.m.; Fri. & Sat. 11:30 a.m.-12:30 a.m.; Sun. 10 a.m.-11 p.m. (brunch 10 a.m.-2 p.m.) Prices: Appetizers $6.95-10.95; entrees $8.95-24.95; cheesecake $5.95-7.50 Fare: A little bit of everything Atmosphere: Grandiose excess Liquor: Full bar When is a factory not a factory? How can…
The Ballot or the Booklet
In Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s 1982 hip-hop classic “The Message,” the chorus pleads, “Don’t push me ’cause I’m close to the edge.” Twenty years later, many wonder whether hip hop has lost its edge — specifically its political edge. Some say hip hop never had a political edge; that, besides…
ROSENSTRASSE
Margarethe von Trotta’s World War II drama based on true events in 1943 Berlin about Aryan women who fought for the release of their imprisoned Jewish husbands veers close at times to melodrama (one is reminded of classic “women’s pictures”) — and though a hankie is recommended, strong performances keep the film anchored. A contemporary…
Mason Impossible
I knew Pittsburgh was in for a bad week on Sept. 20, when black netting appeared on the façade of the City County building. Chunks of the building’s exterior were reportedly in danger of falling off, and the financially strapped city can’t afford to make repairs. Instead, netting was stretched above the structure’s Grant Street…
Little Shop, Big Idea
Here’s how you know Bloomfield’s Big Idea bookstore is a great place: On the day I visited, it had only one copy of a book by ur-capitalist Ayn Rand, whose books convince college students that their only obligation in life is to make lots of money. And that lone copy was moldering in…
SILVER CITY
John Sayles’ new darkly comic ensemble piece follows a private investigator, Danny (Danny Huston), looking into high-level dirty doings revolving around a dimwitted, linguistically challenged Colorado politician, Dickie Pilager (Chris Cooper). Literally directed by the hand of a dead illegal alien, Danny uncovers sanctioned horrors ranging from environmental ravaging to influence peddling — and some…
What on God’s green earth is the meaning of the Allegheny County seal? Are those mushrooms? And is that boat the Pirates’ original ship?
What? You’re confused by our county seal? Surely you were taught about the three-masted schooners that once plied the wine-dark seas of western Pennsylvania, hunting the great white whale! Shiver me timbers — as we lifelong Allegheny County residents like to say — what are they teaching in schools today? “Mushrooms”?…
Gore and Peace
It’s been a long time since Gore Vidal had a friendly game of backgammon with an American president, as he did with his stepbrother-in-law John F. Kennedy in the 1960s. He was, as Newsweek once gushed, “the best all-around man of letters since Edmund Wilson,” who in addition to plays, screenplays and…
Arguing the Fine Points
KDKA-TV ought to be ashamed of itself. The Federal Communications Commission has righteously smote the evil television broadcast entity for broadcasting Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the Super Bowl halftime show. This so-called “Hometown” TV station willingly allowed its New York parent company to foist upon innocent viewers a sight more unholy than…
Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species
Since women tend to vote slightly more to the left, they’ve been eagerly courted by President George W. Bush, who famously declared in 2000 that the “W” stood for “women.” Two recent books, Laura Flanders’ Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species and The W Effect: Bush’s War on Women, a compendium of…
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Dick: The Man Who Is President
It’s been joked about since George W. Bush sat down in the Oval Office — that the real chief executive is nominal second banana Richard Bruce Cheney. But if after four years you don’t have any notion of Cheney beyond his sneer and his “go fuck yourself,” consider John Nichols’ scathing political biography…
Joey Grew Up
Through much of September, a robot named Zoe, developed at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, crawled around Chile’s Atacama Desert in a dry run for a possible trip to Mars. The hundreds of megabytes of information it radioed to researchers loaded instantly into a database thanks to software developed by Joey Flowers, a 25-year-old Dormont…
An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire
Except as a destination for outsourced U.S. jobs, the world’s second most populous country and largest democracy is a place we hear relatively little about. But while India is celebrated as home to an economic boom, there is another, bigger picture — one in which millions of Indians face poverty, malnutrition and state-sponsored…
Accusing Kissinger
Christopher Hitchens is the author of The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Verso, 2001), which argues that Henry Kissinger should be tried “for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against … international law” including conspiring to “commit murder, kidnap, and torture.” In the book, Hitchens plays prosecutor, making the case that…
All the President’s Spin
In their new book All the President’s Spin, Spinsanity.com bloggers Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer and Brendan Nyhan lift the curtain — and meticulously dissect the bloated, spun-out corpse of American governance. Take a January 2002 appearance on Meet the Press by then-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. In a memo reproduced in the book, O’Neill is…
Protesting Kissinger
“We have no intention of uninviting [Henry] Kissinger,” says Mark Weinstein, public relations director for Robert Morris University, which is hosting the former secretary of state as the first in this year’s Speakers Series Oct. 5. “We don’t feel there is any controversy surrounding his visit.” Paul Donahue, preparing a protest of the Kissinger appearance,…
Looking Forward To It, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the American Electoral Process
Stephen Elliott pretended to be with the press during the recent primary season so he could follow the Democrats across the country — seemingly all of them at once, if his alternately amusing and dispiriting campaign diary is to be believed. But pretending was good enough for 2004, since most of the men…
Radio Silenced
More than three years after he started one of Pittsburgh’s tiniest radio stations, artist Bob Bingham was told it was illegal to run it anymore. As part of the city-funded PublicArtPittsburgh program, in 2001 Bingham launched South Side Radio, a low-wattage station carrying oral-history style interviews with neighborhood residents ranging from old-timers and coffeehouse patrons…
The Right Profile
Never mind the old red-state/blue-state divisions this election: Democrats and Republicans aren’t even living on the same planet anymore. We don’t just disagree on the solutions to the problems we face; we can’t even agree on what the problems are. Is Iraq going well or badly? What about the economy? Depends on who you ask…
A Cure for the Common Budget?
Mayor Tom Murphy’s latest budget proposal weighs in at 580 pages, but is light on new ideas. Its careworn solutions to the city’s chronic deficit: cut workers and employee benefits, and beg the state to let the city levy new taxes on workers and businesses. Where’s the innovation? Maybe in City Council. Written off…
Top-selling political books on Amazon.com
Bethel Park Bushwhacked! Life in George W. Bush’s America, by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose Dude, Where’s My Country?, by Michael Moore Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, by Al Franken Corapolis Who’s Looking Out for You?, By Bill O’Reilly Cranberry…
Pittsburgh is for Levers
On Sept. 22, Carnegie Mellon University was the epicenter of the nation’s electronic voting debate, as one its most prominent critics, David Dill, spoke at the invitation of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. But CMU’s resident computer voting supporter, Michael Shamos, still thinks paperless voting is the wave of the future. Since 2000, county…
Uncovered: The War on Iraq
“Death on a massive scale,” said Dick Cheney. “Grave and growing danger,” said George W. Bush. The specter of the mushroom cloud was raised, a scarecrow for skeptics and peaceniks. Who would have guessed that the threat the president, the vice president and their senior security officials were describing was posed…
