The Wicker Man
More than a generation after its release, the bizarre 1973 thriller The Wicker Man is probably as memorable for what it attempts as for what it accomplishes. In the hip-mod shadow of a waning ’60s mentality … when nudity in movies was both titillating and liberating … here was a story about a modern…
What’s Underneath
Mary Gaitskill is an author who peels the veneer of what’s acceptable and exposes the scarred, the overlooked, the harsh realties of what really is. Her fiction is not about princesses, white knights, romance and happily ever after. It is about people who are emotionally isolated, naïve and exploited, even those who dare to be…
Mongolian Ping-Pong
Director Ning Hao opens his gentle coming-of-age film, Mongolian Ping-Pong, with a visual pun. A family appears to be posing in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square; yet when the camera pulls back, it’s revealed to be a temporary backdrop. Beyond the curtain illustrating the heart of one of earth’s largest cities is a vast expanse of empty…
Hollywoodland
On June 16, 1959, George Reeves, best known for playing TV’s Superman, died in his bedroom of a gunshot to the head. The authorities ruled it a suicide, but Hollywoodland wonders: Could it have been murder, and if so, who would want to kill the genial and fading actor? This film, based on real…
Finding Home
When Faith Adiele was growing up, no one in the family album looked like her. That can happen when your mother is of Nordic descent and your father is Nigerian. It was tough being black in a small, overwhelmingly white farming town in Washington state. But eventually, Adiele’s ethnic heritage made her just the ticket…
Brillobox
Location: 4104 Penn Ave., Bloomfield. 412-621-4900 Hours: Tue.-Thu. 5-11 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 5 p.m.-midnight; Sun. 8-11 p.m. Prices: $4-8 Fare: Updated pub grub, sandwiches and salads, including vegetarian options Atmosphere: Studiedly hip Liquor: Full bar Smoking: Permitted throughout Where cool is concerned, the center cannot hold. No place can establish itself as the cool place to…
Stair Master
In an automobile-based culture with fewer and fewer sidewalks, Pittsburgh alone, even among hilly cities, has a vast network of ascendant concrete footpaths that aspire to the heavens, or at least Stanton Heights. A hybrid of architecture, landscape architecture and civil infrastructure that is at once mundane and fantastic, these paths are only beginning to receive…
Bob O’Connor’s Good Name
The text message reached us on the Allegheny River, along a stretch cell phones often don’t reach: Bob died 9 p.m. Friday. The time was off by about five minutes: Mayor Bob O’Connor passed away from brain cancer on Sept. 1 at 8:55. By then, thanks to a printing schedule shortened by the Labor Day…
A Conversation with New Guild Studio
As long as there has been religion, there has been art to represent it. And just behind an unassuming storefront on Braddock Avenue, in Braddock, lies a sacred surprise, a trove of work fit for the finest cathedrals. Responsible for keeping up this tradition of liturgical decoration are two couples … David and Mary Korns,…
Opposites District at Carnegie’s Forum 57 Show
In bringing these two artists in such close proximity, Forum 57 asks: Can an art audience find meaning at both ends of such a vast aesthetic spectrum?
Web of Betrayal
Todd Hollis never claimed to be an angel. Like most of us, he says, he’s made mistakes in the dating arena.Unlike most of us, his mistakes … actual and alleged … have become fodder for news stories, television talk shows, blogs and courtroom arguments. Hollis, 38, says he didn’t set out to become nationally known…
Blown (Media) Coverage on the Steelers
Everybody settle down. Just because most talking heads are not picking the Steelers to repeat is no reason to smash your bobblehead collection. Remember, preseason picks are like blogs: Everybody’s got one, and most of them are hard to fathom. With the Steelers’ title defense ready to kick off, it seems like eight out of…
Osaris
With Changes, Pittsburgh’s Osaris serves up a steaming platter of meat-and-potatoes post-grunge: ponderous vocals riding high on metallic riffs, with a Sabbath influence processed through Godsmack and sprinkled with moody Tool touches. Changes’ strength lies in the group’s considerable instrumental prowess: Chris Balana and Brian Demagall unleash some startling, Ibanez-school metal guitar, while fleet-fingered…
The Tyde
A more realist take on the Beach Boys’ endless summer, The Tyde’s imaginatively titled third album, Three’s Co., combines groovy coastal pop with wry cynicism — an end-of-summer melancholy perfect for … well … right now. The Tyde’s a family affair, in more ways than one. The group includes frontman Darren Rademaker, his brother…
BEERFEST
Visiting Germany during Oktoberfest, Jan and Todd Wolfhouse become the first Americans to see Beerfest … an underground, Fight Club-esque World Cup of drinking. There, the Wolfhouses are simultaneously humiliated at chugging and scorned with rumors of family history: Was sweet great-grandma (the brilliant Cloris Leachman) a whore? The pair vow to return to next…
Into the Woods
We’re having lunch at Turtle Island, and there’s a little bit of everything: meat from a deer shot on the grounds. Fresh cheese from the goats roaming in sight, just across the creek. Tomatoes grown in a garden just up the dirt road into Turtle Island’s woods, which spread for 1,000 acres in this…
Lockouts in Toledo Bode Ill for Loggerheads at Post-Gazette
Block Communications Inc., which owns the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, has locked out five of the six unions working since March 21 without a contract at BCI’s other paper, the Toledo Blade. How concerned are the P-G’s 1,100 workers? After all, contracts for the paper’s 10 unions are up Dec. 31, opening the door to similar…
Hand Outs Get More Thumbs Down
Another city group is trying to shoo people away from panhandlers, but no one can say why it has suddenly become so necessary. Barely two months after the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership began posting uniformed Safety Ambassadors a few feet from panhandlers, the Oakland Business Improvement District is set to launch its own “awareness campaign,”…
Union Just Misses at Food Co-op
A single vote has stymied the most recent attempt to unionize the East End Food Co-op. Workers at the Point Breeze natural foods store voted on Aug. 30 against accepting the Industrial Workers of the World as their union, 22 to 21, although, at press time, the results had not yet been certified by…
