When Ain’t It Cool News guru Harry Knowles claimed he’d published an advance list of Oscar nominees on his movie Web site, the Academy and the media became entangled in a net of paranoia over whether a leak had sprung. Never mind that Knowles got the info wrong (he miserably underestimated the seven nominations for The Cider House Rules), he…
When an eccentric artist dies, his family of students, ex-lovers, and distant relatives makes the long train trip to his hometown, where old resentments and fresh conflicts nearly overwhelm the funeral. Although the artist himself is rarely seen (no lengthy flashbacks here), his presence hangs over his “heirs” and forces them to confront the impact he had on their lives….
Sometimes actors like to take the helm of a movie to highlight their talents in a showy role. Hollywood wags call them “vanity projects.” Robert Duvall, for example, became a director to give himself the part of a lifetime in 1998’s The Apostle. Anjelica Huston (The Addams Family) produced and directed Agnes Browne, based upon the novel The Mammy by…
The advance screenings for Roman Polanski’s occult thriller were abruptly canceled, which is never a good sign; it usually means the studio doesn’t want to give critics a chance to warn anybody before the movie opens. The Ninth Gate isn’t as bad as all that, but it hardly lives up to its director’s reputation as the genius behind Chinatown…
Mission to Mars plays like a wannabe Cliff Notes for A Brief History of Time. Or worse, some backhanded, soft-headed homage to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Director Brian De Palma (Snake Eyes) didn’t seem to have one strong idea about what he wanted to film or even why he wanted to film. Writing team Jim and John Thomas…
Erin Brockovich is a typical Julia Roberts movie. We get to hear her crack wise and see her flash that toothy grin, but her routine has never been more potent or appealing than it is here. Unlike the more glamorous roles she’s had recently in Stepmom and Notting Hill, Roberts’ title character is earthy and down on her luck….
In Hometown Beer: A History of Kansas City’s Breweries, a wonderful photograph of a 19th-century Kansas City saloon shows nine tough-looking men, all wearing jackets, hats, and ties, leaning up against a bar and staring unsmilingly at the photographer. The tavern is a strictly no-nonsense drinking joint with a dirty, wooden floor (a big dog lies right in the…
Blessed with the ambidexterity to at once foil an enemy and seduce an ally, all the while holding a cigarette and a martini, Ian Fleming’s James Bond is a man’s man. Never in a jam he can’t escape, Bond is the unflappable epitome of cool. Fleming died in 1964, but Hollywood has made sure that his dapper alter ego…
The vision is for Kansas City and Lawrence to become the hot spots for mountain bike racing in the Midwest. That’s why three local cycling enthusiasts now have the wheels turning for one of the largest racing series ever to hit the metro area. The 2000 Heartland Mountain Bike Championship Series is a trio of contests planned for May…
When it comes to A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Simon & Schuster, $23), one could argue there really is no need for a book review. The author, Dave Eggers, reviews the book himself in the 40 pages preceding Chapter 1 that make up an extensive acknowledgements section, a preface that contains passages omitted from the book, and “Rules and…
Ke-Sook Lee is a mother. She’s a gardener, a woman, and a domestic doyenne. When her sons were grown, she decided to get back to being an artist, a pursuit that languished while she was busy nurturing everyone else in the house — but one that was strengthened by her experience as a caregiver. Unlike many women artists who set…
We spend a good deal of our waking hours staring at a screen. If we’re not watching television, we’re on the computer or at the movies. Recent studies suggest that Americans spend time on their home computers that would otherwise be spent with family and friends. Television time, mind you, has not been sacrificed. Is this trend a disturbing hallmark…
Let’s get one thing straight: The members of Hadacol were not the only known victims of the Y2K bug, millennium madness, or any other sort of apocalyptic meltdown. But to be fair to those who want to believe, the group has essentially been in hiding since its New Year’s Eve gig at Liberty Hall with BR5-49. “We just sort of…
Allow me to go on the record as stating that I’m disappointed The Anniversary didn’t get a nomination for Band of the Year on this year’s Klammies ballot. I’m also disappointed that The Believe It Or Nots’ “Terra Incognito” and Danger Bob’s “Kicked in the Ride” aren’t up for Song of the Year and that Lushbox didn’t get recognized in…
They just don’t make superheroes the way they used to. The past two Batman films were atrocious, Superman died, and Spider-Man can’t even make it to the big screen. Instead of aspiring to save the world while clutching these larger-than-life crusaders, youngsters now try to complete their Pokémon card collections. And as if the current crop of nondescript comic-book characters…
The Hillary Step is the most dangerous point on Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain. On the first recording of the Kansas City-based trio of the same name, the band succeeds in climbing away from the pack of bland, stagnant rockers by taking huge chances and succeeding in almost every aspect. Experimentation is a great thing for The Hillary…
The intensity of the rhythms on Interstring’s Winter Song is a thing of beauty. Never settling into an easy or repetitive loop, these musicians are constantly and aggressively striving to create new harmonic sounds and time signatures. This makes for a collection of unsettling, harshly impressive tracks. A gathering of four local jazz artists who have returned to the Kansas…
Bloodflowers is rumored to be the closing chapter to The Cure’s 24-year, 13-studio-album career, and as this record is filled with more subtle kiss-off lines than any release since In Utero (I used to feed the fire/But the fire is almost out/And there’s nothing left to burn, singer Robert Smith wails on one tune), it’s probably safe to believe the…
While it’s difficult for any group to range from African tribal chants to swing to classical to folk, Vocolot earns extra credit for pulling off these transitions without the aid of instruments. This female a cappella ensemble, led by accomplished composer Linda Hirschhorn, lends its vocal talents to inspiring original tunes such as “Bird” and “Wings Span,” as well as…
Something had to give. Marcus Durant, the 6’7” frontman of the blues rock band Zen Guerilla, was stomping around the stage of a club in his college town of Newark, Del., thoroughly enraptured by the psycho-soul music that surrounded him. The impact of the 265-pound singer’s footsteps on the wooden surface beneath him wasn’t audible, as pounding drumbeats and wailing…
“We were on the Jenny Jones show last Friday,” claims Wayne Coyne, vocalist and guitarist for Oklahoma’s favorite psychedelic cowboys, The Flaming Lips. But he wasn’t there as a teen seeking a makeover or even, as some older fans might suspect, to serve as one of the show’s hired drug “experts.” He was simply an observer. “(Jenny Jones) came out…
From the mid-1940s to the early 1970s, “social guidance” or “mental hygiene” films were as common as Web sites are today and reached millions of schoolchildren. These films, which dealt with everything from the joys of conformity and auto safety to the perils of illicit drugs and premarital sex, have all but disappeared. Some of these films have resurfaced…
Black men sitting behind bars and running from the law are no joke, but this film shamelessly pokes fun at both to get cheap laughs. The title of this stupefying film is the slang term for the California law AB 971. The law (passed in 1994) calls for a mandatory 25-year-to-life prison sentence for anyone who commits his third felony…
The appeal of Willie Morris’ short memoir, My Dog Skip, is that it paints a lively picture of a dog that was the author’s best friend while it recounts life in Morris’ boyhood home in Mississippi, the strain of World War II in the background. The movie only fitfully re-creates the original’s charm. In the film, young Willie (Frankie…
