Make no mistake: The Cell is easily the most unforgettable film of a pedestrian, forgettable summer. You walk out of the theater grateful for the light and the heat; it is, in places, a rather chilling and claustrophobic film. In places, The Cell is also a rather dazzling film: There are things here you haven’t seen before, and things you…
Irish charm and British eccentricity are hot properties on this side of the pond — especially among U.S. moviegoers. Witness the phenomenal success here of The Secret of Roan Inish, in which a 10-year-old Irish girl finds her lost brother living among seals off her country’s rugged western coast, or of The Full Monty, wherein working-class Englishmen tackle unemployment…
Trash Talk Abraham Maslow would be damn proud of Bruce Rodgers’ appraisal of some Kansas Citians and recycling (“Strictly Mainstream,” August 3). If you’re living in poverty, it is kind of hard to understand why you should pay an additional two bucks a month for the privilege of sorting things you would otherwise throw in the trash. If your main…
Paint the town: Former (and, she promises, future) mayoral write-in candidate Mary De Shon has big problems with the Pleasant Valley skate park. Since the park opened in December, its concrete slopes and sidewalks have proven irresistible to graffiti artists, so on August 5 City Councilwoman Teresa Loar collected paint from Northland businesses and let the taggers have at it….
When the cops sweep Westport’s streets, everyone better be careful. Roland Wayne leans against the rail separating the parking lot from the alley in front of Panera Bread, peering into the crowd below him. Hundreds of people are gathered where the alley dead-ends into Mill Street. Not much is going on, just a lot of looking and talking and bodies…
I have never read The Odyssey, A Tale of Two Cities, Pride and Prejudice, or, for that matter, the Bible. But I have read, from cover to cover, Occupation: Skateboarder, the just-published autobiography from Tony Hawk. I have never seen most of the films of Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, or Carl-Theodor Dreyer, but I have seen Gleaming the Cube…
Grazing at the contaminated Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant, that’s where. The party line on the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant (SFAAP) in Johnson County is that it’s badly contaminated, though no one knows just how badly. It’s been that way since the Army started producing explosives there in 1942. The land’s so fouled with toxins, in fact, that the federal government…
Consuelo Moreno wasn’t feeling well. The 29-year-old mother of three had found work months earlier at a manufacturing plant in Rio Bravo, Mexico. Situated just south of the brackish Rio Grande, Rio Bravo is a humid border town where the summer temperature regularly creeps well past 100 degrees. The town square is green with palm trees and thick with little…
“Please hold for Tammy Faye.” The few seconds between those words and those that follow, uttered by the woman who once haunted pay-to-pray TV like a mascara-ed harlequin, are interminable. Until a month ago, the notion of talking to Tammy Faye Bakker-Messner, once the most adored and reviled figure in the history of television, was unfathomable. So long ago, she…
Diners’ club: So what’s the real difference between the $6.99 grilled patty melt with french fries served at the shiny Uptown Diner (4800 W. 119th Street) in Leawood and the $3.85 patty melt with fries at the greasier, more lovable Town Topic Diner (2021 Broadway)? There’s the obvious answer ($3.14), the somewhat less obvious answer (about 17 miles), the quirky…
There are a lot worse places you could be at 3 a.m. on a rain-slick night than Chubby’s, staring at a big white china plate of crispy tater tots and a cup of steaming java and wondering who in the joint — which is surprisingly crowded — wasted a quarter to hear Patty Duke sing “Don’t Just Stand There.” “What…
10 Thursday If you’ve got the guts, you can ride in Old Glory — a B-25 World War II Bomber that will be in Kansas City today and tomorrow, providing brave souls with an opportunity to take off for the wild blue yonder. Most B-25 Bombers have been grounded due to old age, but Old Glory is still a top…
With a style that is at once meticulously studied and utterly nonchalant, members of Lawrence’s EMU Theatre company are daring audiences to like them — or not. They don’t care. Rather, they do, but it’s more complex than a simple “take it or leave it.” “We’re hoping some people will be so offended, they leave,” company member Trevor Rudor says…
The background noise coming over the phone, as well as the pauses by Dean Boese, are both due to the someteenth-odd time Big Daddy has played on the Boeses’ TV screen. After all, this is a house where comedy not only is appreciated but also helps pay the bills. Boese is a Kansas City comedian who, although fairly new to…
Five kilometers (3.1 miles) sounds like a long way to run. About 500 Kansas City-area women will spend the next two months finding out just how long that distance really is, courtesy of the 2000 Women’s Training Team. The 2000 Women’s Training Team will take women of all ages who may not be in the best shape — especially for…
A Princely PremiereIf you thought Les Miserables dashed the hopes of any future musicals featuring singing and dancing peasants, think again. With Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper as the source — but not one so canonized it couldn’t be edited here and there — writer Ivan Menchell and composers Marc Elliot and Judd Woldin have crafted from Twain’s…
Even the most mainstream of country acts, such as the Dixie Chicks, don’t get the kind of omnipresent attention that’s lavished on pop’s platinum artists, so it might come as a surprise to many to learn that this trio outdid even Britney and Christina for fan enthusiasm and pure scream volume. Whenever opener Patty Griffin, the evening’s hyperactive emcees, or…
Vibe once named Wu-Tang Clan the worst live act of the year, reasoning that it’s hard to wreck shop when you don’t show up for your gigs. Point well taken, as area fans were frustrated by another mysterious cancellation that moved this concert from last Tuesday to Monday night. However, what giving this hip-hop collective that dubious honor doesn’t acknowledge…
When drummer Cody Willis punctuated the climax of one impossibly heavy Murder City Devils tune by setting his sticks ablaze as he emphatically pounded his kit, it was easy to forget this was the cramped, overheated, stageless Replay Lounge and not some grander venue that regularly dispenses such rock-star glory. However, when chain-smoking keyboardist Leslie Hardy visibly registered her skepticism…
A little late for the Kansas City Blues and Jazz Festival, this guitar-master workshop rolls into Starlight offering a high-profile version of an all-night blues blowout. B.B. King and Buddy Guy are equally synonymous with the blues, but refreshingly, Susan Tedeschi joins the pair at the hot-licks crossroads throughout their national tour. More intriguing than her obvious guitar fluency and…
Although new-metal bands remain all the rage, the year’s biggest hard-rock tour remains steeped in tradition. As usual, Ozzy Osbourne headlines the bill, wrapping up the all-day festival with solo hits such as “Crazy Train” and a Sabbath nugget or two. Pantera delivers the type of Southern guitar-rock that Kid Rock loves, but you’ll see Joe C in the NBA…
Although he’s admittedly been influenced by local legends, singer/pianist Bill Laursen is determined to step out of the sizable shadow of the city’s sound, and he’s somewhat frustrated that other area artists aren’t doing the same. “Quit reproducing and start producing,” he urges in the liner notes to The Right Time, the first release of his nearly 25-year career. Laursen…
Previous EP releases by this Lawrence-based quintet have reduced normally eloquent writers to incoherent abstract poetry (“Unearthly tones leave the speaker cones…. Locomotive lumbering drums set a Salvador Dali-like skeletal framework,” rambled one reviewer), so its debut full-length, packed with 16 intricate compositions, might leave some critics at a loss for words. The Teriyakis’ latest effort starts simply enough, with…
As those who caught the final few episodes of critically acclaimed network television casualties such as Freaks and Geeks know, it’s frustrating to become aware of greatness when it’s too late. With its new CD, Aerialist, which will be introduced at a self-described “debut/ finale” concert, Many Series offers local music fans another bittersweet opportunity to make friends with the…
