Playwright-filmmaker David Mamet has the sharpest gift imaginable for shooting down the sins of American greed, the con games people run to get ahead and the corruption that comes with success. Whether he’s haunting a secondhand junk shop, a poker room or an outlying real-estate office, he always finds enough horror-tinged folly to go around. With a wicked ensemble…
If M. Night Shyamalan makes movies to be seen twice, then Joel and Ethan Coen make films to be pawed over a dozen times. O Brother, Where Art Thou?, an opulent and often slapstick updating of Homer’s The Odyssey by way of Preston Sturges, Robert Johnson and Clark Gable, sneaks up on you, revealing its myriad delights and revelations…
Skeptics will not take easily to the optimism in Thomas Carter’s teen love story, Save the Last Dance, and outright cynics may find the whole thing absurd. The notion that a sheltered white girl from shopping-mall country and a knowing black boy from the inner city can dance their way over the social barriers put before them by peers…
Taco talk: I heard a food-related confession recently that shocked me. I was having lunch at a swank country club with a friend when I overheard two attractive, well-coiffed, and freshly manicured matrons at the next table reveal to each other their secret passion: Taco Bell. “Sometimes,” said the blonde matron, looking past her plate of grilled sea bass and…
A new neon sign with lemon-yellow letters points out Medina’s Mexican Restaurant on Wornall. It’s a necessary beacon because the little building with the plateglass windows, the white-painted ironwork, and the 1960s patio lights is so unassuming, it’s easy to miss. Tucked between the pimento-pink Mediterranean villa that houses a lighting shop and the barber shop with its giant awning,…
4 Thursday This year’s Sesame Street Live tour focuses on a message that many children understand quite intuitively: “If you have friends, you can do anything!” Nobody has a better sense of this underlying truth than the kids who have no friends, the ones who lie awake at night certain that other kids with more friends probably manage to evade…
Iveth Jalinsky’s signature, in the lower right corner of her paintings, stands out. “It’s weird — some people think it’s like Japanese, but it’s not,” she muses. On close inspection, the letters actually spell out her last name. But stacked vertically and painted on with quick, slashing brush strokes, the Roman characters look like they’ve come from the other…
With a cast of characters that includes Henry Ford, and Harry Houdini, Ragtime is, in its way, the most ambitious musical of the 1990s. Taking off from E.L. Doctorow’s wildly successful novel about social upheaval at the turn of the century, the show weaves into one gilded braid three strata of society: Harlem blacks, immigrant Jews, and well-to-do whites….
Hope is the Thing With Feathers, a comic play by Richard Harrity about a group of men scheming to catch and cook a duck, had a one-night-only performance in the Kansas City area on December 20. After six weeks of rehearsal, the nine-man cast and six-man crew staged a play that was so exclusive, one had to request a seat…
Sports, and perhaps the world of labor as well, changed forever in 1975 when Dave McNally became the first free agent. Now players, coaches, professionals, and CEOs get a whiff of new money and jump ship, abandoning any interest in that cumbersome concept of loyalty. However, in music terms, free agency is an ancient, accepted practice. Few artists have an…
Three weeks from now, I’ll still be writing 2000 on my checks, and I’ll still have local CDs with 2000 copyrights stacked in the office. The former problem might be unavoidable, but here’s another bunch of reviews to help alleviate the latter. MeasureXMeasure We’re Back At first look and listen, MeasureXMeasure brings to mind Color Me Badd, with its…
What does it say that one of the most traditional-sounding Americana discs this year comes from a 24-year-old Australian — on a major label, no less? When Kasey Chambers sings about a “Southern Kind of Life,” she’s not evoking Nashville or Mississippi; she’s reminiscing about growing up in the most remote part of south Australia. Yet there’s nothing on The…
Paul Burch and the WPA Ballclub’s kind of country music is best fitted for people who will probably never get a chance to hear the group’s third record, Blue Notes. It is country so old-school that anyone weaned on what passes for country today probably won’t care for its earnestness and honesty. And it is beautiful. Other acts play country…
The first time I heard this one, I scribbled connections to Beck songs (the album is full of loops, drum samples, and scratching), Jeff Buckley lyrics, and some remarks about Paddy O’Casey’s wonderful Irish accent. Then I scrawled the first usable note: “Whatever happened to Richie Havens?” The real doorway into Amen (So Be It) is O’Casey’s Havens-esque earnestness. O’Casey…
Post-Napster, post-Amazon.com, post-listening station, does anyone remember the little jolt that accompanied picking up a new release, turning it over, looking at the list of song titles, and wondering what each sounded like? Not that there’s anything wrong with instant gratification, but these tools have moved well beyond caveat emptor usefulness when it comes to buying music. So thank heaven…
As Tom Petty sang, waiting is the hardest part. Just ask the kids who have spent almost 10 years waiting for Axl Rose to get his act together, or ask local Spike Lee fans, who are eagerly counting down the days until Bamboozled hits video shelves, having passed by Kansas City during its theatrical run. Or ask Honeyspoon, which had…
The last time the Gadjits shared a bill with the Breakups was in 1995, when both played at the VFW Hall on Walnut. Gee Coffee was still in Lenexa, the Daily Grind had yet to rise and fall, and El Torreon still served as a storage space. The Gadjits, on the strength of an irresistible self-titled demo full of perky…
The war on drugs has become this generation’s Vietnam, the unwinnable conflict that will, in the end, destroy the innocent and reward the guilty. That, in a coke vial, is the premise of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, a film that gives flesh and face to bloodless government statistics and statements. Traffic is, in a sense, this year’s Three Kings: a…
Trivial pursuits: Dickinson Theaters has had a tough year. What remains of the company’s showcase Glenwood Theater (after its more interesting bits were sold off in October) continues to be demolished, and the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October. But just as celebrity deaths come in threes (see December obits of Billy Barty, Victor Borge, and Jason Robards),…
For most of his 49 years, Marvin Chandler has lived in the same house in northeast Kansas City, Kansas. Growing up, the Chandler clan totaled eight, yet the house has just two tiny floors, each about the size of a suburban garage. The family managed to thrive. Six of the Chandler kids — Marvin among them — went on to…
Derrick Thomas’ vehicle slid off an icy highway last January, and his resulting death left fans and teammates shaken. Tamarick Vanover’s and Bam Morris’ arrests angered the city. Roy Williams flirted with his beloved North Carolina before painfully deciding to stay and coach the Jayhawks — his Jayhawks. Tony Muser’s Royals enjoyed one of the most prolific offensive years in…
“You’re right! I quit!” Until this moment—this shrill outburst that comes out of nowhere and startles both interviewer and subject—Marisa Tomei had been speaking in hushed tones, like someone making funeral arrangements. Every so often, she would punctuate her sentences with giggles—some nervous, some delirious—but suddenly, she is laughing uncontrollably like someone so amused with herself she barely notices…
