Just shoot me: The Kansas City Film Office, which has been threatened by city hall budget cuts, may not end up on the cutting-room floor after all. The office has lured millions of movie-making dollars and, when people like Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jewel are in town, made us feel special. In late March, the council decided to bankroll the…
Paul McGuinness has never thought of himself as a teacher of life lessons, so it comes as a bit of a surprise for him to hear it relayed that Kelly Curtis considers him an adviser—hell, a mentor. It comes as even more of a shock to discover that Curtis recalls exactly what it was McGuinness said to him all…
On April 3, Henry Bloch dug a golden spade into the soggy lawn at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Of all the VIPs breaking ground for the Nelson’s expansion, Bloch was the most important: The ice-cuby building will be named the Henry W. and Marion H. Bloch Gallery of Art. At least $12 million for the new gallery had come…
For a few days at sunset each September, a tiny, gritty corner of Kansas City’s west side fills with the fluttering orange wings of thousands of monarch butterflies that stop to rest on their migration to the fir forests of central Mexico. They glide onto trees that surround a tiny patch of grass that was Kansas City’s first park. A…
Steve Harville perches on a black midcentury Modern chair with his companion, Studley, on his lap. Gourmet food, posh resorts, handsome men and sexy women glide across his television screen. It’s the Style channel. “That’s kind of the Barbie channel,” says Steve. He and Studley, a frisky Boston terrier, enjoy lives of fine decor, fashion, travel and glamour. But Steve’s…
A noodle isn’t always just a noodle. For example, a traditional noodle (the kind used with stewed chicken or beef stroganoff) is made with flour, water and egg or egg yolk. The Asian noodles used in such restaurants as the new Lulu’s Thai Noodle Shop and Satay Bar may be prepared out of any number of ingredients: rice flour, mung-bean…
There’s an old saying in the restaurant business: If a customer has a great experience, he’ll tell five people about it; if he has an awful experience, he’ll tell fifty. That’s one of the pitfalls of opening a new restaurant when the service is still shaky or the kitchen isn’t up to speed. And two months after Lulu’s Thai Noodle…
05 Thursday The Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee 2001 continues tonight at Tivoli Cinemas, 4050 Pennsylvania, where several local filmmakers display animated shorts (that’s short movies that are animated, not summer garments that move about on their own); the festival gets under way at 7:30, and early arrivals are encouraged not to argue with doorman Bob Smith, recognizable by his debonair…
“Get thee to a nunnery!” Hamlet shouted at Ophelia in Shakespeare’s day. Times haven’t changed that much for William Claassen, a journalist and self-proclaimed “nomadic pilgrim,” who tells people to “Get thee to a monastery.” He’s speaking from personal experience. The 52-year-old author of Alone in Community: Journeys Into Monastic Life Around the World spent nearly three years traveling…
A recent on-site rehearsal for aha! dance theatre’s performance of “Automobiles” forced dancers to deal with an unexpected environmental factor: rain. Fortunately, improvisation leaves room for the unexpected. That’s been the norm for aha! since 1993, when seven dancers got together on weekends to exchange ideas. Eventually they developed enough skill to stage performances. In the “Planes” segment of…
When sound came to the movies in 1929, the presentation of the Academy Awards was but two years old. In the next decade, as the industry grew out of short pants and into gowns by Adrian or Edith Head, the honors were adjusted to accommodate new categories, such as Best Supporting Actor and Actress, which were first awarded in…
Seeing Neil Diamond’s cameo in Saving Silverman was somewhat off-putting, but hearing his golden pipes intone a dark tale during which one participant halfheartedly suggests We could both quit smoking/and kick the booze and blow is downright disturbing. But wait, the man behind those lyrics is actually former Archer of Loaf Eric Bachmann, whose deceptively silky singing could allow him…
Despite the fact that none of its members were alive when ABBA broke up in 1982, the impossibly cute A*Teens “paid tribute” to the band with the misleadingly titled note-for-note-covers album The Abba Generation. Somehow, this disc went gold, inspiring a sequel. The good news is that this quartet has ceased raping ABBA’s cold, dead corpse. The bad news is…
Eric Clapton’s new disc, Reptile, must be labeled as the most disposable of his albums. And because there are plenty of those already, let’s just say that we’re not talking Gillette Sensor disposable. More like a dull Bic. Reptile (titled, the guitarist says, as a nod to an endearment known among his friends and family when he was a child)…
Except for remixes of already slickly produced mainstream pop songs, a trend that somehow continues to defy extinction, the single is now the sole province of independent labels. Sub Pop revived its seven-inch club last year, regularly issuing exclusive tracks on vinyl to subscribers. Other labels press limited editions of singles on 45s, which are quickly snatched up and, more…
If a tree falls and no one is around, does it make a noise? If basketball fans employ the mute function on their televisions while watching Bill Walton call a game, are they still annoyed? When a local bar band calls it quits after nearly a decade, is it an occasion to mourn or to rejoice? Timeless questions all,…
About a year ago, Spin offered a feature called The Shredder, in which twenty-some albums were reviewed mercilessly in thirty or fewer sentences. However, this wasn’t Spin’s final word on these releases. The Shredder dismissed Everlast’s solid Whitey Ford Sings the Blues as the ramblings of “a wack rapper who listens to Creed,” but the album blew up, and just…
When Creedence Clearwater Revival wrote “Traveling Band,” its members probably never imagined — except, perhaps, in a fit of ’70s sci-fi fancy — that the tune would become a mantra for a squeaky-voiced certified chemistry teacher and his electronic companion. But Adam “Atom” Goren has come to epitomize the rock musician’s nomadic lifestyle, playing basements, punk clubs and balconies with…
The Actionslacks’ frontman, Tim Scanlin, used to complain that no one got the joke in the title of the group’s second disc, 1998’s One Word. See, Scanlin considers himself a verbose fellow, one for whom just one word is rarely enough. The proof, though, is not in his songs, which are tidily written and crisply played (more than ever…
The party started early at a midtown bachelor’s crowded lair last month. Dozens of young people, most in their mid-twenties, showed up in their Friday-night best: baggy pants, pec-tacular shirts, backless tops, booty-quakin’ bell-bottoms, feather boas, heavy makeup and T-shirts emblazoned with phrases such as “I Paul.” They drank. They danced. They popped a few pills. All in the…
The heroine of Andrucha Waddington’s Me, You, Them is a force of nature who holds men in her thrall and deftly reshapes them to suit life. Without knowing it, they fall prey to her charms, her spirit, her very scent. But she’s no Cleopatra dripping with jewels, no Lucrezia Borgia draped in the dark power of the state, no…
Hello, what’s this? Why, could it be another cautionary tale from Hollywood about recreational drugs being — alert the media! — not particularly good for people? Indeed, with Blow, director Ted Demme (Beautiful Girls, Monument Ave.) has set us up with a morality tale in which the moral is obvious from the start and there’s very little to do but…
Kansas City filmmaker premieres Wednesday, April 4, 7:30 p.m., Tivoli Cinemas, Manor Square, 4050 Pennsylvania, $5 Award-winning television programming Thursday, April 5, 5 p.m., Tivoli Cinemas, Manor Square, 4050 Pennsylvania, $5 Screening of competition short films — short stories Thursday, April 5, 7:30 p.m., Tivoli Cinemas, Manor Square, 4050 Pennsylvania, $5 Academic film conference Friday, April 6, 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m.,…
Patti Smith discovered him at a dive called The Cooler and was so inspired, she wrote “Death Singing” for him. Michael Stipe met him in the early 1980s and says of him now, “He was like an old pair of Levi’s — kinda worn, kind of frayed at the edges.” His name is Benjamin Smoke, and for ninety minutes,…
