Appropriately, A Beautiful Mind does not offer a literal translation of the life of John Forbes Nash Jr., the mathematician whose work on game theories won him a Nobel prize in 1994. Akiva Goldsman’s adaptation of Sylvia Nasar’s 1998 biography of Nash — the “mysterious West Virginia genius” whose mind slowly split in half as a result of schizophrenia —…
There’s great poignancy to the new cinematic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The film succeeds as massive, astonishing entertainment; enthralling us is its chief goal. Yet for all its effects, its regal performances by the likes of Christopher Lee and Ian McKellen and its teensy bit of media hoopla, the…
Suck it up: Regarding Kendrick Blackwood’s “Unprotected Sex” (December 6): I was horrified to read about Robert Rowe and his promiscuity in exposing his penis in a public bathroom (of all places). It’s frightening to think that people might be pulling down their pants and exposing their buttocks, when taking a crap, in bathrooms all across America. It’s shocking. Shocking,…
That bloody geyser at Union Station isn’t gushing from the mythical bullet holes supposedly left by Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd. It’s red ink flowing from Science City, where lack of attendance is dragging down the Titanic-like old train station. City leaders recently started talking publicly about new old ways to prop up the place, such as applying Kansas City’s traditional…
Beautiful women stroll the darkened room, stopping to chat with beer drinkers, dancing close and topless for those with cash to spare. A curvy woman in sparkling lingerie asks the DJ, “Will you play a country song next?” Three cowboys just walked in; maybe they’ll feel right at home listening to Shania Twain’s “Man, I Feel Like a Woman.”…
The recovery of the Eastern Pacific gray whale from the brink of extinction is the single greatest turnaround of a marine mammal population, and the whale’s myriad connections to human cultural conflicts are no less impressive in their scope. In the Pitch’s “Shades of Gray,” reporters from several of our sister papers have traveled from Siberia to Mexico to…
Together is the second feature from Swedish director Lukas Moodysson, whose 1998 Fucking Amal was released here two years ago under the title Show Me Love, renamed for obvious reasons. Together is an ensemble piece — a sharp, perceptive look at a Swedish commune in a suburb of Stockholm, circa 1975. That Moodysson himself would have been just six years…
Mel Bowie gets paid to tell people they’re HIV-positive. Sometimes they don’t want to hear it. A public-health specialist for the Kansas City Health Department, Bowie tries to persuade people to come in for counseling. Once he visited a couple to break the bad news to the husband. The man’s wife rushed into the kitchen, yelled that she was going…
For two years, the stench of waste from Beverly Magill’s cats wafted into her neighbors’ houses and hung over their yards. Magill’s neighbors frequently called the city’s animal control, health and neighborhood-preservation departments about the tiny house at 81st and Jarboe where dozens of cats peered out from green- and pink-trimmed windows, but little changed. Finally, on November 26, Heather…
It was a quiet and peaceful night. Every school board seat held a warm body. A faint but sweet scent of success hung in the air: Rising test scores and falling dropout rates just might deflect the state from seizing control of the schools. And so the December 4 meeting settled down to a droning, thoughtful debate of education, punctuated…
Plaza Blights The art of the steal: Regarding C.J. Janovy’s “Lights Out” (December 6): I, too, live in the Plaza area. I’d like to sign Kevin Brimmer’s petition, and I know everyone in my apartment community would as well. We have had several problems on our block with little response from the police. My boyfriend’s rims and tires were stolen…
Beneath the hazy, mystifying layers of Vanilla Sky lies a remarkable Tom Cruise performance — one that, to a large extent, takes place beneath a makeup artist’s piled-on scars and a costumer’s blank prosthetic mask. As David Aames, hipster publisher of Maxim-like magazines, Cruise plays a lothario so vain he plucks out a single gray hair with tweezers kept in…
Quite simply, it is only one step removed from flabbergasting to note how many Lawrence residents not only have the last name Hefner but also how many of them are coincidentally young white males who share an interest in garage rock. Four of them play together as, well, the Hefners, natch. There’s L.J. Hefner on guitar and vocals, Bryce Hefner…
One of the most popular meals at Buca di Beppo (see review) is spaghetti and meatballs. Different restaurants offer the dish in various sizes with their own particular seasonings, but trendier Italian spots, such as Lidia’s (101 West 22nd Street) and Il Trullo (9056 Metcalf), don’t even serve it. “It’s not an Italian dish,” says Il Trullo’s John Avelutto. “Occasionally…
I can’t help but wonder whether the chain of Buca di Beppo restaurants, including the new one on the Country Club Plaza, would exist if it hadn’t been for Kansas City’s most brilliant failure: Walt Disney. The cartoonist and visionary went broke here in 1922 and finally packed his bags to find fame in fortune in sunny Los Angeles….
“Every holiday show needs a doofus, and that’s me,” says Gary Miller, who plays the Snaggletooth Storyteller in this weekend’s hillbilly-holiday show at the Reading Reptile. “My job is to make anyone who comes feel smart by comparison.” With their particular spin on the notion of a feel-good event, performers in this production hope to give anyone who’s been stepped…
The ironies of celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ with the complete Sopranos collection on DVD speak for themselves. But the place where the meaning of Christmas becomes synonymous with consumerism is a comfortable one for the Black Poets Collective, which stages a show called Holy Days December 19 at the American Jazz Museum. Gino Morrow is president of the…
It is December 5, the day AOL Time Warner-owned DC Comics has been anxiously awaiting for almost 15 years—the day writer-illustrator Frank Miller once more dons cape and cowl to resurrect the Dark Knight, his fiercely rendered vision of an obscenely obsessed middle-aged Batman. Today, stores will finally open their doors to those waiting for The Dark Knight Strikes Again,…
“Terry Allen is our football coach, and he’ll be thankful to have Al Bohl as his AD. I’m going to do everything I can to help him. Terry Allen knows the pressure we’re all under.” — Al Bohl, shortly after being hired at the University of Kansas, the Associated Press “This bullcrap that we’ve got the best fans is the…
Athletic director Al Bohl rose from his seat at the University of Kansas’ football media day last August and started telling jokes. Bad jokes. He pantomimed gawking upward at giants as he told the assembled how he had first met the football team the night before. He then spread his arms and looked down at the floor, demonstrating a meeting…
The purpose of blinders is to keep the horse from getting distracted by the shit alongside the road. The horse looks straight ahead and continues on its plodding way without being spooked. It reaches its destination. Eats oats. Falls asleep standing up. Even if the horse could talk, it couldn’t tell you the truth of where it had been. People…
The drizzly season calls for dark tones. If golden-voiced Hope Sandoval does one thing exquisitely — and she does — it’s make perfect rainy-day music. Rarely is a song sad enough to make listeners feel genuinely concerned about the singer, but the first solo album from the former Mazzy Star vocalist does just that, again and again, veritably begging for…
As popularly perceived, the history of American music consists of two separate but equal narratives. Some music is clearly “black,” and some is self-evidently “white.” End of story. But the reality is considerably more complicated than that — and a lot more interesting. Jim Crow notwithstanding, American music has always been a child of miscegenation. Several current recordings suggest how…
Why does it sound cool, even inspiring, when a rap group confidently hypes itself (see Public Enemy) but vain and sophomoric when a guitar-slinging outfit does the same? Leave it to Le Tigre’s feminist-rock icon Kathleen Hanna to challenge another double standard. The trio’s second full-length album, Feminist Sweepstakes, overflows with self-referential sentiments. For the ladies and the fags, yeah/We’re…
