Of all the A-list men playing dedicated authority figures, Star Wars alums Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson remain among the most amusing and pleasing, which is why K-19: The Widowmaker glides along engagingly rather than sinking. In many ways, it’s just another cramped, dank submarine movie — bells, whistles, leaks, danger-danger! — but well-established playboys Ford and Neeson put on…
The old man and the seat: After reading Allie Johnson’s article on Charles Wheeler’s campaign for state senator (“Sorry, Charlie,” June 27), I was angry. Then, after reading it a second time, I realized she had accurately described the situation. There are three candidates for the senator’s seat in the 10th District of Missouri. One is a doctor and a…
Zoo de-Wourmed: Police arrested Kansas City Zoo Director Mark Wourms at his office Tuesday after Savannah, a thirteen-year-old Asian elephant, was found stabbed to death in her enclosure. Bloody footprints had led police to the house Wourms shares with his mother near Swope Park. Wourms, suspected of being the country’s worst serial animal killer since William Cody, covered his face…
David Fenley knows what it’s like to have his ass kissed by city hall. Getting his ass kicked is another matter. Yet that’s what happened when the head of Kansas City’s third-largest law firm went before the tax-increment financing commission July 10 to request tax breaks for an Overland Park developer’s downtown Kansas City project. Fenley listened in amazement as…
Mary Pilcher Cook knocks on another front door. This white ranch house on the residential stretch of Johnson Drive west of I-35 is owned by Republicans. Cook is a Republican who represents them in the Kansas Statehouse. Still, she can’t be sure of her reception. It could go either way. Two children peer through the storm door at the strange…
The Blue Moose Bar & Grill (see review) is one of a new breed of local restaurants that simply don’t take reservations. “We have a limited number of tables,” says manager Chris Throckmorton, “and we get a lot of walk-in business from the neighborhood. It’s first-come, first-served, and no one seems to mind.” Even when the wait for a table…
There’s more than one reason Rocky and Bullwinkle come to mind when I think about the two-month-old Blue Moose Bar & Grill in Prairie Village. Yes, eating there felt as if I were stuck in an episode of the old cartoon, but that’s not all. I can’t seem to shake the sense that this restaurant is really a setting…
Of her three solo albums, country singer Neko Case favors Blacklisted, the one she just finished recording. But she admits that her love for the album has more to do with the fun she had making it than anything else. “When you make a record, you’re too close to it to know what it sounds like,” she says. “But I…
It’s hard to believe that Till Freiwald’s paintings aren’t photographs. It’s even harder to believe that he paints them purely from memory. Freiwald sits with models and does several quick sketches. He memorizes every contour of the face, practicing for when the sitter is gone. Freiwald then takes as long as he needs — several months in some cases —…
A pal asked last week, “Who you writing about?” Told him, “Art Linson,” which screwed his face into a big ol’ question mark. “He’s a movie producer. He made Heat, Fight Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Untouchables, Car Wash…” Said said friend upon hearing that last one, “Dude must be old, if he did Car Wash.” Linson isn’t…
“Does John McEnroe know that when you use steroids, you still have to work out?” — Tim Grunhard, after Tatum O’Neal accused her scrawny ex-husband McEnroe of using steroids during his tennis career, WHB 810 “Should McEnroe tell 20/20 that used to have anal sex? Do you think the public would look at her differently? Do you know how many…
If you have tried to buy any Royals gear at one of Kansas City’s six area Target stores, you’ve been about as successful as David Glass has been as a baseball owner. On a recent check of local Target stores, I couldn’t find any Royals gear. Not a stitch. But they’ve got a bargeful of St. Louis Cardinals gear. In…
Richard Rodgers, the late musical composer whose 100th birthday is being feted this year in cabarets and concert halls across the country, reportedly believed that musical theater was so popular because it was so far removed from real life. That makes it easy to embrace the trend that recently brought to stages such quirky and dark musical comedies as…
The pop-rock recordings of Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter-guitarist Marlee McLeod usually include just enough twangy color — via pedal steel and mandolin, mostly — to mark her as a fellow traveler of the alt-country and Americana crowds. On stage, though, she’s far more likely to strip things back to the power-trio essentials. There, McLeod’s fresh, buoyant voice delivers songs heavy with wordplay…
In 2002, some fifty years after rock got rolling, there are plenty of influences from which to draw. Whereas most of the bands on rock radio have tapped into the same shallow pool of early-’90s groups, underground acts often take the time to do their creative homework. Rarely, though, has anyone sought to resurrect the disparate ghosts of Spike Jones,…
The Fire Show has burned out. Let the record state that its third record, Saint the Fire Show, will function as its final statement. A last tour will then serve as a fare-thee-well, as showmen M. Resplendent and Olias Nil venture forth, laying to rest their second group together (Number One Cup preceded it) with just the two of them…
Moby is one heck of a frustrating rock star. He’s Christian, vegan and friends with Kato Kaelin — reasons enough for Eminem to diss him on wax. And though the not-hurting-for-bucks Moby never met a commercial he didn’t like, he’s also just landed the biggest hit of his career with the soy-milk-smooth “We Are All Made of Stars.” That…
The final stop of a three-week tour should be a welcome homecoming for the Get Up Kids, who’ve endured a hailstorm of criticism for their folksy new effort, On a Wire. Though fans across the globe gnashed their teeth at the album’s lukewarm tempos and maudlin lyrics, the band is said to have added some spark to its live Wire….
As retro radio stations and flashback lunch hours so often forget, there was much more to Blondie than the disco kitsch of “Heart of Glass,” the island kitsch of “The Tide Is High” and the hip-hop kitsch of “Rapture.” At heart, Blondie was one of the best girl-fronted pop bands, complete with the art-punk attitude expected from the late-’70s class…
This was going to be a column about Californo’s Storyteller-style Sabbath-night shows, at which alt-rock bands whose shows traditionally don’t contain much folksy warmth or interactive banter unplug their guitars and chat about the muse behind each song. Unfortunately, word has it that the restaurant might trash the concept like a half-eaten entrée. But there’s one last chance to listen…
“Why the heck should the government suspend the First Amendment when we’re making such poor use of it?” asks media critic Norman Solomon toward the end of the two-disc set Monkeywrenching the New World Order: Global Capitalism and Its Discontents, forming the crucial question behind several recent spoken-word releases from Alternative Tentacles Records. In post-9/11 America — a country…
When the 57th Street Rogue Dog Villians roll through the streets of Kansas City, people stop and stare. After all, it’s not the average band that bumps through town in a tricked-out Chevy van with gleaming 20-inch rims and ornate, bumper-to-bumper artwork. “People love it,” says Txx Will with a grin. “They wave on the highway; they honk. People pull…
For centuries, Western philosophy has interpreted the dragon as a symbol of explosive violence. The notion that the basilisk is born to be slain is rather one-sided, but storytellers summoning such creatures can count on a passionate rise from their audience — which is why Reign of Fire has built-in appeal. Who wouldn’t want to watch the last bastion of…
In a small scene from the misguided Joe Versus the Volcano, Tom Hanks emerges from a doctor’s office wearing a fedora too small for his head and a trench coat that hangs off his body as though dangling from a skeleton. Hanks, then in his early 30s, still looked like a child. Twelve years on, he sports the same…
