Thursday, August 21, 2003 For anyone who hasn’t noticed already, the long period of construction at the Englewood Theater has finally ended, so Kansas Citians with a hankering for old movies on the big screen can get their fill. Today ends a week offering three different movies: Viva Las Vegas, Way Out West and Man Without a Past. Way Out…
When Sarah Ivy was growing up in rural Kansas and the suburb of Overland Park, she wasn’t exactly beating the drums of gay advocacy. “Even at KU, I didn’t really have any gay or lesbian friends,” she says. “I was asexual. I was oblivious.” Ivy’s incremental self-acceptance makes her participation in next week’s Makin’ It Safe all the more extraordinary….
Stripped of its powdered wigs and the layers of silk and satin, Stephen Frears’ film version of Dangerous Liaisons is an exquisite and perversely contemporary tale about people who use people. As the Marquise De Merteuil (the wicked Glenn Close character) says to the equally vicious Vicomte De Valmont (played by John Malkovich), those so inclined must declare nothing…
On Sunday, HBO will air the final episode of what has been the most consistently entertaining—and aggravating—show of the summer television season. Project Greenlight will fade to black, and the people who populated the series—the first-time screenwriter who’s had the optimism beaten out of her, the rookie directors who’ve had their unwarranted hubris removed with rusty pliers, the irritated…
If rock music is indeed the new pornography (as stated by no less of an authority than Jimmy Swaggart), then the New Pornographers’ sophomore disc Electric Version and its predecessor, Mass Romantic, are the kinds of finds that any sixteen-year-old boy would be crazy-happy to unearth in his dad’s garage. Armed with an inherent understanding of what makes great melodies…
Ever since Johnny Carson abdicated his late-night television talk-show throne — taking with him his fashion-challenged, chop-busting trumpeter Doc Severinsen — the battle of the late-night bands has never been the same. While David Letterman’s perennial sidekick Paul Shaffer might share Severinsen’s questionable sense of style, only Conan O’Brien’s Late Night trumpeter Mark Pender comes close to filling his musical…
While the interplay between the members of acts such as Phish and the octet currently touring as the Dead is consistently compelling, the jam-band aesthetic can sound equally at home in the hands of a single singer/songwriter. Keller Williams creates intensely dense compositions onstage thanks to a healthy handful of loop pedals and a boundless imagination that transforms even the…
There are many reasons why seemingly rational people dislike Radiohead’s records: terminal overexposure (commonly cited by record-store employees), latent anti-intellectualism, “that damn whiny voice,” compulsive contrarian tendencies, paucity of killer mosh-pit fodder. Then there are the music critics who secretly love recent Radiohead albums but dismiss them in print as “all but unlistenable for casual listeners,” thereby congratulating themselves for…
Using a punctation-spliced cadence that’s a natural fit for a mixer, DJ Cache 22 describes his sound as “Urban. Downtempo. Latin. House.” Dance-music fans who find any or all of those terms appealing can stop by Mi Cocina, where Fresco Productions hosts “Scene 2” from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Thursday. Plaza eateries don’t usually host high-profile spinner showcases,…
When David Garza came to town a few years ago, opening for (and then playing with) Alejandro Escovedo, he added a wonderful guitar voice, a wry sense of humor — and the realization that he’s not really a roots artist at all. After a song or two, fans of singer-songwriters such as Rufus Wainwright, Jason Falkner and Jeff Buckley will…
Those who love Eleni Mandell’s white-hot, punky lounge stylings will recognize her recent full-jump foray into deep country music as anything but a cynical attempt to cash in. The country covers that have always been part of her shows should have been our clue, but with her most recent CD, Country For True Lovers, Mandell has made a sultry, slinky…
For the most part, the audience at the Pitch Music Awards was attentive and respectful. So, everyone who was there should ace this post-show pop quiz. As for the rest of you, take your best guesses. The answers are at the end; the full list of award winners is posted at pitch.com. 1. As he accepted his unprecedented seventh…
Joe Cummings knows the RAVE Act. He has followed its progress, studied its wording and researched its recent applications. The act hasn’t directly affected him, and he hopes, as a promoter of legitimate dance-music events, that it never will. Still, he remains wary, because three years ago police charged him with a Class-C felony, “maintaining a public nuisance,” after…
As darkness fell on the KROQ 106.7 Weenie Roast and Blink-182 finished its goof-rock set, I waded through a crowd of 50,000 drunk and disorderly concertgoers toward the dozens of bonfires dotting the lawn area of the Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion, about an hour’s drive from Los Angeles. Plumes of toxic, black smoke scorched my lungs. Passing scores of fistfights,…
Ah, Paris — City of Light, of Love, of Liver Damage and Lung Cancer. C’est formidable, non? Who in need of a posh vacation would turn down the opportunity to luxuriate in its finest hotels, to stuff oneself with sumptuous snails, to work on a terribly flat romantic drama called Le Divorce? As it turns out, nobody. In the nearly…
It’s a pleasure to behold a chunk of art that’s simultaneously dank and fresh, and that description perfectly fits the superb Dirty Pretty Things. The latest from veteran director Stephen Frears (Gumshoe, Prick Up Your Ears, High Fidelity) transports the viewer to a subjective inner landscape shaped by dub-funk, eerie fluorescent lighting, sticky streets and urban decay. The place…
Structural damage: Regarding Allie Johnson’s Kansas City Strip (July 31): bad form. Complete with misquotes and defamatory half-truths, Johnson abuses her position as a journalist to misrepresent the Revolutionary Education Community Center. The shameless and excessive use and misuse of the buzzword anarchist is a transparent attempt to stereotype and trivialize the collective efforts of the RECC. How dare Ms….
Last Tuesday, a horde of navy-suited Secret Service agents, Kansas City police officers and bomb-sniffing German shepherds stood sentinel at Unity Temple on the Plaza. Their mission: Maintain order among more than 1,000 bookworms awaiting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had agreed to autograph 1,250 copies of Living History in an hour and a half. There would be no time…
Over in Castaway Cove, the adults-only area at Oceans of Fun, the unlikely combination of drinking and swimming under the broiling sun gives special meaning to Oceans of Fun’s claim of a “wet and wild adventure.” Past the gift shop, where visitors can pick up hats and shell necklaces, and beyond Captain Kidd’s pirate ship lies the Cove. There, wenches…
It’s pretty clear what Ray Parker is doing, and it’s fairly easy to guess why. But the value of his pious little protest? Now that’s a tougher question. See, Parker is taking a moral stand, and he’s doing it as a favor to all of those parents who have just loaded up their cars with the belongings of their…
Another universal truth about drinking: The daytime drinkfest is stealthily more lethal than the nighttime one. This is what we discovered on a recent Saturday afternoon, when we participated in our friend Robert’s pet project: the summer Goodswill Games, at which he and his friends compete in various bar contests. The festivities began at 2 p.m. at Smiley’s Golf Complex…
Now that the most hyped name in pizza on the Country Club Plaza is the California Pizza Kitchen (see Café), the nearby Pizzeria Uno (4710 Jefferson Street) has discreetly changed its name to the Uno Chicago Grill. Actually, the formal name change occurred six months ago, according to a spokesperson for the restaurant chain, but a new sign hasn’t been…
“Have you been to the California Pizza Kitchen?” asked a friend of mine, practically salivating. “It’s out of this world! Everything is so delicious.” She continued in great detail, not noticing that my eyes had glazed over. It isn’t that I dislike hearing other people extol restaurants, but this particular friend has notoriously abysmal taste in dining venues. So her…
FRI 8/15 Bass players are always the artsy ones. Maybe it’s because of their introverted souls. They did, after all, select an understated instrument. You’d be hard-pressed to find a longhaired guitar player giving a musical interpretation of contemporary art. Local bass player Bill McKemy, however, is doing just that. Inspired by Greg Rose’s landscape paintings on display in an…
