The KC Strip takes pleasure in stepping aside at this time of year to print our traditional Christmas editorial, prompted by a well-known letter to the editor. We print it, expressing at the same time our deep gratification that the letter’s faithful author is numbered among the friends of this meat patty. I am 53 years old. Some of my…
The Moore the Merrier One film looms over all others in 2004: Fahrenheit 9/11, released in the heat of summer and the heat of an election-year battle, cast all comers in its estimable shadow and renders them moot. Combined, the dozen or so political docs that received theatrical distribution this year didn’t make a fraction of its earnings, and…
While Michael Moore and Mel garnered most of this year’s critical attention, plenty of fine films opened to little or no fanfare. Following are our reviewers’ favorite movies that didn’t draw the adulation they deserved. Consider yourself armed for the next trip to Blockbuster: Control Room — In a year of agitprop documentaries both left and right, the best political…
To understand this most tumultuous year in film, over which loomed the ghost of a blessed messiah and the shadow of an accursed pariah, turn your eyes from the movie screen and look to the bookshelf. There you will find a copy of Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures, which became available just 12 days into 2004 — long before…
Our best movies of the year actually may have been anything but the best to a few of our critics — such is the dilemma of offering employment to writers of dissenting opinion. In other words, the No. 1 film of 2004 wasn’t universally heralded by our team of Bill Gallo, Melissa Levine, Jean Oppenheimer, Luke Y. Thompson, and Robert…
After returning from our recent trip to London and Paris, the first thing everyone (except for Night Ranger Mom and Dad) asked was, “Did you hook up?” Sadly, the answer is no. This time, we behaved ourselves while on vacation, mainly because the NR went by herself and tried to exercise some caution when it came to matters of international…
Allah help me, I thought as I drove past the former Taco Bell building at 7630 Wornall Road. “Not another name for the same Mediterranean restaurant?” The sign in front of the low-slung building was different, all right: Petra Café. But was it actually a different restaurant or yet another creative gambit by restaurateur Nazeeh Hajeeh? The Jerusalem-born Hajeeh opened…
It’s hard to get Latrelle “Trelle” Osteen and Lynn Richardson — owners of the two-month-old Lillies on 17th — to speak planely. That is, to dish any dirt on nasty or bitchy celebrities they tended as TWA flight attendants. They much prefer talking about the nice ones, such as Natalie Wood or Bette Midler. Or telling how Liza Minnelli is…
12/18-12/19 Lucky for Disney, the animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarves probably presented fewer practical challenges than the Kansas Regional Ballet’s production. After all, how could a dance company’s lovely, lithe ballerinas be expected to play stumpy little men? Enter Claudette, Daphne, Goldie, Penelope and Winifred: the Belles of the Forest and protectors of our alabaster heroine. See…
12/16-12/17 The only thing rarer than a great comedian is the appearance of one — let alone two — in Kansas City. So it must be some sort of divine scheduling that brings both Lewis Black and Wanda Sykes to town this week. Sykes’ gig at the Uptown Theater (3700 Broadway, 816-753-8655) at 8 p.m. Thursday promises a return to…
ONGOING Winter is upon us, and a trip to the Kansas City Zoo doesn’t quite top our list of weekend destinations. But the zoo is open year-round, and right now it’s a holding zone for Santa’s reindeer. Jungle Bells, the zoo’s seasonal extravaganza, offers fun for kids, cheesy adults and even grumpy twentysomethings willing to surrender their keen sense of…
ONGOING Soulistic Tuesday, the Jazz District’s new open-mike night, is a no-holds-barred conglomeration of poetry, hip-hop, jazz, spoken word and performance art. Check it out from 8 p.m. to midnight every Tuesday at the Red Vine, a Cajun restaurant and bar at 1700 East 18th Street; call 816-472-8463 for information. — Annie Fischer Techno Geek Eddie Amador blinds us with…
Some skeptics cite sparse attendance at Kansas City Knights games as evidence that the area couldn’t sustain an NBA team in its new arena. By the same logic, small gatherings at grade school piano recitals might scare away an Elton John tour. The NBA, more than any other professional league, thrives on star power. The Knights actually confirmed KC’s NBA…
Thursday, December 16 Arguably, the most famous gift in art history is van Gogh’s severed ear, which he presented to a prostitute in 1888. Because cartilage is perishable, however, we are unable to share the lucky hooker’s happiness today through viewing the ear in a museum and perhaps eating a few ear-shaped shortbread cookies in a museum café. But the…
We’re snobs. Mention “burlesque revival,” and our knickers get in a twist; say “all-male revue,” and we’re thinking Chippendales, circa 1984. Oiled, shirtless men in shiny spandex pants and bow ties writhing around to Wham’s “Love Machine”? Not so much. But when Marco Marcez and the Men of Playgirl come to Joshua’s Saturday night, they’ll leave the sequins (and the…
Diane Arbus, Family Albums The mother who challenged compulsory prayer in public schools. The doctor who treated poverty and its side effects (hunger, parasites) as diseases needing cures. Diane Arbus assembled these and many other figures for Family Albums, a project the photographer left uncompleted before her death. We recognize some of the subjects for their blood relationships: Lee Harvey…
Christmas in Song Whether your holiday play list veers toward traditional carols or the pop of Bing Crosby and Eartha Kitt, you should be sated by Quality Hill Playhouse’s annual Christmas show. Joining pianist and master of ceremonies J. Kent Barnhart are Sylvia Stoner, Matt Leisy and, following a last-minute casting change, Toni Gates-Grantham. Last year’s audiences reportedly leapt to…
One odd consequence of 9/11 was the birth of a new urban legend. It’s about people who would have been inside or in the vicinity of the World Trade Center that morning who instantly decided to let their loved ones assume they perished. Dropping old loves and jobs and debts for something completely fresh is an intriguing setup that has…
Truman Road is one of my favorite streets. It’s exciting, for example, to see a sign advertising a bookstore I’ve never heard of, only to realize a moment later that those rectangular objects in the window are too big to be books. They’re mattresses. A trip down Truman Road makes me want to drive slowly so I don’t miss anything….
Fresh off a tour with Sondre Lerche and a welcoming reception at the CMJ Music Festival in New York City, the Golden Republic is poised for a sweet homecoming. The band throws a variety of sounds into its mix — bits of glam, garage, neopunk and disco — on top of the popular distorted, sassy midtempo hipster rock sensibility of…
Why don’t more bands openly embrace marijuana, regardless of whether they actually smoke it? Starving musicians, put this in your pipe and smoke it: Just get some gigantic paraphernalia props to spice up the stage show, ask “Do you like to get high?” a dozen times a set and dig into the cornucopia of cannabis-related album title puns (Royal Highness,…
Labeling Charlie Robison “pure country” is like calling Bush a “compassionate conservative” — you’ve only got it half right. There’s no denying the country-fried charisma of this down-home Texas badass (Robison, that is), but for every measure of steel guitar and Southern drawl that drips from his lyrics, he dishes up an equal helping of rock-and-roll attitude. Besides being married…
As a performer and pedagogue, University of Missouri-Kansas City director of jazz studies and alto saxophonist Bobby Watson continues to be an invigorating presence in the Kansas City jazz scene. His latest effort, Horizon Reassembled, reunites his watershed mid-’90s quintet and serves as a reminder that postbop isn’t past its prime yet. As an instrumentalist and composer, Watson conveys tonal…
It is possible to prepare for a battle competition that requires spontaneous rhymes. Rap into the mirror. Work on your free-association skills. Eat your carbs. But fledgling microphone fiends will need plenty of practice, practice, practice tactics for this Mic Mechanics Battle — they’ll be stepping into the ring against area veterans such as Approach, Mac Lethal, S.H.A.D.O.W. Judges spot…
