L.A. Twister is an independent film about two rookie filmmakers making an independent film about two rookie filmmakers … making yet another independent film. Unfortunately, all of these films suck. But despite the rampant Hollywood clichés, the overdone movie-within-a-movie plot and poor acting by bit players, the work is made watchable (and practically enjoyable) by the three actors at…
Thursday, December 9 Every year, from late November until well into January, swarms of tacky, mass-produced holiday missives take flight across the postal system like a plague of locusts. Sure, it’s nice to receive greetings from far away, but we don’t exactly get warm fuzzies from a stanza or two of doggerel followed by a scrawled signature. So we’ve resolved…
A cartoonist’s rendering of playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute would surely include both an angel and a devil buzzing around his head. From his first film, In the Company of Men, to his latest stage work in New York, Fat Pig, LaBute seems to relish rattling people — or pissing them off outright. But for every viewer who despises him,…
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…
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…
For several Decembers running, the Unicorn Theatre has done its damnedest to avoid shows with holiday themes. Convenience, Gregg Coffin’s new musical, continues that tradition, but with maddeningly mixed results. Well, maybe not that maddening. The show is worth seeing, primarily for its cast. Frustrating better describes this dense, sometimes lovely musical that zigzags from scenes of bruising emotional resonance…
Erik Pointer probably gets caught in those awkward moments when someone is not-so-quietly musing to his own beat more often than he’d care to admit. But the Kansas City trumpeter and composer nonetheless offers plenty of glimpses into the creative cogs of his musical mind on Better Late Than Never. A teacher by trade, Painter is an occasional sideman for…
Quiet as it’s kept, Sealhenry Samuel is a bona fide postmodern genius. Outkast’s Andre 3000 gets all the glory these days, though Seal also worships faithfully at the font of Ol’ Skool. Yet while the Promethean duo from Stankonia continues to take Funkadelicized baby steps to remake Planet Pop in its own image, Seal has assumed the throne of Invisible…
Neil Young’s genius was affirmed before the sun ever set on 1967’s fabled Summer of Love. But it took several years before Young escaped the shadow of Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to unveil his individual mastery. Even so, any veteran Youngian short of a completist will find this hit parade redundant and opt instead for the…
No Doubt’s best record, Return to Saturn, plays like an unofficial Bridget Jones soundtrack. Gwen Stefani is jealous of cuter women, greets her birthday with grim gravity, clings to an unfaithful man and frets: Who will be the one to marry me? Her pathological insecurity is absurd but never insincere. Four years later, Stefani has joined the ranks of solo…
People have their obsessions. Ahab had his white whale. Indiana Jones had his Ark of the Covenant. I send Gary Coleman love letters written in my own blood. Hey, diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks, right? Well, Todd Comer has house music. Three years ago, the photographer known as Phocas was working on a photo essay about the dance-music culture in…
If James Taylor had been born into the Krauss family, his music might sound something like what Barclay Martin produces. Martin, formerly of the excellent bluegrass quartet Potato Moon, tones down the twang on his forthcoming album, Promise on a String, and concentrates instead on straightforward singer-songwriter folk. The disc has the warm immediacy of a guitar-shop hootenanny, with Martin’s…
VHS or Beta had the misfortune of competing with a Red Sox playoff game during its October visit to Boston. It’s a shame, because the synthesized edge on the Kentucky quartet’s latest album Night on Fire — which tones down the instrumental Daft Punk-isms of its debut, Le Funk, in favor of vocal-driven postpunk decadence — translated into a booty-bumping…
The Paper Chase opens its fourth album by rhyming I want your wicked parts with I want to eat out your bitter heart, a daring couplet that could crash in less capable hands. Instead, John Congleton’s dramatic voice, which quivers with authentic intensity, sells every word, and the claustrophobic backdrop conjures images of a mad pianist stomping on his keys…
PD: How was your Thanksgiving? RB: I was able to rest just long enough to get a head cold. In Arizona? Yeah, it’s funny. We were in Canada last week,and then I come home, where it’s 65 degrees, and then I catch a cold. Did you at least get fat and happy? Oh, yeah, I had lots of good food….
It was only 81 words. It would all be over in 90 seconds. Nothing to sweat. Nothing to lose. Pssssshhhhhhhh. I was screwed. Altruistic auspices had lured me to Independence Center, but it was sheer terror that kept me frozen on the small food-court stage, strangling a microphone as I peered out at blank faces. “How’s everyone doing in the…
Back in January 2003, when the Donnas stormed MTV’s TRL with a performance of “Take It Off” — the lead single from its 2002 major-label debut, Spend the Night — the presence of real guitars and nonplastic women on the show disturbed the balance of the channel’s teen-pop-centered cosmos. Such gleeful disruption sums up the nature of the Donnas: four…
The inspiration you seek can’t be found inside specially marked boxes of Cocoa Puffs. It resides within Mark Reynolds, an eccentric Kansas City musician who will enlighten your open mind with deranged projects like Whoremonger. Reynolds recently submitted the album — seven “songs” in 57 seconds — to the Guinness Book of World Records for consideration as the World’s Shortest…
That tortoise-and-hare parable is complete bullshit. While the timid little terrapin takes his sweet-ass time, the rabbit kicks ass and takes names at warp speed. And SideWise is a hare with no need for apologies. The band is only seven months old. It didn’t really perform in public until September, and most of its members hadn’t even heard of…
“I’m not for sale. I’m fucking love. I give it away.” So says Anton Newcombe, the raging megalomaniac who heads the Brian Jonestown Massacre, an underground rock band determined to take over the world. First he hurls the words at the audience. Then he informs the crowd that they bought tickets, so he’ll give them what they paid for. (So…
If you’ve already decided to see Ocean’s Twelve, it’ s probably best not to read much about it. Unlike its predecessor, a remake that clung to a hoary heist formula, the sequel contains ample pleasures, most of which amuse because of surprise. There’s no one big twist for critics to spoil, but many little things are better the less…
Helter Shelter Bedroom eyes: Regarding Allie Johnson’s “Meet the Landlord” (December 2): As a single mom, things like this make me very angry. I was in a bad situation when my oldest was just a baby, and I thank the good Lord up above that I was never in a situation like that. Men often wonder why women have a…
Native Tongue What’s an ambassadress, and does it come in a size 4? The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial is mercifully coming to a close, along with the rest of 2004, and the press release for the final lukewarm commemorative event, Sacagawea: Ambassadress to the West, was sent to the Pitch from Tim Tiegreen, the Kansas City Parks and Recreation…
Every year brings a heartwarming Christmas tale, and this year’s took place in Independence. You may have heard about it. This time, Scrooge was played by Independence City Manager Robert Heacock, who decided that a charity run by a man named Richard Boyden couldn’t park a semitrailer in Independence Square to take donations. Boyden’s charity is called Operation Morning Star,…
