Hip-hop MC Priceless Diamonds describes herself as a “boss bitch” who grew up boosting clothes and turning the occasional trick. She swears that she’s leading a straighter life now, but we figure she’s still learned lots of good life lessons. So listen up, y’all. Got any insider tips on how to keep my heating bills low? Yeah, because I heard…
Now that wrecking crews have finished demolishing the old Jones Store to make way for all of downtown’s booming progress, the Strip can reveal a long-forgotten secret about the 103-year-old building: Spider-Man bought an orange oxford shirt there in 1982. The Marvel Comics hero (created by cartoonist Stan Lee in 1962) wasn’t in Kansas City to make a celebrity appearance…
It’s a Friday night at the Bottleneck in Lawrence. The hundred or so mostly white kids have come for rock and roll — punk and metal, to be specific. Headlining is the Esoteric, favorite of the region’s hardcore crowd. Playing third but no stranger to this kind of lineup is Mac Lethal, who, as his few fans here are aware,…
Putting together a sequel to a hit video game is tricky business. Play it safe and give people more of the same, and it ends up feeling stale. But try to innovate too much, and you dilute what made the game great to begin with. Soul Calibur III somehow manages to make both mistakes. The sequel offers game play…
Born to Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set (Columbia Home Video The centerpiece of this three-disc boxed set isn’t the classic 1975 album but the two DVDs that come with it. On one, shot in London in 1975, Bruce and the band tear through most of Born to Run and its two predecessors, and it’s a mighty sight: Springsteen, his face…
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Wellspring) The Ed Sullivan Show Rock & Roll Classics Boxed Set (Sofa Entertainment) Fantasy Island: The Complete First Season (Columbia/Tristar) Friends: The Complete Tenth Season (Warner Bros.) Friends: Collector’s Box (Warner Bros.) Greg Behrendt Is Uncool (WEA) Guided by Voices: The Electrifying Conclusion (Plexifilm) The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection (New Line) Kings and Queen…
Bang Rajan (Hart Sharp) Big Fish: Special Edition (Columbia/Tristar) Blue Collar TV: Season 1, Volume 1 (Warner Bros.) Burn (Columbia/Tristar) Christmas With the Kranks (Sony) Cronicas (UMVD) Edward Scissorhands: Anniversary Edition (Fox) 50 Cent: Refuse to Die (New Line) Jumanji: Deluxe Edition (Columbia/Tristar) La Dolce Vita: Deluxe Collector’s Edition (Koch Lorber) Lady Sings the Blues (Paramount) Lily Tomlin: The Search…
Rockstar Games has a winning recipe: Blend a nuanced story with a rich environment, add a dash of sensational marketing, then drench the confection in blood. What else would you expect from the publisher that gave us Grand Theft Auto? Rockstar’s latest release, The Warriors, proves that the bad boys of gaming can’t — or won’t — make an omelet…
Beavis and Butt-head: The Mike Judge Collection, Volume One (Paramount) This three-disc, 40-episode volume chronicling Beavis and Butt-head’s early years will come as a relief to anyone who was stuck in a teenage wasteland when the MTV series first hit the air; turns out, we weren’t just stoned — this stuff is still funny. A celebration of stupidity as…
An Inspector Calls Nice to see a return of old-school man of letters J.B. Priestly’s most urgent, haunting play, a masterpiece that demonstrates how art can be vital and rich in ideas without sacrificing accessibility or the pleasures of story. When Inspector Goole shows up at a wealthy British family’s estate to investigate a suicide, everyone involved is in some…
Charlotte Street Foundation The Charlotte Street Foundation awards show isn’t your average group show, lumping together somewhat disparate artists with a theme or linking their work by period or subject. Instead, the CSF artists whose work hangs together at Johnson County Community College’s Gallery of Art share something else: recognition and the funding that comes with it. This year’s award…
Here’s a tip for decoding theater reviews: “Crowd-pleasing” is the critic’s shorthand for “Everyone liked this stupid thing but me.” Not that pleasing a crowd is bad. It’s just that reviewers tend to apply these particular words exclusively to works that aim low and score big, to lunkheaded shows that manage, despite their artlessness, to whip up crowds like whales…
It’s hard to resist a show that exhibits only human faces and bodies (through nontraditional means). Seeing the Society for Contemporary Photography’s Simulacrum: Portraiture in the New Millennium is like peering into a warped mirror; it distorts our perceptions of ourselves and others, altering even the process of how we see. The unique construction of Loretta Lux’s photographs renders…
FRI 11/11 It’s been said that Jimmy Carter is the only person ever to have used the U.S. presidency as a stepping stone to greatness. Although he earned mixed reviews as leader of the free world, his ex-presidential years — spent working on behalf of human rights, the environment and peace — have revealed his strength at fighting international…
THROUGH 11/13 That’s hot.’ Les Misérables bills itself as the “world’s most popular musical,” which is the sort of damning praise that either keeps people filling theaters while the winner of eight 1987 Tony Awards continues to tour — or keeps them far, far away. The epic show (which has been translated into 21 languages!) tells the story of…
FRI 11/11 Taking a cue from an annual St. Louis tradition, KC capitalizes on the good-natured rivalry between firefighters and cops for its Guns and Hoses boxing match. The Surviving Spouse and Family Endowment Fund benefit begins at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Memorial Hall (600 North Seventh Street in Kansas City, Kansas, 913-371-7555). — Annie Fischer Digable Planets This weekend…
MON 11/14 Many people’s first encounter with Russell Banks was through the moody film based on his book The Sweet Hereafter, whose characters are forever changed by a school-bus accident that kills all of the children onboard. Banks’ newest novel, The Darling, explores similar themes of isolation and survival. The darling of the book’s title, Dawn Carrington — aka…
Walking the tightrope between commercial success and critical acclaim is complicated in all of the pop arts, but it might be most difficult in network television, where the bar for audiences is set limbo-low. The West Wing, with its compelling week-to-week narratives and outstanding ensemble acting, has for seven seasons been a sanctuary for viewers sick of the shameless piggyback…
Thursday, November 10 When the Pitch gave River City Books (108 Missouri, in the River Market, 816-283-8344) the Best New Used Bookstore award in 2003, the writer compared its likelihood for long-term success to the likelihood of a three-legged thoroughbred dominating the dog tracks: damned fun to cheer on, but if you’re a bettin’ man, keep your wallet in…
Sheila Syty and her group, Il Circolo Italiano, prove that some Americans want a cultural exchange richer than ordering pizza. Less than two years ago, the conversation and culture group was only an idea. Syty was learning to speak Italian in order to converse with her in-laws, who live in Italy. “At first we were able to scrape together four…
Keira Knightley, who is all of 20 but has the grace and gravitas of someone a good decade older, probably considers herself the luckiest lass in all the world at present. Just as last month’s Domino shamefully skulks toward video-store shelves, never to be heard from again, Pride & Prejudice begins filling the cineplex with dewy, hopeless romantics who can’t…
As a screenwriter, Shane Black has built a reputation on action movies featuring mismatched partners: Crazy Mel Gibson and aging Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, sassy Samuel L. Jackson and amnesiac hit-woman-housewife Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight, burnout detective Bruce Willis and football player Damon Wayans in The Last Boy Scout. He’s been out of the game…
Because we’re in seventh grade, nothing is dearer to us than the sports-based sexual innuendo. So when we heard that a gay sports bar just opened at 36th Street and Broadway, we had a field day. Sure, Outa Bounds gives new meaning to the term sports nut, and we expected to see a lot of ball handlers. (Har har. OK,…
A friend of mine called last week to say he’d gone to The Gaf (7122 Wornall Road) to see if the rumor he’d heard was true: that the new Irish pub in the former Romanelli Grill space was attracting a younger, hipper clientele. The venerable Romanelli Grill, a Waldo institution since the 1930s, was better known in recent years as…
