Forbidden Planet (Warner Bros.) Long available as faded discount product, Fred McLeod Wilcox’s 1956 masterpiece — the movie without which Star Trek, Star Wars, 2001, and, oh, Lost in Space wouldn’t exist — at last gets its proper due; this double-disc collection comes with everything but stardust and rocket fuel. The tale of a United Planets spaceship, captained by a…
A Christmas Carol Could even that hooded and horrifying Ghost of Christmas Future have guessed that Charles Dickens’ slight, sentimental Christmas ghost story would outshine even Great Expectations or David goddamn Copperfield in the public imagination 163 years after its composition? This is the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s 26th stab at it, and the troupe has again assembled a grand…
Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale A cryptid is a creature like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster — that is, lost, rumored or thought to be extinct. Cryptozoology is a science — or pseudoscience, depending on whom you ask — that studies such creatures. A real-life cryptozoologist named Loren Coleman joins 17 artists from around the world in a…
Like many boys, my friends and I dedicated much of our childhoods to the pursuit of televised nudity. This was a tricky proposition in the early 1980s, before most American households were equipped with pipelines for pumping in porn on-demand. For years, the best we could get was the pre-network Channel 41, which, in its early days, sometimes let a…
For kicks, Elvis Presley once shot his television. In a famous 1975 performance-art piece called “Media Burn,” the experimental art and architecture collective called the Ant Farm upped the ante by heroically driving a funky spaceship car through a wall of TV sets in San Francisco. To observers, it looked like Evel Knievel had suddenly become political. An edited…
Fast Food Nation, directed by Richard Linklater from Eric Schlosser’s best-selling 2001 exposé of the McDonald’s conspiracy, is an anti-commercial. It’s designed to kill desire and deprogram the viewer’s appetite. Linklater — who, along with Steven Soderbergh and Gus Van Sant, has staked out a particular outpost on the indie-studio border — here takes a cleaver to the great American…
By all rights, 2002’s cynical, weary Die Another Day should have been the final James Bond film. Yet here we are, not only prolonging the franchise but at its beginning: the third attempt to get right Casino Royale, the first book in Ian Fleming’s series, which began in 1953. Set in the present day, this kinetic, character-driven take is…
I’m always thrilled when friends and acquaintances — and readers — tell me about new restaurants to investigate. That’s what inspired me to drive to Raytown to dine at an independently owned restaurant at 88th Street and Blue Ridge called Chandler’s. Last week, a friend and I hopped in the car and headed east. Chandler’s was easy enough to find,…
In Paris, a maison is a house unless, just as in America, the house is not a home. Kansas City has several restaurants located in buildings that were formerly houses — Stroud’s on Northeast Oak Ridge Road, the Governor’s Meeting House in Shawnee, the second floor of Café Rumi in midtown — but the cozy French restaurant at 63rd…
When your night starts with a nearly nude woman offering you a mini cream puff, you know you’re in for an interesting time. Then again, it was First Friday, so perhaps other such arty nekkidness and pastry were titillating an appreciative crowd elsewhere in the Crossroads. Insert your own creamy-filling joke here. Whatever the case, we were a bit flustered…
At first, the New Amsterdams existed as a Matt Pryor side project, living in the shadow of his other band, the Get Up Kids. For five years, the Amsterdams were satisfied to quietly turn heads. Things have changed. These days, Pryor isn’t two-timing anymore. The Kids broke up in July 2005 (they’re all still friends), and Pryor began to focus…
If we were in command of a sixth-grade class, this Saturday show at the Record Bar would easily trump the planetarium when it came time to plan the yearly field trip. It’s tragic — kids these days have almost no access to real rock and roll! It’s getting to where a child is lucky to have a dad who huffs…
When early Alice in Chains single “Man in the Box” hit radio some 16 years ago, the box that late singer Layne Staley was trapped in was heroin. His 2002 speedball OD death seemed likely to put the kibosh on the fashion-challenged band that Staley and guitarist Jerry Cantrell co-founded in 1987. But let’s get real: The market can handle…
When Tara Jane O’Neil performs, she mostly looks down at her shoes, anchored to one spot, holding her guitar close, as if she’d like to pull the instrument as far inward as possible. Inevitably, this will strike some audience members as attitude, shyness or intensity of focus. They should shut their eyes, then, because what’s important is how O’Neil floods…
Rocket Fuel Is the Key hasn’t released an album since its 1996 debut, Consider It Contempt, and its follow-up remains rooted in that era’s indie-noise aesthetic. The Kansas City band blends garage-rock velocity with rhythmic shouting and feedback-fuzzy solos. It’s a sound that doesn’t need updating, especially because few groups have mastered it. With the exception of the six-minute standout…
Walkmen (Record Collection) Evidently, the Walkmen recorded Pussy Cats Starring the Walkmen as a spontaneous send-off to their Brooklyn studio, its building having been slated for demolition. To that we say, Who cares? With the exception of a few songs off its past two albums (“The Rat,” “Louisiana,” etc.), Pussy Cats is the band’s best work since its debut, 2002’s…
Things have been quiet lately from Deep Thinkers, but 2007 should be a big year for the Kansas City hip-hop duo. MC Brother of Moses and producer Leonard Dstroy, who both have solo projects in the works, will soon be releasing Don’t Call It a Mixtape Vol. 1, the first in a series of recordings that will build up to…
When John Mellencamp’s cloying “This Is Our Country” is selling Chevy trucks every five minutes during commercial breaks on NFL Sunday, it’s easy to forget that there are bands that still play real, American music. The search for those bands might make twang lovers throw up their hands in frustration, as Faith Hill did at the Country Music Awards when…
The Dictators’ “Haircut and Attitude” remains an effective prescription for rock fame: You gotta look good! You gotta act tough! Nowhere in the song does singer Handsome Dick Manitoba shout, You gotta be self-effacing! Nevertheless, the appearance of modesty has become a matter of punk etiquette — one that the black-clad foursome Love Equals Death doesn’t seem to believe in….
Tech N9ne ain’t looking real wild these days. Gone is the signature explosion of spiked, red-dyed hair — a look that was inspired during the rapper’s long affair with Ecstasy. No longer rolling on pills but still riotous onstage, Tech’s rocking the close-cropped, sophisticated-older-guy look. Tech’s jutting, pharaoh goatee has strands of white in it — which is common for…
The California-based company NS Microwave Inc. had what sounded like a brilliant idea to showcase its high-tech crime-fighting gear. In June, the company lent $250,000 worth of surveillance equipment — including wireless, night-vision cameras and a mobile command unit — to the team of cops patrolling the grounds of the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival west of Lawrence. Afterward,…
The Strip has to give it up for ol’ Clay Chastain. Working without money, volunteers or in-state residency, he convinced the citizens of Kansas City, Missouri, to pass a $600 million tax. Yep, to everyone’s shock, voters last week approved Chastain’s latest light-rail proposal. The plan calls for a line from Swope Park to the airport, a fleet of electric…
Dave VonKleist is ready to jolt this crowd out of its early-morning stupor. Armed with a guitar, VonKleist steps onto a makeshift stage in a large banquet room at the Clarion Hotel just east of the Truman Sports Complex. On weekday mornings, VonKleist hosts The Power Hour, a political talk show on KCXL 1140 focusing on government misdeeds and…
Head South, Men Dear Mexican: A friend says she read somewhere that only 20 percent of Mexican men will go down on their ladies. I don’t believe that. Can you “spread” some light on the subject? El Gabacho Guapo Dear Guapo: Let me penetrate the thrust of your friend’s argument by referring her to the seminal The International Encyclopedia of…
