Last Saturday night, Julianne Donovan and Nathan Wyman got married. Since both are creative, crafty types, I knew that their wedding would be pretty spectacular, and my suspicions were confirmed when I got the invitation. It encouraged guests to wear costumes and comfortable shoes for the after-ceremony parade, and it also included two tickets to the debut performance…
Menomena. Friday, June 22, at the Bottleneck By Richard Gintowt It’s been awhile since I got really excited about a show. Maybe it’s just bad luck, but most of the bands I’ve been digging lately — Field Music, Crystal Skulls, Chromeo, Mice Parade, Rotary Downs, Voxtrot — haven’t ventured anywhere near the area. That’s not to slight the fine…
The University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Institute for Labor Studies is off the chopping block for now, according to a letter sent out Saturday by the institute’s only staff member, Judy Ancel. Last Friday, UMKC Chancellor Guy Bailey decided not to immediately close the institute. Bailey changed his mind after a meeting with Gary Kemp, the Business Manager of the…
Starbucks heard the “predator” taunts when it plopped a new store next to the Broadway Café in 1998. But the onslaught of green-aproned baristas hasn’t been all bad for independents. By ritualizing the consumption of fancy coffee drinks, Starbucks has made caffeine peddling an attractive business. As Starbucks boss Howard Schultz said on 60 Minutes, “e created an…
Yes, the episode is old – it first aired December 11, 2005. But a few nights ago, I caught the Aqua Teen Hunger Force spoof of Sprint’s Boost Mobile youth brand of cell phones. For those with lives, jobs and ambition, Aqua Teen Hunger Force is a late-night cartoon about the misadventures of a floating box of French fries (Frylock),…
FRIDAY Giant celebrity funnyman and Bullwinkle impersonator Dave Coulier (pictured) performs his inimitable brand of Bullwinkle-imitation-based comedy tonight at Stanford and Son’s (1867 Village West Parkway, Kansas City, Kansas) and will be, perhaps, the only man in the city limits who has been seen on television somewhere in the world every single day since, like, 1987. Go experience the…
The nominees are in. The voting is open. The 2007 Pitch Music Awards are on a collision course with your ass. Hell yes. A panel of more than 30 local music experts — people whose lives are invested in the Kansas City and Lawrence music scenes in one way or another — have chosen the nominees in categories that we…
The Veils, the Comas, and American Catastrophe. Tuesday, June 19, at the Grand Emporium Reviewed by Jason Harper Do you know anyone who likes seeing shows at the Grand Emporium these days? I’m afraid I don’t. The sound is usually bad, the bar staff ain’t the friendliest in town, the stage is ugly and half-assed, and it’s just not a…
Three years ago, John Wysocki stood looking at the manicured grounds of the Lawrence Visitor Center at 402 North Second Street in Lawrence. “I thought, Gee, this is a great place to hold outdoor events,” he tells the Pitch. That’s how Wysocki came up with the idea of the Lawrence Art Market at the center. “We combined two approaches to…
Norman Rockwell spent his career telling America a safe, uncontroversial story about itself. Resorting frequently to caricature and indulging a cornball sense of humor, he favored a folksy, homespun approach that often obscured his technical mastery of oil painting and his vividly rendered imagery. Today, Rockwell’s America: Celebrating the Art of Norman Rockwell comes to the KCP&L Gallery at…
In this week’s Pitchcast, Stretch, the sculptor and businessman who helped pioneer the Crossroads for fellow artists, talks about the taxes that are driving galleries out of the area, the future of arts in KC and about his label as a raging asshole. . Get it through iTunes by clicking here, download it on the Web by clicking here here…
You fancy yourself a grown-up, and then something like this happens. There I was, 90 minutes into Intimate Apparel, a pokey but crowd-pleasing drama packing them in at the Unicorn Theatre. The opening-night audience seemed deeply absorbed, but I was antsy, worrying about how all the various plots had yet to resolve themselves. Then I got smacked back to fifth…
A gestural machismo dominates the Dolphin in June. And the work is accomplished, enthusiastic and smart. This predominantly male exhibition showcases some of the most exciting work in town. Disappointingly, only three of the 13 artists are women, and their work is not installed in the main gallery. So let’s start with them. Ke-Sook Lee, Peregrine Honig and Anne Lindberg…
Uplifted beyond its merits by a thrilling performance from Marion Cotillard, this humdrum biopic of French songbird Edith Piaf obliges the legend rather than the woman. Writer-director Olivier Dahan, an unblushing fan, marches his revisionist biography dutifully from one event to the next — miraculously cured blindness, bad marriages, tumultuous affairs — while building a kind of Piaf theme park…
A skilled actor vanishes into a role; a movie star appropriates it. Presence trumps character, with the star personifying Bertolt Brecht’s alienation effect, and the movie merely the latest installment in a public myth. Angelina Jolie is the major alienation effect in A Mighty Heart, though she’s not the only one. The hectic pizzazz with which hired gun Michael…
The screenwriters of this Stephen King adaptation are collectively responsible for Reign of Fire, Problem Child 3 and Agent Cody Banks, and director Mikael Håfström’s English-language debut was the dreadful Derailed. Yet 1480 is a surprisingly effective movie, terrifying in its tension and heartbreaking in its release. John Cusack plays a former novelist named Mike Enslin, who, after the death…
This sequel to Bruce Almighty is the work of an angry God. A sanctimonious sitcom dolled up as the most expensive comedy ever made — reportedly $175 million — it marks an unfortunate low point in the history of recent American comedy. Worse, it proves that Steve Carell can’t make everything funny. In short, God (Morgan Freeman) tells Evan (Carell)…
Based on a trilogy of Russian best-sellers, Day Watch, which told of an ancient feud waged between the forces of light and dark, was a huge hit in Russia and went on to make a decent chunk of change in the States. Day Watch dawns with a whiplash refresher course before diving into an inspired set piece concerning the provenance…
Unless you were raised entirely on Sweetland and The Spitfire Grill, you know damn good and well that any independent film opening with shots of farmland and granaries and one-street downtowns has taken aim for the wormy heart of Heartland, U.S.A., probably going in through the asshole and working its way up. True to that model, Eric Frodsham’s tough-hearted Hall…
A restaurant manager once told me that the most important person in his restaurant wasn’t the chef or the bartender or any of the serving staff. “The most important person in this place, my boy, is the dishwasher. Without a nonstop supply of clean dishes and pots and pans, we’d have to close the place down.” As you may have…
Fritz Co. Grille operates in three locations — Overland Park, Lee’s Summit and Topeka (a Wichita location shut down last month) — which makes it a minichain, I guess. One with an interesting motto: “We put our ego in the food, not in our prices.” Call me crazy, but I’m not sure what it means to put ego in…
The influence of reggae on current music and, more important, DJ culture, is felt the world over. Here at home, Jilly’s on Broadway is starting up the Strictly Reggae Happy Hour (7 to 9 p.m.) and Bassline Pressure (9 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.) every Wednesday night. Resident DJ Daylight Robber plays mostly roots reggae and ragga (reggae-tinged drum-‘n’-bass). His…
Wikipedia says that in the 1995 film The World’s Biggest Gang Bang, Singaporean actress Annabel Chong set some kind of world record by engaging in 251 sex acts with about 70 dudes. In tribute, the area’s newest and swankiest live ska band, the Sex Police, has named its first original song after her. The porno paean is just one sultry…
Watching Sal Retta perform is a bit like bird-watching. If you remain deathly still and hold your breath, you’ll be treated to some of the loveliest warbling you’ve ever heard. But it’s not just Retta’s trembling, high-register voice that has us all aflutter — it’s her songs. The young Kansas City songwriter has the goods to match punches with Jolie…
