The four-year-old Tomboy design studio is so-called because owner and creator Laura McGrew’s philosophy on clothing stems from a childhood of keeping up with her two brothers. Hence, her natural aversion to the frillier side of fashion. Tonight at 7, however, McGrew shows off her couture dresses during a fashion show featuring models from Hoffman International and makeup by…
There’s a hint of Herman Melville in the music of Telegraph Canyon, a seven-strong collective from Fort Worth, Texas. Songwriter Chris Johnson has a penchant for penning soundtracks for wide-angle shots of skimming vessels, incorporating accordion and violin into his seasick, acoustic-guitar-based compositions. Picture a band of sailors congregating for a post-typhoon jam session, and you’ll begin to get a…
Bob Saget: That Ain’t Right (HBO) The Boris Karloff Collection (St. Clair) Broken English (Magnolia) Carlito’s Way: Crime Saga Collection (Universal) Dark Shadows: The Beginning (MPI) The Essential Ozzie & Harriet Collection (Mill Creek) Friday Night Lights: The First Season (Universal) Gideon’s Trumpet (Acorn) Heaven & Hell: Live From Radio City Music Hall (Rhino) Heroes: Season 1 (Universal) John Lennon’s…
The next-gen consoles are sexy as hell, but it’s not all bad being the reigning “last-gen” champ either. With more than 100 million PlayStation 2 consoles sold, software companies can afford to be a little adventurous — after all, even if their game appeals to only 1 percent of that audience, it’s destined to be a smash. That’s why…
Year of the Dog (Paramount Vantage) It’s just about the First Commandment of Hollywood: Don’t kill the dog. So it’s a testament to the clout of writer-director Mike White (School of Rock) that killing off the dog is the first of many rules broken in this weird-ass movie. Folks fooled by the pack-of-lies trailer into thinking it’s a romantic…
Dinner With Friends This superior production from Kansas City Actors Theatre connects with its audience, quickly and deeply, digging into the particulars of two marriages — one failed and the other coasting. In the process, Dinner unearths universals about romantic relationships. Melinda McCrary, at her tremulous finest, plays Beth, who breaks down at a dinner party, announcing that husband Tom…
American Pastoral Where does grief go? Several places, apparently. It evaporates or corrodes or erupts in a welter of agony. And sometimes it coalesces into artistic works such as Robin Bernat’s American Pastoral. Bernat created this five-part video installation after the death of her lover, who fell from a cliff in Argentina. If the tragedy sounds like the stuff of…
Back in the fall of 2005, actor-director Scott Cordes and his gang of actors and craftspeople mounted Killer Joe, a nasty piece of work that’s still lodged like buckshot in anyone who caught it. In truth, mounted is too polite a word for what Cordes and company achieved. They hauled off and ramrodded that show, giving it a kick…
It is as you’ve always suspected: Rob Zombie’s house is way cooler than yours. For one thing, the punk-metal god turned filmmaker has a 12-foot stuffed polar bear in his living room. (Zombie to dumbstruck interviewer: “I know, right? How fuckin’ big is that bear?”) The bear presides over dozens of horror and B-movie collectibles, including a sarcophagus; an…
By late summer, when director James Wan’s Death Sentence is playing side-by-side with Neil Jordan’s The Brave One at many of our nation’s multiplexes, moviegoers will be forgiven for thinking that they’ve traveled through a time warp and landed in the late 1970s, when first-class cinemas and seedy grindhouses alike were flooded with urban crime dramas about ordinary citizens taking…
No way this is a documentary. No way could anyone swagger like Billy Mitchell, who talks about himself in the third person while wearing the gaming crown for 25 years on a head of hair that screams “Party in the back, bitches!” No way Steve Wiebe really told his crying kid waitaminute, waitaminute while attempting to ascend Mount Dorkus. But,…
Back in 1995, Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise gave flesh to a Yank’s fantasy of worldly European womanhood: Julie Delpy’s Celine, a sprite who materialized on a passenger train for one sweet Viennese night of courtship and flirtation, as if willed from the fevered dreams above a thousand hostel beds. As one-night-with-a-French-chick fantasies go, Linklater’s brief encounter was perfect for…
I have a couple of friends who are big fans of Azul Latin Bistro ( Categories: News Tags: Anthony Fries, Columns, Crown Center, JP Wine Bar – CLOSED, Kansas City, kansas city, Sprint Center
Early in her career, Lily Tomlin performed a hilarious monologue about waiting tables at the Howard Johnson’s in New York’s Times Square. Her real ambition, Tomlin said, was to be a famous waitress — she took jobs as a comedienne only as a way to make some extra money while she waited for her big break as the head…
Track 2 from Tactic’s mix Money Shot, Volume 2: Ben Fuller and DJ Candlewax (Brent Lippincott) are some go-getters. Together, as the DJ and remixing duo Tactic, they demonstrate a vehicle of pure talent with a motor that doesn’t quit. The fine folks at the sushi restaurant Nara allow Fuller and Candlewax to play whatever they want every Wednesday night….
Though it sounds like the mascot of Major League’s woeful Cleveland Indians, the moniker Chief Beef is entirely appropriate for a band that yields juicy slabs of power-trio rock. The Phoenix, Arizona, band’s 2007 Gravy Tour comes on the heels of its independently released debut, Something About Rock. Step into Chief Beef’s meat locker for a rump roast’s worth of…
“P.O.S. Is Ruining My Life” by P.O.S., from Audition (Rhymesayers, 2006): Gritty even by Rhymesayers standards (Atmosphere, Grayskul), P.O.S. shuffles to a moody murk cooked with a spicy side of rock. Into punk rock as a youth, the Minneapolis rapper discovered hip-hop at 14 through Company Flow and turned a new leaf. Punk and metal guitar make appearances on…
“You & Jane” by Telegraph Canyon, from All the Good News There’s a hint of Herman Melville in the music of Telegraph Canyon, a seven-strong collective from Fort Worth, Texas. Songwriter Chris Johnson has a penchant for penning soundtracks for wide-angle shots of skimming vessels, incorporating accordion and violin into his seasick, acoustic-guitar-based compositions. Picture a band of sailors congregating…
Tim Kasher is a star in Omaha’s indie-rock scene, but he’s looking to score at the movies. The frontman for the Good Life (as well as Cursive) headed west earlier this year to work on the companion film for the band’s forthcoming Help Wanted Nights, a concept album set in a small-town bar. Sure, the movie will probably get the…
Traditional Irish music possesses many outstanding qualities — most notably, lyrics that are easy to remember and melodies that encourage clapping along (two things that are way fun when you’re on beer No. 11). But no one wants to be the guy who’s loudly and mistakenly belting, Crack-whore, my daddy-o, there’s whiskey in the bar! So before attending the Irish…
“Homes” by Black Christmas Many a creative partnership has likely been forged over late-night movie rentals accompanied by booze and other quality-of-life enhancers. Lawrence’s Black Christmas traces its origins back to communal viewings of Dario Argento films such as Profondo rosso and Suspiria — notable as much for the Italian band Goblin’s eerie proto-prog soundtracks as Argento’s surreal slasher scenes….
When two friends and I ventured into the eerily quiet West Bottoms on a Thursday night, little did we know we’d get hand jobs. Nor did we figure on encountering drunk UPS duders or having shots foisted on us by a new pal. But apparently that’s the normal wackiness on tap at Connie’s Genessee Inn, an upscale dive within stumbling…
I stand before the toy altar, awed. My jaw hangs numbly as I take in the mad display of jack-o’-lanterns, Santa Clauses, monkeys, cartoon characters, Japanese movie monsters, singing-children lawn ornaments. Partly because almost every creature on the altar is smiling, it’s as if I’m absorbing a highly charged beam of visual stimuli. Animated question marks are probably circling my…
“Walking With Jesus” by Spacemen 3, from Sound of Confusion (Taang Records, 1986): “I never called for people to do anything but use drugs in a considered way,” says Pete Kember, aka Sonic Boom, founder of legendary trance rockers Spacemen 3. “I wasn’t endorsing the Happy Mondays-type party line.” And he hasn’t really changed his tune much since Spacemen 3’s…
