The Princess Bride: 20th Anniversary Edition (MGM) As far as anniversary-edition DVDs go, The Princess Bride is crushingly disappointing: no Rob Reiner commentary track, no outtakes, no making-of doc, no nothing, save for a lousy game and a few short interviews with Robin Wright Penn, Mandy Patinkin, Christopher Guest, and a few others scattered throughout three mini-docs. (Alas, no…
If anyone wanted a piece of Mayor Mark Funkhouser, this was the perfect chance. It was midday on October 31, and the banquet hall at the Argosy Casino was packed with 250 people from the city’s construction industry. Hispanic contractors, minority contractors and two organizations for women in the business were celebrating their annual luncheon. Just a week and a…
It’s interesting to see what powerful and moneyed art enthusiasts collect. Michael Ovitz co-founded the world-renowned talent shop known as CAA, or Creative Artists Agency, and briefly was president of Disney. He and his wife, Judy, began collecting art in the 1970s and began to focus on contemporary art in the 1980s. Their Ovitz Family Collection is based in…
Dear Mexican: Is Lou Dobbs right when he says that close to 80 hospitals in California have been closed down because of the illegals, or is he lying? Cabrónes No Necesitamos Dear CNN: Dobbs is right to a certain point, and only in spite of his idiocy. The father of two half-wabs spouted off his closed-hospitals claim at least three…
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is less Sidney Lumet’s comeback than his resurrection. Three years after being presented a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, the 83-year-old director comes forth with a violent family melodrama that is his strongest movie in at least two decades. Robustly directed from Kelly Masterson’s bear-trap screenplay and lit up with a number of live-wire performances,…
I love pancakes, but I’ve grown a lot fussier about them over the years. As a kid, I’d happily eat any doughy disc set in front of me, as long as I could douse it with Mrs. Butterworth’s. Today, I rarely find a pancake that satisfies my expectations (and it’s not because I was once a professional flapjack flipper in…
Craig Benton isn’t a lug, but he’s got some lug in him. With his wry, masculine face and his bearing of beer-and-football averageness, he’s the ideal lead for American Heartland shows. There, he’s perpetually cast as an architect or a sportswriter, done up in ball caps or button-downs, playing the straight man in every sense of the term. He…
Local bedroom DJs wondering how to break into the DJ community in Kansas City: You came to the right column. Friday at The Point, resident spinners Mr. Nuro and Bucho are opening their decks to anyone, novice or pro, who wants to play some records. It doesn’t matter whether you want to make a name for yourself or simply jump…
Britain’s Joe Jackson has been off a lot of people’s radar since his “Steppin’ Out” days, but the man hasn’t been wasting time. Besides crafting variations on his new-wave brand of piano pop, Jackson spends his days railing against anti-smoking legislation on both sides of the pond. You can read his recent essay “Smoke, Lies and the Nanny State” at…
Another Night Before Christmas This home-invasion Christmas story posits a dude who claims to be Santa caught in the home of a skeptical, sensible woman. You can bet that, by the 90-minute mark, she will have learned the true reason for the season. This year’s American Heartland holiday show, a world premiere, comes somewhat pedigreed, with book and music by…
Bountiful Nora Othic’s archetypal figures and her dynamic, posed compositions evoke regionalists such as Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood but also such mid-20th-century muralists as Anton Refregier and Milton Bellin. In “Mean Bull,” two laughing ranch hands dive over a fence, chased by an enraged bull. The masterly “Diner” is an energetically composed image of two waitresses tending a…
“Handles” by Approach, feat. DJ Sku, produced by Salva, featured onHeat from the Street: If Kansas City radio is a party, and its commercial stations are the DJs, what are they gonna bring? A bag full of tricks by the Popper, CES Cru and Reach? Or a complement of the latest hits from Kanye West, 50 Cent and Def Jam’s…
The Addams Family: The Complete Series (MGM) Amazing Grace (Fox) Annie Duke’s Texas Hold’em Supercourse (Big Vision) Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Criterion Collection (Criterion)Close Encounters of the Third Kind: 30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition (Sony) Gilmore Girls: The Complete Seventh Season (Warner Bros.) It’s a Wonderful Life: 2-Disc Collector’s Set (Paramount) Man From Earth (Anchor Bay) The McCartney Years (Rhino) Melrose Place:…
The Hold Steady, with Art Brut and 1990s Tuesday, November 13, 2007 The Granada Better Than: Most modern art. Brief thoughts by Harper; photos and Art Brut interview by Wonderman Scott Spychalski Craig Finn for President 2008! If Eddie Argos and Craig Finn had been in charge of the world right after 9/11 instead of Tony Blair and George Bush,…
Recognize this guy? No? How about now? That’s Christopher “Kid” Reid with his partner, Christopher “Play” Martin, two hip-hoppers out of Queens, New York, who hit the big time in the ’90s as a rap-comedy duo, making records, movies and even a Saturday morning cartoon. While Martin is a born-again Christian active on the praise circuit, Reid is looking to…
Last Saturday, the friends and families of Kansas City’s murder victims crowded beneath the peaked pavilion in Swope Park. Some had opted to decorate plastic white chairs with photos and words for departed loved ones. Others just came to hear music, share food and be together to enjoy the last bit of the day’s sunlight. Al Brooks, in a black…
As the CEO of $10 billion trucking company, Bill Zollars, you’d think, would spend a few minutes a day thinking about the price of oil and worst-case scenarios. Or not. Zollars runs YRC Worldwide, the Overland Park transportation company. Last week, Zollars and two railroad executives spoke at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Hyatt Regency. Zollars said…
Tomorrow night’s ninth episode of the Garth Brooks Down Home Country Jamboree will be broadcast live from the Sprint Center to 300 movie theaters around the country for the benefit of people who are into watching concerts by proxy in movie theaters. Ordinarily, we’d make fun of this kind of person by resorting to a crude stereotype, but literally…
Check out the new video from Adrianne “Dri” Verhoeven, off her Nov. 6 release Smoke Rings. Nezbeat did the production on this song, called “You Know I Tried.” It and his other contribution, “Free Tonight,” (sample here) are the album’s best tracks to dance to. Download “Tried” via my column about Dri. Range Lifer Brendan Costello directed this video. “All…
There’s power in a well-known acronym, especially a slightly racy, endearingly harmless one representing grown-up girl time. Such is the case with a certain power hour taking place tomorrow, at the Sav-Art Gallery in the lovely Westwood neighborhood just off of the Plaza. It’s called the NO Boys Girls OnlY Night. Yeah, that’s O.B.G.Y.N. Categories: News
Yeah, every celebrity out there has a MySpace page that’s surely not created by them. Take this page for Brodie Croyle, the recently christened starting QB for the Chiefs. There’s more than a couple clues that Croyle didn’t create it, like indicating that his salary is “$250,000 and Higher.” Another oddity is that his MySpace blog asks people to…
With the Wayward Son still wayward, The Pitch’s Chris Packham filed this dispatch. Today, I stared into Tim Finn’s blog, Back to Rockville, and Back to Rockville stared back. Finn spares no totally unnecessary detail in documenting Garth Brooks’ seventh show at the Sprint Center Arena, while Regina Spektor merits nothing but a link to Wikipedia — nice journalisming over…
BY ANDY VIHSTADT Jukebox Hero Cat Power turns on the Jukebox January 22. The mostly covers album (and bonus disc) will include a bit of everything from Hank Williams to the Hot Boys. Here’s the tracklisting. For those of you hoping for her rendition of “Hanging on the Telephone” from the Cingular ads, you’re out of luck. Then again,…
%{}% Meredith Spencer, The Vicksburg Post Four months since they shipped off from Kansas City on a raft made of recycled materials, a small band of local artists is back on the Mississippi River. A run-in with the Coast Guard beached the group’s travels for nearly seven weeks. Jamie Burkart and Libby Hendon, both Kansas City natives and students at…
