As part of the series “The Trials And Triumphs Of Contemporary Black Women,” photographer Jerry Taliaferro captures images of contemporary black women from all walks of life in striking, honest yet glamorous poses. Taliaferro includes photos from a series of shoots conducted in Kansas City with women from diverse fields including the arts, law and education. At the Kansas City,…
Directed by Peter Cattaneo, The Rocker is more or less the Pete Best story — the tale of a poor bastard who gets shitcanned right on the brink record-bin immortality. The film opens in Cleveland, mid-1980s, where Rainn Wilson’s Robert “Fish” Fishman is behind the kit for Vesuvius, a metal band fronted by three head-bobbing, hair-waving morons (Will Arnett, Fred…
The Pajama Game Perhaps the lightest, friskiest and most underrated classic of the Broadway musical’s golden age, Adler and Ross’ workers-versus-management comedy follows labor troubles from the factory floor to the union hall to -— in its allusive ’50s way -— the bedroom. This concert-style Musical Theatre Heritage production emphasizes the memorable songs “Steam Heat,” “Hernando’s Hideaway” and the knock-’em-dead…
Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven wears current events on its sleeve, feeling out the state of German-Turkish relations as the former Ottomans clean house for membership in the European Union and the demographic earthquake of 70 million Muslims waits at Europe’s door. Examining a Europe whose increasingly porous borders have drastically undermined a longstanding homogeneity is very much at…
Part caper movie, part real-life superhero saga and entirely engrossing, James Marsh’s documentary recounts in Rififi-like detail how a Parisian street performer and wire walker named Philippe Petit dodged cops, fought the elements and defied seemingly impossible logistics to pull off a feat of death-defying frivolity: an illegal, hastily rigged tightrope walk on August 7, 1974, across the 1,350-foot plunge…
Aretha Franklin and Gloria Gaynor once used vulnerability to present an image of female strength that was unprecedented in its day, but Chicago blues singer Shemekia Copeland’s modern woman pushes through on sass alone. Unapologetic about her determination and her lust — and funny as hell — Copeland uses her ball-busting self-assurance to lift her music far above its straight-ahead…
Download Tactic’s promo party featuring the Egyptian Lover, Cybotron, Radioclit, Kraftwerk and more, via Zshare Traditionally, DJs have not bothered too much with wardrobe. Up there on the decks, presiding over the dance floor, a T-shirt usually suffices. But in the early ’80s, Greg Broussard — with his bouffant do, sculpted facial hair, fancy jackets and yen for all things…
Catherine Breillat hitches her wagon to the hottest of European stars, Asia Argento, in a highly entertaining adaptation of Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly’s mid-19th-century novel Une vieille maîtresse — once notorious for its treatment of a young libertine’s erotic obsession with a homely 36-year-old woman. Breillat’s movie opens in 1835, as a pair of self-satisfied aristos discuss the impending wedding of…
Hamlet 2 debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where Focus Features bought it for $10 million, one more overpriced snow bunny sure to melt the moment it hits the multiplex. It’s the quintessential Sundancer: disdainful of middle-class Middle America, willfully “edgy” and made by a Hollywood director looking to make his big comeback. In this case, it’s Andrew…
As the popular saying goes, there’s no me in indefinite hiatus … or something like that. After a nearly three-year break, the members of Finch — or at least a three-fifths majority — seem to have patched up their differences long enough to record a new EP and take on a full summer of touring. Despite the departure of a…
While we wait for the next round of ’70s-era soundscapes and pep rally cheers, the Go Team is giving its fans an assortment of freebies. Hand over your e-mail address to thegoteam.co.uk for access to the group’s hard to find debut EP, Get It Together, as well as a newly recorded version of the import-only tune “Milk Crisis.” You can…
The first half of Andrew Hack’s story sounds like a public-service announcement. The second half is more like a riddle. After riding his 2004 Harley to the Lucky Shot bar in Excelsior Springs in May 2006, the Independence man had a few drinks. When he figured his blood-alcohol content was creeping into the illegal zone, he called a friend to…
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play the B-side “Bye Bye Johnny” at Kemper Arena in November 1984: It’s been a tough time for the E Street Band. Last summer, Bruce Springsteen’s personal assistant, Terry Magovern, died. And in April, the group lost keyboardist Danny Federici, the man Springsteen called “the heart and soul” of E Street. Soon after…
Siah Armajani: Dialogue With Democracy One of this nation’s most important public-art figures, Siah Armajani was born in Iran in 1939 but is now a naturalized U.S. citizen. In commissioned work all over the country, he typically suggests the ideals of a society that encourage open dialogue among its citizenry. His sculptures emerge from a love for the language of…
The North vs. South Festival is one of our region’s largest annual music events, yet it remains relatively unknown. While Wakarusa gets all the headlines, skrilla and emaciated festivarians, North vs. South plugs away in relative obscurity, supported primarily by in-the-know music fans excited by the prospect of seeing, say, former Hüsker Dü drummer Grant Hart. The brainchild of longtime…
I’ve forgotten how many ill-fated restaurants have come and gone in the interesting two-story building at the corner of 28th Street and Southwest Boulevard. The best-known was probably the El Patio Restaurant, operated by legendary restaurateur Jose “Don Pepe” Hernandez for two years, until 2002. Other than its recent past as a home for doomed restaurants, the building has a…
To get to the Islamorada Fish Company, you pass a lot of nicely displayed sporting gear until you arrive at the rustic set of stairs near a splashing waterfall. Go down the stairs, past a scene of some large grizzly animal — a bear, I think — attacking smaller, defenseless creatures. All of these hairy animals were once alive and…
Leave it to Northern Europeans, with their deeply satisfying landscape tradition, to create luminous photographs of the land. Of the 10 photographers in the Nelson’s Human Nature: Recent European Landscape Photography, the Belgians, Dutch and Germans provide the most emotive and even mystical images. Each artist approaches the land differently, which results in an exhibition of work embodying many physical,…
There’s a trick with “moral clarity” — by which I mean not some hard-worn sense of justice but that defiant, reductive, good-and-evil, cops-and-robbers, cowboys-and-Indians, norms-and-elitists strain of American know-nothingism. It’s that moral clarity too often makes enemies out of more than just the sons of bitches you’re fighting against. It can also set you against anyone who doesn’t share your…
Linda Carter summoned her inner circle to her fifth-floor office in the Johnson County Courthouse. It was fall 2006, and Carter was the director of administration for then-District Attorney Paul Morrison. She wanted to play show and tell with her girlfriends — Brenda Albright, Shawna Chambless, Shelly Hartman and Stacey Trumbly. They all reported to Carter. They were also supervisors…
Justice moves swiftly in Kansas City, Missouri, Housing Court. Minutes after tersely issuing a $1,000 fine, Judge Wayne Cagle takes pity on an elderly man whose gutters need repair. “I can refer you to a program where the city will help you pay for it,” the judge says. The program, the Municipal Court Fund, helps low-income homeowners with grants up…
Dear Mexican: I’ve looked everywhere, including the Pew Hispanic Center, but I can’t find a concise summary of the number of Hispanics who have served, died and been wounded in the current war. From what I can determine, Hispanics have been serving this country in war since the revolution. In Texas, where I’ve lived since 1970, Lorenzo DeZavala, whose great-great-grandson…
Feature: “Up Show-Me Creek,” July 31 Into the Wild I just read Carolyn Szczepanski’s story about the ultra-kayak race on the Missouri River. Epic story with a Technicolor telling! I read a lot of adventure writing — this is right up there with Jon Krakauer. Well done! Gary Henry, Lawrence Live Streaming It seems to me that your writer nailed…
