The original script for Jacob’s Ladder called for traditional religious imagery, such as a literal stairway to heaven and a fiery hell with horned demons. Director Adrian Lyne opted for a more ambiguous approach, to the point that viewers might ask, Wait, why is this part of the Monks Amid Society film series? (Short answer: Writer Bruce Joel Rubin drew…
(409 East 31st Street, 816-756-3767). From 7 p.m. to close on Mondays, all bottles of wine are half off with any food purchase. Sadly, the bar’s “edible shots” probably don’t count as food.• Garozzo’s (526 Harrison, 816-221-2455). Between 5 and 9 p.m. on Sundays, any wine bottle under $100 is half off. Mondays, 7 p.m., 2009 Tags: Night & Day
Between 5 and 9 p.m. on Sundays, any wine bottle under $100 is half off. Sundays, 2009 Tags: Night & Day
Tonight, the organization Women in Design Kansas City honors its namesake. The efforts of 13 creative women from this area will be celebrated during Design Loves Discussion at Arts Incubator (115 West 18th Street). “It’s good to be aware of top designers from your own city, so you know who and what we have to offer,” says WiD-KC programs chairwoman…
The heavy psych-rockers of Sleepy Sun, drawn together in 2005 by the landscape and general weirdness that is Santa Cruz, California, possess an arsenal of jam-band sensibilities. The sextet’s haunting male and female vocals and shredding guitar riffs draw listeners headfirst into an intoxicating, extended musical orgy. Sleepy Sun’s debut LP, Embrace (produced by Colin Stewart, known for his work…
Space Station Lounge plays short, catchy folk tunes, but singer and multi-instrumentalist Turtle adds cosmic touches befitting the group’s name, such as sci-fi soundtrack keyboards and the odd Stephen Hawking sample. Turtle works alone, as isolated as Major Tom, except during “Moonbird,” on which he duets with Olgostin from Italian one-woman band September 29th. Her delicate voice subtly complements his…
If you’re gonna live up to an alias like L. Ron Drunkard, you better play music fit for drinking. Kansas City’s Red Kate fits the bill with its accelerate-around-the-curves blend of garage rock and trucker punk. Frontman L. Ron (no relation to the Scientology magnate, we hope) sings with a Parliaments-stained throat that barely needs a microphone. Guitarist Brad Huhmann…
“That’s four years’ worth of poop,” a doctor remarks when Eugene (Zach Cregger) voids his bowels upon waking from a coma after his best friend, Tucker (Trevor Moore), wallops him with a baseball bat. He wakes only to discover that his virginal high-school sweetheart is now a Playboy centerfold. Miss March sprays like an exploding colostomy bag for 89 minutes….
Katy Perry kissed a girl, and she liked it. She had an ex-boyfriend who was “gay” but didn’t like boys. These are the biographical pillars, the paradoxical details, on which Perry’s pop stardom are built. And they’re pretty ingenious. However, One of the Boys, Perry’s major-label debut, is not especially original. Her voice wails like Alanis Morissette, and her rebellious…
It’s a wonder that In the Pines came back to Kansas City, after the warm way it was received in Germany and Austria last summer. Fortunately for us, our city’s reigning Appalachian-chamber-rock band left the VIP Deutschland treatment behind to write another handsome album. The six-piece group will debut at least six new songs when it hauls its violins and…
Just as we thought the “bromantic comedy” had overstayed its welcome, the genre reaches its high point with writer-director John Hamburg’s best film yet. The subtext is finally the text — it’s right there in the title. It delivers an absolutely complete, fully realized, delightfully novel redo of the hoariest of forms: the meet-cute, love-at-first-sight, break-up-and-make-up, racing-to-the-altar slapstick weepy that’s…
No one does raging unlovability quite like John Malkovich, who’s a total gas when he drops the bombast that often bogs down his more serious roles. Not that Buck Howard, the once-great mentalist now playing to half-empty theaters in Hicksville, lacks for pathos — or glory. His lounge act is excruciating, his stand-up terrible. Based on a magician known to…
The Dactyls allow the inner bong-rocker in all of us to party hard without feeling like we just took a hit of something that’s gonna show up on a drug test the next day. The Lawrence band plays an indie-credible strand of stoner rock that doesn’t induce a haze of laziness after delivering a beautiful rip of alternate tunings, shout-along…
Using a literal interpretation of viral marketing, Chimaira has started leaking clips from its April release at spread-the-infection.com. Fans download fliers from the site, send photographic evidence that they’ve distributed them, then receive codes granting access to the site’s resources. Meanwhile, old-fashioned word-of-mouth buzz has already started building about “Secrets of the Dead,” the lone new track on the band’s…
Justin Bale doesn’t understand a lot of things. Like, why won’t the ’80s go away again? Why does so much indie and alternative rock sound wussy? The founder of popfreeradio.com does get one thing, though: The future of radio is on the Internet. It’s been more than two years now since Bale, whose on-air alias is Chronic the Hedgehog, launched…
As the grandson of Sicilian immigrants, I don’t know whether to be proud or embarrassed by local filmmaker Terence O’Malley’s long but riveting documentary Black Hand Strawman, about the history of the Mafia in Kansas City. My father had the same reaction to The Godfather, which was released to a firestorm of criticism by Italian-Americans enraged at continually being typecast…
Live bands and rap music rarely go together well. Hip-hop, perhaps more than any musical form, relies on synthetic sounds, turntables, and basically anything not resembling a live guitar and drum set. This is also the reason that rappers are notoriously disappointing in concert. There’s simply not enough live instrumentation to hold a crowd’s attention. It’s with this sort of…
Babies will cry. Politicians will lie. And Houston rapper Devin Copeland will wake up, roll a blunt and smoke his way into another bleary-eyed day. Copeland, who performs as Devin the Dude, likes to smoke weed. That’s not journalistic conjecture. It’s a fact that Copeland himself publicizes, as inarguable as gravity, death and the continued rise of unemployment. From whence…
There are three kinds of dining companions: the interesting conversationalist, the deadly bore and the monologist. I’m always happy to break bread with the first type, I dread being stuck with the second, and I have mixed feelings about the third. I have to be in the right mood for a monologue, which is sort of like eating in front…
Whether it’s the amnesiac superspy of the Bourne franchise or the weary law-firm fixer of Michael Clayton, screenwriter and director Tony Gilroy specializes in characters who wear so many masks, memory loss or no, they scarcely know who they are anymore. Guided by instinct, his soldiers of fortune patrol a ruthless landscape of big government and bigger business, where truth…
Sometimes, the simpler an exhibit’s theme, the more diverse and meaningful the art turns out to be. That’s the case at La Esquina, where right now it’s all about the tree. The tree as subject may sound so unfussy that dullness is guaranteed, but the work here emerges organically from the broad, straightforward theme. Too bad it’s called Happy Tree…
The American Heartland Theatre’s Backwards in High Heels: The Ginger Rogers Musical is a high-spirited tribute to the headstrong Texas hoofer who walked away from her partnership with Fred Astaire at the peak of their success. It earns its keep on sweat, hustle and a score I’m tempted to call swell — especially when the talented ensemble taps through “We’re…
Mark Ernst looked out upon a grateful ballroom. It was December 18, 2003. Then the chief executive of H&R Block, Ernst was holding a news conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel to announce that his company was moving downtown. Spurning offers to move to Johnson County, Ernst delighted Missouri politicians (then Gov. Bob Holden attended the festivities) and downtown business…
So I’m on hold, and a recorded voice is describing the mission of the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. The foundation, I’m learning, strives to improve the quality of life by increasing charitable giving, connecting donors to the needs they care about, and leading on critical community issues. All very nice. I decided to call the foundation after Mayor Mark…
