Put on your fanciest duds for a dress-up event that will raise money for homeless pets. The $60 ticket to A Black Tail Affair gets you a five-course dinner, access to Las Vegas-style games and a silent auction, plus dancing. Proceeds go to HELP Humane Society in Belton. Meteorologist Bryan Busby will be the host for the evening. Sat., Aug….
Hitting a movie theater at midnight is pretty awesome, especially when the screen’s alight with the film that put director Quentin Tarantino on the map — Pulp Fiction. Fri., Aug. 21, 11:30 p.m., 2009 Tags: Night & Day, Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino
Participating restaurants in the Power & Light District will feature special $10 lunch menus and $25 dinner menus. Plus, diners get $5-$10 gift certificates with a meal purchase. See districtrestaurantweek.com for details. Aug. 24-30, 2009 Tags: 2817, Night & Day
Notwithstanding a reputation founded on darker, bleaker Shakespearean fare such as Henry V, Kenneth Branagh proved himself equally adept at ye olde romantick comedie with 1993’s Much Ado About Nothing. Featuring a stellar cast — Emma Thompson, Michael Keaton, Keanu Reeves, Robert Sean Leonard, Kate Beckinsale, Imelda Staunton and, in Branagh’s words, “Denzel Washington in a fetching pair of leather…
The 2009 fall essentials, which are not at all essential but nonetheless so cute, include the following: pencil skirt; frilly blouse; boyfriend jeans; toughed-up boots; and anything oversized, leather, neon or fringed. Sound familiar? Maybe because those trends get rolled out nearly every other year. With that in mind, comb your closets for the fall items you already own and…
We had our doubts about the stand-alone coolness of the fiddle, but then we heard Amanda Shaw’s funked-up version of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” She won our musical souls in that contest, and smoke was coming off her strings. The 18-year-old New Orleans fiddler, singer and all-around good-looker has a style that’s tough to pin down in musical…
The first soul food was the food of slaves: pokeweed, chitterlings, mustard greens and meat scraps such as hog’s jowl, pig’s feet and tripe. That’s a far cry from today’s hearty cuisine, which centers on macaroni and cheese, fried chicken and chocolate cake. Celebrate the salty, comforting food enjoyed by people of every color when Kinfolks Entertainment presents the second-annual…
Lewis Hyde, author of the classic text The Gift, is the first speaker in the 2009-10 Humanities Lecture Series, sponsored by the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas. Hyde will present “Culture as Commonwealth” at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 25, at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. The event is co-sponsored by Kansas Public Radio. A…
Presented by Loox Entertainment, in conjunction with Louis & Company Dance Studio, Ballroom Fever will feature World Class Champions Louis Bar and Laura Cantu, plus numerous performers from the greater Kansas City area. Special guests also include Johnny Rowlands from KMBC News and Tanna Guthrie from KUDL. Fri., Aug. 21, 8:30 p.m., 2009 Tags: Johnny Rowlands, Kansas City, Laura Cantu,…
Box-office failure? Check. Twice, you say? Impressive. Incomprehensible plot? That figures. Director’s cut? You bet. Midnight screenings? Well, OK, then. What you’ve got, here friend, is a cult film. Specifically, Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001), which opens with a jet engine’s meteoric descent into the titular character’s bedroom while he’s off having a late-night tête-à-tête about the end of the…
This concert features Beau Bledsoe, who will perform a program of flamenco and Turkish music with guests Fernando Achúcarro (Paraguay) on cajon (flamenco percussion box) and Sait Arat (Istanbul) on darbuka (Turkish drum). Sun., Aug. 23, 7-8 p.m., 2009 Tags: Beau Bledsoe, Fernando Achucarro, Istanbul, Night & Day, Paraguay
When Darryl Burton was sentenced to life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, he became a prisoner twice, held captive by both his cell and his hatred for the justice system. Only after he embraced forgiveness, praying for those who had wronged him, did rays of hope begin to shine. Last August, with the help of local lawyer…
Today and Sunday, the skies over Kansas City will be the stage for the KC Aviation Expo & Airshow at the Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport (480 Northwest Richards Road). The expo, sponsored by the Mid-America Youth Aviation Association, will have people in the crowd craning their necks to watch exciting aerobatics, thundering jet-fighter tactical demonstrations, parachute teams, a Chinook…
Jon Fulton Adams’ drama-filled designs were once restricted to the stage, but soon they’ll be available to Everyman. Expect no less than full frontal glamour at tonight’s launch of Adams’ new men’s clothing line, Queen’s Rocket. Adams says the look is a mixture of “Edwardian and steampunk styles, translated for the modern Dandy.” The Ron Megee-produced festivities feature music from…
In order for a place to claim big-city status, it must have a restaurant week. Add Kansas City to that list with the Power & Light District’s Summer 2009 Restaurant Week, today through August 30. Lunch runs $10 a plate, and dinner is $25 to $30. With 17 participating restaurants, everybody should be able to find someplace to eat. A…
New books, fresh pens and 8 a.m. classes give way to house parties, football games and afternoons off: It’s back-to-school time. Here’s a roundup of college taverns in Lawrence where you don’t have to be a student to get caught up in the something-new spirit. • Free State Brewing Company (636 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-843-4555). Founded in 1989 as the first…
Hard to believe that just 89 years ago, Americans lacking Y chromosomes couldn’t vote. Through dedicated protest, however, feisty suffragists changed that. The government granted women the right to vote in August 1920; 51 years later, Women’s Equality Day was founded. Honor the not-well-enough-known holiday by attending the Women’s Equality Day Fair from 5 to 9 p.m. today. Festivities in…
Myra Taylor — there are none higher. It was only by last-minute luck that the 92-year-old Kansas City blues and jazz matriarch ended up at the Pitch Music Awards at all. If, several days before Sunday night’s awards, we hadn’t stumbled across a recent Jazz Ambassador Magazine with her manager’s phone number listed in the back, we might never have…
Shorts is a cute and mildly clever fantasy about a nerdy suburban tween named “Toe” (Jimmy Bennett), who finds a rainbow-colored stone with wish-fulfillment powers. The simplistic plot’s limitless possibilities are digitally and unsubtly rendered. (Calling all dung beetles, upright crocodiles, man-sized frankfurters, and booger monsters!) Structured episodically, but cheekily out of order, the film introduces Toe’s friends, family, schoolyard…
Post Grad tries to do three things at once but half hits on only one. Part of it is wacky Little Miss Sunshine family time, with Carol Burnett in the Alan Arkin part and Michael Keaton as the clueless paterfamilias. Part is sketch comedy, which is not half-bad, given Keaton’s frequently underused talents, plus Jane Lynch as his wife and a supporting cast…
This deliriously foulmouthed political satire is set sometime between 2002 and the day after tomorrow; hard to say, given that the country with which U.S. and U.K. pols want to go to war is unnamed, save for its location in, you know, the Middle East. The prime minister and president, likewise, go unnamed. But several of the British wonks and…
Dave Alvin has sung about all sorts of unseemly gals during the course of his three-decade career, but he might have to tread a bit lighter now that his band is composed of seven women. The veteran roots musician, whose past bands include the Blasters, X, and the Knitters, assembled his all-dame band on the heels of losing a friend:…
As millennial hip-hop goes, Lil Wayne has set the standard for what it means to sell fun. After a decade in the music business, the prolific rapper’s efforts paid off with the release of Tha Carter III in 2008; the album’s hits, such as “Lollipop” and “A Milli,” launched the artist directly into the collaborate-with-everyone-ever sphere. As his proficiency at…
“Laconic” doesn’t even begin to describe the Cool Kids. In their partnership, Illinois-born Antoine “Mikey Rocks” Reed and Michigan’s Evan “Chuck Inglish” Ingersoll exude a confidence so assured that it’s often mistaken for laziness or ineptitude. Homemade boom-boom-bap beats set a skeletal pace that Rocks and Inglish gamely jog alongside, slinging ’80s-cadenced verses that shout out equally ’80s signifiers: pagers,…
