With an emphasis on production design as much as storytelling, the films of Tim Burton are studies in chiaroscuro. Perhaps no other director in the Technicolor age has worked so definitively in a monochromatic palette, setting his protagonists adrift amid dark shadows and shades of gray, reserving the more vivid colors to subvert the bleakness of his vision. Case in…
Especially since Zombieland came out, some of us hardly know how to get through the days till Halloween. Good thing that today holds two excuses to gussy up in the garb of a brain eater. First, there’s the Kansas City Zombie Walk for Hunger. At 2 p.m., the undead gather at J.C. Nichols Fountain (47th Street and Main), where they’ll…
In theory, a lot of figurative closets will get cleared today: It’s National Coming Out Day. In observance, LGBT groups across the country have planned marches and performances, fairs and film screenings — anything to encourage a culture of openness and acceptance. In Kansas City, the Country Club Congregational United Church of Christ (205 West 65th Street, 816-523-4813) got into…
For Kansas City-area cineastes, the ongoing partnership between UMKC’s Department of Communication Studies and Tivoli Cinemas (4050 Pennsylvania, 913-383-7756) is essential to our continuing film education. And the latest installment in their ongoing Classic Film Series is a cinematic coup, assembling a lineup of great films rarely seen here. Tonight at 6:30, Dirk Bogarde stars as a convalescing composer drawn…
t’s been 11 years since Matthew Shepard was robbed, beaten with a .357 Magnum, tied to a fence and left for dead on a cold Wyoming night. A month later, Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie in order to conduct interviews with the people who lived there. These interviews formed the basis of The Laramie Project,…
Like a peacock feather in the hat of Waldo, The Well is a showy, fine-looking drinking venue with an upstairs deck that’s lit-up nightly with tiki torches. So salute The Pitch Readers’ Choice winner for Best New Bar with your happy-hour drinking dollars from 3 to 6 p.m. today. The second installment in the Lewellen brothers’ franchise (Lew’s Grill &…
Dear Mexican: A Mexican-American, I’ve lived in St. Louis for about 17 years and have seen a substantial influx of my brethren. Nevertheless, I’m for border security — against the no-good, godless Canadians. I hate Canadians! Funny accents and cold weather — ha! Why is America not closing the Canadian border? That bunch of hockey playin’, maple syrup-eatin’ hijos de…
Archie Scott Gobber understands that in this time, at this moment, no five letters in the English alphabet, arranged in this order, provoke the same anxieties as these: PALIN. So he paints them in a sickly pale-green, gives them an orange third dimension, and sets them in a quavery block of rich-sod brown, all of it against a chipboard background…
Depending on which metalhead you ask, metal is either being saved or being strychnined by Dethklok — the cartoon band at the center of the Adult Swim show Metalocalypse. On the one hand, the group makes fun of just about everything that made metal cool; on the other hand, they totally shred! The real-life band, which features Metalocalypse creator Brendon…
When you’re greeted by David Eugene Edwards on his MySpace page with a link to livinggodministries.net, you get the feeling that he just might be serious. The dark knight of Denver, Colorado, has been churning out biblical, Armageddon-invoking music for nearly two decades with 16 Horsepower and now with Wovenhand. You might just drop to the ground and start speaking…
If Mott the Hoople and Dr. Dog had a baby, it would be called Tom the Poodle and it would sound like the Shaky Hands. Coming out of Portland, Oregon, with a no-frills, all-boogie presentation that reclaims the spirit of the blues-jamming early ’70s without resorting to Almost Famous hair and mustaches (see above), the Shaky Hands pack enough soul…
It took four albums, but the American public has finally grown to love Kings of Leon as much as the British press, which has been fawning over the Nashville quartet since its 2003 debut, Youth & Young Manhood. The band’s backstory has been packaged and sold along with the music: three home-schooled preacher’s sons (and a cousin) go from traveling…
Krizz Kaliko, a 10-year veteran of the Strange Music label, has gotten a lot of mileage out of his second solo album, Genius, since it was released this summer. Much like his mentor, Tech N9ne, Kaliko woos fans with his affinity for offbeat topics (“Bipolar,” the album’s 11th track, is dedicated to the eponymous mental disorder), combined with a healthy…
The self-titled debut record from Diverse, a group that originated in the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance under the mentorship of sax legend Bobby Watson, starts on a breezy, smooth-jazz-flavored note and takes few musical chances. The first two songs are middling, horn-driven affairs that, while listenable, merely work as mood music. But the snooze doesn’t last long. By…
From the sound of its newest CD, Stories, Grooves & Melodies, hometown R&B and soul band Neon Blue sure knows how to light up the dance floor. “I’m Not Your Puppet” hits it with that old-school Memphis horn sound but with a fresh take, thanks to Brian Macdonald on trumpet and Butch Smith on sax. These two guys sound like…
Spencer Brown says it’s just a coincidence that his touring a cappella quartet is finally playing his hometown. Originally from San Francisco, the Kinsey Sicks have a reputation that stretches back 16 years. Someone at Country Club Congregational United Church of Christ (205 West 65th Street) knew about the group apart from its Kansas City-based member. And that means the…
The boys of Everyday/Everynight are cool with the fact that you haven’t heard of them yet. But watch out — pretty soon, you will be held accountable. Comprising five ragtag kids with tousled hair, plaid shirts and tattoos, Everyday/Everynight initially appears to be your token group of indie-band boys as they chill on their couch in Brookside, their homemade album…
The inmate who renamed himself after a Hollywood action star has been incarcerated for all but a few months of the past 34 years — 30 of them spent in solitary — having strategically attacked a succession of guards, attendants and fellow inmates to parlay his initial seven-year sentence for armed robbery into a lifelong role as “Britain’s most violent…
In the Oscar derby for Best Actor, is it better to die or to grieve? Clive Owen opts for the latter route in this strained, sentimental adaptation of a memoir by widowed English journalist Simon Carr. His 2001 book — boozy, breezy and thoroughly unsystematic — was a precursor to the new laissez-faire parenting movement, which Owen’s sportswriter character describes…
T he romantic days of dining on trains — real dining, with good food and cloth napkins and waiters — went the way of Pullman porters and Fred Harvey restaurants a long time ago. I still fantasize about what dining cars must have been like in their heyday, but I have to settle for living vicariously through old movies, such…
Because it boasts more theater than it has theaters, Kansas City could use a couple of more Bess Wallersteins. A producer, director and improviser, Wallerstein has revived the notion of “environmental” theater: shows performed in spaces that fit their settings. With her One Time Productions, she whipped up True West on a Brookside lawn and now has mounted Rob Roznowski’s…
Jason Miller pushes aside his tie, pulls up the right side of his black shirt and, squinting at the computer screen in the basement of his Lenexa home, starts to scrawl the phone number of a lawyer on his abdomen — just in case. It’s a little after noon on September 25, and Miller is making the final preparations for a…
Title: Kansas City Town Squire Date: September 1970 Discovered: at Prairie Village estate sale The cover asks: “Volker Park … Jungle or Paradise?” Representative quotes: “You don’t have to be a big spender to be a successful swinger in Kansas City … if you net $400 to $500 a month, you can get by fine.” (page 60) “Overall, Volker Park…
Feature: “The Oldest Professional,” September 10 Street Smarts When I went through my first divorce, my kids and I were forced to live in the Northeast neighborhood because the rent was cheap. I knew I’d get a lot of my property stolen. I had no choice. I was working jobs I can’t even remember, to keep on the lights, gas,…
