Recent times haven’t been the best for automakers and auto dealers, and big-time bailouts and sticky-brake headlines have made drivers nervous. But nothing can undo our obsession with cars. A V-8 roaring down the open road, a pimped-out lowrider cruising city streets — these things represent a particular brand of American freedom. Pinpointing the apex of that singular easy-riding feeling…
Tonight, the Lied Center at the University of Kansas (1600 Stewart Drive in Lawrence) presents The Aluminum Show, a production that involves more than the shiny stuff you place over leftovers. “You say aluminum and you think foil immediately,” says Tim Van Leer, the Lied Center’s executive director. “Well, everything is not made out of aluminum foil, but it’s made…
Mum’s the word — or perhaps granddad’s the word — as the 14th-annual Kansas Silent Film Festival becomes a family affair at Washburn University’s White Concert Hall (17th Street and Jewell in Topeka). In addition to Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy shorts, special guest Melissa Talmadge Cox introduces her favorite of her grandfather Buster Keaton’s films, the overlooked silent…
Last month, the Chinese government pulled Avatar from more than a thousand screens, in part because of concerns that the imported blockbuster was luring too many moviegoers away from the work of Chinese filmmakers. Here in the states, Avatar remains entrenched at every multiplex, but local film fans — even those suffering from Pandora withdrawal — might want to explore…
Remember your 21st birthday? How you kept calling for shots of Tequila Rose, chugged PBR tallboys in between, and then insisted that the bartender whip up your first nonvirgin strawberry daiquiri — all this right before you disappeared, and we found you sprawled across an upturned trash can? Oh, that’s right, you blacked out after those two Long Island iced…
Unfortunately, images of Keith Coogan cannot be found in the online archives of Tiger Beat, but the teen star of yesteryear, who appeared in many a sitcom and two ABC After School Specials, is still in Hollywood trying to make a go of it. Coogan is best remembered for playing pimply dorks in Adventures in Babysitting (1987) and Don’t Tell…
During this poker run, riders will take their bikes to five bars and buy a PBR at each to earn a poker card. Cash prizes for first, second and third best hands. Sat., Feb. 27, 3 p.m., 2010 Tags: Night & Day
Last month’s inaugural Night of Fame event at the Uptown Theater’s new Conspiracy Room pitted Madonna devotees against Lady Gaga impersonators. Rabid fans danced and drank in the guise of their favorite pop divas. Night of Fame Vol. II celebrates pop tart Britney Spears. Dress up like Spears in her schoolgirl or psycho phase, or come costumed as a circus…
Last fall, Stephanie Roberts, a UMKC Theatre Department professor, dispatched her students into the city to collect stories about how people were faring in this recession. The result is Slammed!, an extraordinary achievement of community reporting and ensemble creation. Its power doesn’t derive from any singular voice or revelation but from the steady accumulation of both. Actors speak the words…
The cover story in last week’s Pitch reported on the Kansas Legislature’s rush to ban fake marijuana (Peter Rugg’s “Fake Reefer Madness”). It also exposed a hypocritical disconnect in lawmakers’ efforts to supposedly protect the people of Kansas. It took members of the Kansas House and Senate about two weeks to ban a substance that they knew nothing about —…
Home is where the heart is. Well, sort of. For Cursive’s brilliantly emotive frontman, Tim Kasher — steadfast Midwesterner and self-avowed champion of his native Omaha, Nebraska — home is more than just a place. It’s the cradle of his musical career. So why did he pack his bags in 2007 to pursue the glimmering lights of Los Angeles? And…
Dear Mexican: I am a lifelong resident of Arizona and have worked side by side with illegals for 25 years as a bloquero. In all that time, I never knew ONE of them to be an aspiring American. In fact, their loyalties remain with their home states. They listen to mariachi and cumbia, and their trucks sport lots of Mexican-flag…
Opening with balalaikas, agrarians in collarless shirts, and intertitles announcing that Tolstoy was “the most celebrated writer in the world,” The Last Station threatens at first to be Tolstoy for Dummies as interpreted by Monty Python. Soon enough, though, this adaptation of Jay Parini’s novel about Tolstoy’s last days, adapted and directed by Michael Hoffman, settles into a lushly scenic…
Jimmy (Bruce Willis), a swinging-dick career cop threatened by his ex-wife’s new husband (Jason Lee), tries to sell a treasured baseball card so he can pay for his daughter’s wedding. That plan goes awry, thanks to interventions from Seann William Scott, a thief, and the scene-swiping Guillermo Diaz as a textbook Mexican movie gangster with an atypical baseball obsession. Jimmy…
Lars von Trier’s doggedly outrageous, fearsomely ambitious two-hander is so desperate to make you feel something — if only a terrible sensation of nothingness — that it’s almost poignant. Most simply put, Antichrist revels in the gruesome ordeal of a bereaved couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) who lose their toddler because they were too sexually engrossed to notice him…
The White Ribbon is Michael Haneke’s first German-language film since the original Funny Games (1997), and addressing what used to be called “the German problem” while dodging the filmmaker’s own likability issues, it’s his best ever. A period piece set on the eve of World War I, in a Protestant, still-feudal village somewhere in the uptight depths of northern Germany,…
The artistic arc of Lawrence’s Be/Non is a study in evolution. Emerging from the amniotic swirls of frontman Brodie Rush’s brain in 1996, Be/Non has spent 14 years marching without mercy through fads, band members and shelved records, all the while refining its pulsating space rock. Rush has followed his bizarre creative vision into whatever abyss his whims lead him…
Texas songwriter James McMurtry specializes in rough-hewn characters — from a meth cooker to a disabled veteran forced to panhandle. His sprawling stories and salt-of-the-earth narrators recall the books of his father, Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove. The younger McMurtry uses country-leaning roots rock to champion the working class and embrace progressive populism, pairing biting lyrics with…
In this modern era of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the intricacy and precision of a master guitarist is reduced to a paint-by-numbers musical. While the general population may now believe that a G chord is just a green plastic button, guitarist Charlie Hunter continues his quest toward stringed perfection. Trained by Joe Satriani, Hunter has already enjoyed a prolific…
After fleeing to Nashville following the demise of his band, native Kansas Citian Ben Grimes rediscovered his muse with his new outfit, Soft Reeds, and returned to our city. His present claim to fame is a song that he co-wrote and released on Soft Reeds’ three-song EP last year: a quavering, transcendent rendering of “Buildings and Mountains,” the catchy little…
Earlier this month, bulldozers tore down the remains of Kansas City’s original Hereford House at 20th Street and Main after an explosion and fire had shuttered it for good in October 2008. The place was iconic — even though I never included it on a list of the city’s best steakhouses, I know a lot of people who did. In…
Danny Rowland and Jen Weidl of Transmittens possess the power of perfect pop. We Disappear, the Lawrence duo’s second release on England’s WeePOP! Records in less than a year, delivers 10 more catchy twee-pop tunes. Rowland and Weidl have mastered the craft of pairing playfulness with pathos, even when singing about goofy subjects (unicorns, dinosaurs, hot-dog suits, etc.). We Disappear…
It’s possible that Richard Gintowt is Kansas City’s most underrated musician. Much of that is his own fault: He’s also one of the market’s most prolific music journalists. Now that he has moved on from The Pitch to focus on Lawrence.com, we can finally — without conflict of interest — say Gintowt is a fucking great songwriter. After fronting Lawrence’s…
Anyone giving a frustrated finger to the dead-end traffic jam on Massachusetts Street during a Tech N9ne concert can testify to the love that Lawrence has for local hip-hop. The first installment of the I-70 Series, a planned sequence of live performances promoting the Lawrence hip-hop community and IndyGround Entertainment, takes place Friday at the Jackpot. The IndyGround label houses…
