With a luscious score by Jewish composer Alan Menken, Beauty and the Beast brings this classic fairy tale to life that was popularized by the Disney movie. this CenterSeason production is partnering with Children’s Therapeutic Learning Center and we are collecting packages of swim diapers for the agency. Patrons who donate a package receive $3 off their ticket price. Sat.,…
Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, apparently had some leftover free time on her hands because she was also the goddess of the arts. On the third Friday of each month, she smiles upon the fair city of Independence as businesses in the Englewood Station Arts District, along four commercial blocks of Winner Road, throw open their doors for a…
Just in case you forgot, we at The Pitch are in the middle of a celebration. The occasion: the 30th anniversary of our marriage to this fine metropolitan area, a relationship consummated in the basement of a Westport record store. Like all good unions, this one has included some drama. We just can’t help picking on sketchy politicians and generally…
KC comedian Jus Jay must have known something about laughing through the pain. Earlier this summer, the joker performed for a rooftop audience, including R&B star Ginuwine, at The Jones the night before he died from complications related to kidney disease. He was 26. Had he lived, he would have performed with BET Comic View’s Lavelle Crawford and Last Comic…
Back in what historians refer to as “Mad Men days,” people were stone-crazy for the printed word, yo. In the mid-1960s, upscale, urban magazines such as Esquire would occasionally do crazy shit like devote an entire issue to a John Updike story, and everyone would read it, presumably while smoking cigarettes, drinking martinis and inhaling asbestos. Since that peak, though,…
The pay-per-view gods have their eyes on the Sprint Center (1407 Grand, 816-949-7100) as World Wrestling Entertainment hosts Money in the Bank. The dual Raw and SmackDown event consists of two matches with eight entertainers fighting to be the first to climb a ladder and retrieve a briefcase containing a championship contract. See Randy Orton, Chris Jericho and hybrid rapper-wrestler…
For some of us, the days of running through sprinklers as a way to beat the summer heat are long gone. But you can still take a break from the air conditioning in your home or office and jump into a neighborhood pool. Kansas City Parks and Recreation offers free swim times at a number of area pools. Wade in…
Feature: “Royal Curse,” July 1 Swing and a Miss Yes, the Royals have sucked for a long time, but for crissakes, did you know you can look up and verify statistics online? Danny Jackson never won the Cy Young Award. He finished a distant second in 1988 to Orel Hershiser. Kirk Gibson played only one full season from 1986 to…
My instructions finally came in the mail on an early winter morning when no one else was in the house. That was good. The papers said I shouldn’t share this information with anyone. I looked over everything, and when I felt that I had a handle on what had to be done, I walked upstairs to the master bathroom and…
This Bruckheimer-produced Apprentice pays homage to Mickey’s dancing brooms but draws more from modern, road-tested blockbuster elements: Spidey’s nerd-turned-superhero wish fulfillment and Harry Potter’s boy wizardry. Nicolas Cage plays Balthazar Blake, a 1,300-year-old understudy of Merlin who finds his long-sought Chosen One in the unlikely form of skinny NYU physics student Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel). The movie at least has…
Inception is a chilling trip into the psyche … of writer-director Christopher Nolan, the action director who shattered the Tomatometer of mass consensus with The Dark Knight. Nolan’s follow-up offers more muted colors, gift-wrapped themes and GQ leading men with stockbroker comb-backs over the frowns carved in their brows — indicators of high-minded artistry, all. Leonardo DiCaprio has every reason…
This freakishly engrossing black comedy, about excessively mothered men and the women who enable them, stars John C. Reilly as a middle-aged lost soul who can’t believe his luck when he takes up with an enigmatic fox (the excellent Marisa Tomei). Until, that is, he runs afoul of her son the emotional terrorist, played by Jonah Hill, who cannily dials…
Two iconoclasts, whose contributions to their respective artistic fields left an indelible mark on the 20th century — did you know they used to bone? After a lengthy staging of the disastrous 1913 premiere of “The Rite of Spring” (the sole sympathetic set of ears in the audience belonging to the youngish Chanel), Stravinsky jumps ahead a decade. Lacking love,…
Dear Mexican: Most Mexicans I know (myself included) feel it’s a terrible disrespect to keep old photos around of you and your ex and vice versa. I would never keep pictures of me and an ex around to try and push my new, current boyfriend’s buttons; I guess I feel it’s a slap in the face. So when a couple…
The Faint is a master of murky electronic feedback and dangerously catchy hooks that force listeners to automatically crank the volume. The Omaha group’s lyrical style was born in sync with the emo movement, but it swapped acoustic guitars and whiny lyrics for an intense, new-wave dance sound and lyrics that have examined erections and birth, and guys wearing makeup (in…
New Jersey has had to fight a dubious reputation for years, but thanks to all the hair-gelled douchebaggery on MTV’s Jersey Shore, the Garden State — like Snooki — has really taken a lot of sucker punches lately. So if Jersey’s looking to rehab its image, New Brunswick’s the Gaslight Anthem makes a fine musical poster child. To call lead…
Frontier Ruckus and Samantha Crain are two shiny new Americana acts handpicked by Ramseur Records (better known as the folks who brought us banjo-driven balladeers the Avett Brothers). Frontier Ruckus is the folk-rock project of Matthew Milia, inspired by abandoned malls and vacant suburban landscapes. Milia must have been inspired by the blank expanse of the Midwestern plains, too, because…
Ignore the fact that this band’s name has the word twilight in it. The moody, seductive sound Civil Twilight crafts has a romance all its own — one that blissfully has nothing to do with vampires. Steven McKellar’s willowy tenor dips and flutters against moody backdrops, recalling Thom Yorke. But despite Civil Twilight’s penchant for graceful, slow-moving balladry, the band…
With songs this rich, who needs albums? Though only three tracks long, the Sexy Accident’s Now That She’s Gone teems with sonic and lyrical detail. It captures a fleeting, stunning portrait. And fleeting is the operative word because Camry Ivory — who joined seven months ago — will soon be the longest-tenured member besides founder Jesse Kates. (The Sexy Accident…
Thrash may be part of metal’s sense of humor, but Hammerlord is no joke. The local metal band hearkens back to the days before corpse paint and song titles that read like William Blake poems. With Wolves at War’s End, Hammerlord proves that pummeling, driving drums and earth-scorching guitars don’t have to be bleak and depressing. You can, in fact,…
It’s Wednesday afternoon in Activity Room A of the Northeast Branch of the Kansas City Public Library. A portable Sony spits out instrumental rap beats from the back of the room, which is filled with kids ages 7 to 12. The beats are loud, but not loud enough that the class of boys and girls can’t hear their instructors. Aaron…
My friend Cathy thinks that Fogo de Chão, the Brazilian churrascaria on the Country Club Plaza, should remove the display rotisserie that rotates theatrically in the show windows west of the restaurant. There are real flames, and meat appears to be cooking (it’s actually fatty beef that would have been tossed out), but Cathy is hungry for a different sight….
The phrase outsider art is well-accepted terminology for work by creators who toil beyond mainstream artistic channels, though it also conveys a vaguely disdainful connotation of otherness, a certain “You ain’t from around here, are you, boy?” But the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Art Critic Terminology lacks a category for Knob Noster painter Harlan Bonar. Late Show Gallery owner…
Not a month goes by that I don’t recall the girl who, during my elementary school’s spelling bee, marched up to the microphone and proclaimed with unshakable conviction that should was spelled S-H-O-O-D. The laughter that followed is the closest thing I’ve seen to the wrath of God unleashed. Years later, she got knocked up by the guy who drove…
