Lemuel Gulliver (Jack Black) has spent a decade stuck in the mailroom of a New York City newspaper before blundering and plagiarizing his way into a travel-writing assignment that lands him, en route to the Bermuda Triangle, in Lilliput. Black is playing a “Gulliver,” but while sharing disproportionate size with Jonathan Swift’s protagonist, he has more in common with Mark…
The ambivalence in the title of Jenny Carr’s album evokes the fluttering uncertainty in her songs. She’s an unconfident lover, always pledging her heart to the wrong person (a mood summed up by the lyrical gem Life’s just a goddamn tease). Ballads rule this 12-track collection, but Carr is more than just a girl with a broken heart and a…
One of the greatest selling points of the singer-songwriter genre is its inherent simplicity. After all, with only a guitar and a few stray harmonica riffs, how much fuckery can one get away with? Jerad Colton Tomasino’s latest release, White Hall, is a solid, unprocessed take of the singer-songwriter in a performance hall, armed only with voice and guitar. Tomasino…
Despite the Great (and So Persistent!) Recession, plenty of new restaurants opened in Kansas City in 2010. They came in many forms, from stylish hot-dog shop (Dog Nuvo) to the much discussed partnership between bon vivant bartender Ryan Maybee and chef Howard Hannah (The Rieger Hotel Grill and Exchange) to the return of short-order cook Jerry Naster, this time as…
The rabble-rousing Architects have been uncharacteristically quiet in 2010. “Other than our show with Flogging Molly earlier this year at the Uptown Theater, we’ve only played a handful of shows,” says lead guitarist Keenan Nichols. “We figure, why burn everyone out on us by playing all the time?” Hook-heavy, with a tinge of scruff, last year’s The Hard Way toed…
It all began on New Year’s Eve 1981, when guitarist Jimmy Nace and his older brother — drummer and lead singer David Nace — played their first show with bassist Tim Williams. Ever since, the Nace Brothers Band has reaped a sturdy grassroots following over the course of six albums. (There’s a seventh in the pipes.) The band primarily plays…
They may have grown up on glam-metal, but the guys in Ultimate Fakebook sound more like rockers mixing the Get Up Kids’ perky pop-punk hooks with the distortion-drenched rock of the Replacements. The band’s first decade of existence — roughly spanning 1994 to 2003 — was highlighted by its second album, 1999’s This Will Be Laughing Week. It was rereleased…
Boldly reanimating the comic Western that secured John Wayne his Oscar 41 years ago, the Coen brothers’ True Grit is well-wrought, if overly talkative, and seriously ambitious. Opening with a strategically abbreviated Old Testament proverb (“The wicked flee when none pursueth”), the film returns the Coens to the all-American sagebrush and gun-smoke landscape that has best nourished their wise-guy sensibility…
A picnic for Anglophiles, not to mention a prospective Oscar bonanza for the brothers Weinstein, The King’s Speech is an enjoyably amusing, inspirational drama that successfully humanizes, even as it pokes fun at, the House of Windsor. The story is a good one: Shy young prince helped by irascible wizard to break evil spell and lead his nation to glorious…
At The Pitch, we go out. Scratch that: We go out a lot. And in 2010, we saw you, Kansas City. We saw you cheer, dance and roar at dinosaur acts at the Uptown Theater, at steamy rock shows at the Replay Lounge, at hard-charging DIY punk sets in warehouses, and at crusty blues riffs at Knuckleheads Saloon. After all,…
It has taken almost two years for the bonkers, exhilarating same-sex romantic comedy I Love You Phillip Morris to finally reach theaters. Premiering at Sundance in January 2009, the movie was nearly a casualty of nervous-Nellie U.S. distributors — more comfortable with innocuous gay genres like the homosexual weepie or the martyr biopic — and countless release delays. In the…
A city agency’s simmering implosion is making life uncomfortable for the people who run it. But there’s plenty of embarrassment to go around. Members of the City Council in Kansas City, Missouri, for instance, may want to take this moment to re-evaluate their fixation on gamesmanship. As I wrote in November, the Kansas City Port Authority paid lawyer William T….
Dear Mexican: I live in a moderately fancy-ass suburb of Dallas, am super white and make decent money. Naturally, I have a Mexican gardener/lawn dude who works his ass off, has 14 brothers and sisters in Guanajuato, employs all his relatives, etc. He also has a sweet wife and three little boys. He does extra landscaping, and I pay him…
%{}% Kansas City Royals fans aren’t feeling optimistic about the deal that sent Zack Greinke to the Milwaukee Brewers. But Brewers fans are saying KC made off with a good haul for the former American League Cy Young winner. Let’s hear from Brewers fan CB, who left commented on our post asking whether the Royals got a good deal for…
Bust out your chastity belts, the Kansas Board of Education is talking about abstinence. The Kansas board has been controversy-free since 2007, when moderates voted to overturn science standards that challenged evolution and changed the definition of science (and made Kansas a laughingstock). So here we have creationist Kathy Martin asking her fellow board members to block an annual contribution…
UPDATE, 2:53PM: We have video! Find it after the jump. You know that saying about how everything takes a little bit longer to reach the Midwest? Well, after the flash-mob trend has taken over train stations and public spaces across the world, it’s finally made it to Kansas City. According to the Star, at least 450 people — organized by…
Last summer, local label the Record Machine held a summer film camp for high school students. Says label head Nathan Reusch, “The kids shot, conceptualized, and edited videos for Motorboater and Max Justus. Mike Russo, the other guy who does Record Machine, helped out.” Justus’ “Please Please Please” and Motorboater’s “Francois’ Dream” were the songs given the teenager treatment. Good…
The current worst-kept restaurant secret in Kansas City? The news that Richard Ng — who co-owns and operates the six Lo Lings restaurants in the metro with his wife, Theresa — is planning to move his Plaza location out of the Board of Trade building in 2011 and into the Skelly Building on the north side of Brush Creek. Ng…
I don’t think I’ve laughed at an Andy Samberg SNL digital short this side of Laser Cats, but Samberg’s musical parody group The Lonely Island just dropped the single from their upcoming sophomore album The Best Damn Thing Ever, and it had me LOLing all over the place. It’s got cameos from Blake Lively, Jessica Alba, and John McEnroe, and it…
Sarah Steelman’s U.S. Senate campaign is less than a month old, and she’s already having to fend off unflattering newspaper stories. Sunday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch drew attention to the lameness of one of Steelman’s major issues. As Missouri treasurer, Steelman made a big deal about “terror-free” investing. But her personal portfolio has held stock in companies that do business in…
