A key film from the 2012 festival circuit is starting to see commercial release in the United States, despite not having received an Oscar nomination in the foreign-language category. (It was a strong year for foreign-language movies.) Even without an Academy Awards nod, though, Barbara seems likely to connect with American audiences. It’s a tense historical inquiry from one of…
The first thing you’ll want to know, as you watch Quartet, is where first-time director Dustin Hoffman shot his movie. The setting is Beecham House, a fictional home for retired English musicians, and the scent of the idyllic estate’s cool, green lawns and smartly tended gardens wafts down from the screen on the Buckinghamshire breeze. (The answer: Hedsor House, a…
Show me a town where people like to drink, and I’ll show you at least one 24-hour restaurant. Following a night of drunken debauchery, you need a place to unwind and sober up, a way station on the road back to sanity — or at least on the road home. Such a place must offer certain things: greasy sausage, runny…
Klink Mobile’s world headquarters is in the clubhouse of a sprawling, gated Overland Park apartment complex. The space is perfect for Jessie Bishop, the startup’s 30-year-old CEO and founder, who says she can conduct international business and “not leave for a week.” “I can literally roll out of bed and get my day started,” she says. “The last thing I…
%{}% For certain rock fans born between, let’s say, 1960 and 1980, R.E.M. represents something approaching a religion. I consider myself a respectable R.E.M. fan — I have most of the band’s records, I like a lot of its songs, and they always seemed to me like a pretty cool group of dudes, especially Peter Buck — but I was…
Relationships are complicated. Especially when the connection is between a 40-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl. That’s among the lessons of Scottish playwright David Harrower’s Blackbird, said to be inspired by a 2003 case involving a 31-year-old former U.S. Marine, Toby Studebaker, and a 12-year-old British girl. Together they flew to France and checked into a hotel, having met online…
Browse the track list of Love Sign, the new LP from Free Energy, and it’s clear that no momentous shifts in the band’s aesthetic have occurred since its 2010 DFA Records debut, Stuck on Nothing. “Electric Fever,” “Girls Want Rock,” “Dance All Night”: the Philadelphia group is still enthralled with the kind of power-pop party anthems of such forebears as…
Sum 41 Are you under the impression that Sum 41 is washed up, forgotten, yesterday’s news? You are as wrong as singer Deryck Whibley was when he thought his marriage to Avril Lavigne would last forever! You are as wrong as Whibley was when he thought, There’s no way my ex-wife will take up with that blond singer with the…
Group exhibitions, particularly those with no overarching theme, can be tricky organizational feats. With no structure to guide the selection or placement of artwork, and no curatorial premise to coax new meanings and interpretations, individual pieces must stand on their own. Two local residency programs, Studios Inc. and the Charlotte Street Foundation’s Urban Culture Project, have taken very different approaches…
Tommy Baker had a tough day yesterday. He’s the Kansas City resident who had two cars stolen in the span of a few hours. Thieves apparently stole his first car at a gas station (he left the car running while he was inside the station paying) and then a second vehicle that was parked in front of his home. The…
Be sure to wear your black. The show announcements keep on coming at a wallet-breaking clip, with Sigur Rós and Animal Collective announcing KC shows in the last couple of weeks. Well, prepare to dig through your couch to find whatever money’s left because Britain’s moody, lovely the xx announced this morning that they will be coming to the Uptown…
Flickr: philcampbell Should we drink beer in the name of charity year-round? There’s no shortage of pub crawls for charitable causes, but Kansas City doesn’t yet have a pub that is attached to a charity year-round. If you read The New York Times, we might not have to wait that long for the next cocktail trend. In a recent story,…
Keep an eye out for Abraxas. This may very well be the year when Kansas City moves from the idea of local to regional craft beer. And one of the key additions could be Perennial Artisan Ales, a St. Louis brewery founded in September 2011. Co-owner Phil Wymore spent time at Goose Island and Half Acre before bringing his own…
Once or twice a year, when I’m feeling especially suffocated by Kansas City, I pick a night and drive to Columbia for a show, usually at the Blue Note. (One time, I ended up staying for six months, but that is a story for another day.) Being in the middle of Missouri purifies and rejuvenates some part of the soul….
Tom Hilton Last Friday, a 51-year-old Asian-American food-delivery driver, working for the Mandarin House Chinese restaurant, delivered an order to an apartment in Independence. Instead of getting a tip, he got a beating. With a baseball bat. He remains in critical condition. “I understand he’s in pretty bad shape,” Independence Examiner executive editor Sheila Davis tells Fat City. According to…
%{}% %{}% Jaimie Warren V’s Italiano Restaurante is ready for its AARP card. Fifty years ago, when Kansas City residents could tear themselves away from the three networks on TV (Petticoat Junction and The Fugitive both premiered in 1963) to go out for a little cibo Italiano, the choices included Italian Gardens downtown, Jasper’s in south Kansas City, Villa Capri…
The Star McClanahan’s favorite color isn’t green. Won’t someone please help E. Thomas McClanahan? He’s stuck in his La-Z-Boy again, barking half-remembered Google-search results as he fart-squirms toward the Marie Callender mini pie on his TV tray. The Kansas City Star’s resident Flat Earther has been a little adrift since the election ate his brain. Like a new retiree, McClanahan…
Flickr: Elaine Vigneault All diets come with limitations. A few come with lectures. In a good sendup of his ilk, BuzzFeed’s Jack Shepherd documents the 19 Most Annoying Things About Being Vegan. It gets at the preachy tenor or judgmental attitude that can, but doesn’t necessarily, accompany veganism. Back in March of last year, The Pitch’s Payton Hatfield attempted a…
The Crossroads Coffeehouse was apparently robbed this morning. KMBC Channel 9 reports that police were called to the coffee shop at 310 Southwest Boulevard at 7 a.m. According to KMBC: Police said a man armed with a handgun and wearing dark clothing and a ski mask walked into the shop demanding money.The man ran off after getting some cash. No…
Facebook: Old Shawnee Pizza Lenexa Lenexa gets a little taste of Old Shawnee. Some pizza shops can make claims about being original or classics, but few date back as far as Old Shawnee Pizza. The Kansas pizza shop, which opened its first pizza joint in Shawnee in 1969 (it was then a Pizza Shoppe), has expanded to Lenexa. The third…
Facebook: RevolveKC RevolveKC has got plenty of ideas in motion. It’s only fitting that RevolveKC would open up a second location. Everything seems to come in pairs for the bike advocacy nonprofit. Two wheels. Two founders. And starting next month, two shops. The nonprofit, which restores used bicycles to help finance and supply its earn-a-bike program (people earn their bikes…
