Bangkok Dangerous
Joe (Nicholas Cage) is a hit man planning to retire after one last job in Bangkok. Along the way, however, he undergoes a transformation from cold and amoral assassin into a human being with a conscience. That change is brought about by two locals: Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm), a petty criminal Joe takes under his wing,…
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
Alex Holdridge’s low-budget romance aspires to be something like Before Sunset. It falls way short of the mark, however, as two desperate singles (Scoot McNairy and Sara Simmonds) meet through ads they’ve posted on the Internet and spend a wild New Year’s Eve night on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. He’s an aspiring screenwriter…
Transsiberian
Brad Anderson’s (Next Stop Wonderland, The Machinist) thriller has plenty going for it. Beautifully shot and filmed on the train that runs from Beijing to Moscow, it throws so many curveballs into the mix, it’s nearly impossible to know what’s coming next. The plot surrounds an American couple (Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer) that meets…
Ameri-canned
WHAT'S SURPRISING about Amanda Petrusich's book is how little she actually struggles with the questions she poses, or discovers in the process. Despite logging thousands of miles on the trail of American Music, despite whispers of awareness that could have lead her to more profound questions or different conclusions and despite her strong background as…
Croc Rock
The first thing I gotta ask hipper-than-hip laptop rapper MC Lars, one of several acts on the Crocs Next Step Campus Tour, is whether he actually owns a pair of the comfy plastic kicks sponsoring his tour. "I don't," he admits via phone from rehearsals in Reno. "They say they'll hook me up, so that's…
Civic Benefit
On Saturday, September 13, the Akron Civic Center (182 S. Main St.) will host A Very Barium Tribute to Josh Miktarian. The concert will raise funds for the family of Miktarian, the Barium guitarist and Twinsburg K-9 police officer who was shot to death during a routine traffic stop on July 13. "Josh's death touched…
Sam Phillips
For more than two decades, singer-songwriter Sam Phillips has crafted a spectacular body of sophisticated, shadowy pop albums. Although progressively modern, her work is populated with time-warp ghosts of Tin Pan Alley and Revolver-era Beatles. Phillips has also created original soundtracks for the entire run of the Gilmore Girls TV show, and her song "Sister…
Not Afraid Of Virginia Woolf
"I feel certain that I am going mad again," Virginia Woolf wrote in her oft-quoted suicide note to husband Leonard Woolf. "I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best…
Cuts Like A Knife
In November, Cleveland voters will weigh six changes to the city charter, all placed on the ballot by Council last week in a preordained show of self-sacrifice. Most are housekeeping chores: a change in Board of Elections deadlines, a switch from 40 to 30 days for legislation to take effect, a ballooning of the police…
Letters 09-10-2008
BEYOND THE PALIN Gov. Sarah Palin: Like many other community organizers at various agencies across the city, county, state and nation, I work very hard for the underprivileged and impoverished people in my community. I work long hours in the Cleveland area in order to educate and involve the community toward ending poverty in this…
Local Disc Reviews
Xero Gravity The Best of Xero Gravity (self-released) xerogravity.com Aloha! Former Clevelander Jose L. Ortiz Sr. kicked around town in bands such as Graf and Coconut before leaving the North Coast for the North Shore (Hawaii, that is) a few years back. He recently compiled his best material from Xero Gravity, a classic-rock-sounding band for…
Get Out!
Wednesday 9.10 MATCH GAME Fill in the blank: "Dumb Dickie is so dumb that when he had a garage sale, he sold his _________." If your answer is the same as those given by a panel of four "celebrities," you have a good shot at scoring $25 at tonight's Match Game at the gay-friendly Twist…
Ridiculoso
What do you do when some dumb video you posted on YouTube a year ago becomes a weird pop-culture phenomenon? Make a sequel and get Erik Estrada from CHiPs to star in it, of course! Since it was first posted on September 10, 2007, local stand-up comedian Mike Polk's Spanglish music video "One Semester of…
Arts News
For more than 40 years, poets, poetry publishers and readers have looked to Len Fulton's Small Press Review magazine to help sort through the many thousands of chapbooks and anthologies that come out every year. In reviews and editors' picks, it is for many people an indispensable guide. The magazine's July/August issue includes Bottom Dog…
Capsule Reviews
Alphaville (France, 1965) – Jean-Luc Godard's famous 1965 meshing of 1940s style film noir with futuristic science fiction and more than a soupcon of satire. Driving a Ford Galaxy 500, a typical trenchcoat-and-fedora private eye Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine, an émigré American actor who found renown in Europe playing hardboiled types) arrives in Alphaville to…
Family Business
Love 'em or hate 'em, every one of Tyler Perry's movies about middle-class African Americans has been a box-office smash. With limited budgets for marketing and promotion, the films have filled a niche in ways that no one could have predicted. Hell, even his half-baked TV show, House of Payne, has become a hit after…
Ryan’s Hope
"It's All About Men!" That was the slogan on the poster for The Women, the 1939 movie version of Clare Boothe Luce's catty, all-female Broadway play. Directed by George Cukor, the movie starred Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell and Joan Crawford. Diane English, who created TV's Murphy Brown, makes her feature debut with a remake starring…
Your Weekly Arts Calendar
The Glass Menagerie opens at the Cleveland Play House September 12 Tennessee Williams' long history of productions at the Cleveland Play House began 65 years ago; an exchange of letters between Williams and then-Play House Artistic Director Frederic McConnell led to the premiere production of Williams' little-performed play, You Touched Me! In the letters, which…
Rattlesnake Island Revealed!
All Matt Boggs wanted was a cool job. And what could be cooler than working at a private club on a place called Rattlesnake Island? Boggs was familiar with country clubs. While studying at Kent State, he'd worked at Twin Lakes as sous chef, learning the ins and outs of serving the wealthy – respect,…
Keep Holy The Sabbath
The football scheduling gods have bestowed upon Northeast Ohioans a gloriously daunting, dauntingly glorious weekend of games. Saturday night, the Buckeyes visit USC in a nationally televised game with BCS championship implications, and the Browns take on those fuckwads from Pittspuke on Sunday Night Football. (Case and the University of Rochester tussle Saturday afternoon, but…
Cat Stevens, Giant Sand, And More
Cat Stevens Tea for the Tillerman Live DVD (Wienerworld/MVD Visual) Although this DVD's short length is unfortunate, it is what it is: a 1971 half-hour concert TV special shot for Los Angeles public television. The program features seven cuts from Cat Stevens' then-current Tea for the Tillerman ("Wild World," "Father and Son"), plus a foretaste…
Dining Bites
Look for the area's second Melting Pot location to open in mid-September at Westgate Mall on the Rocky River-Fairview Park border. Seth Bromberg, the local owner behind the successful Legacy Village store (24741 Cedar Rd., 216.381.2700), is putting the finishing touches on the 200-seat fondue emporium. While slightly larger than the East Side outpost, Bromberg…
A Woman Of Constant Sorrow
Kent's Jessica Lea Mayfield started performing at age 8 with her family's band, One Way Rider, and, to hear her tell it, she knew right then and there that she was born to be a singer in a rock 'n' roll band. "It was great. It was what I wanted to do," she says via…
Spies And Misdemeanors
TORONTO – Everyone in Joel and Ethan Coen's (No Country for Old Men, Fargo, Barton Fink) new movie, Burn After Reading, has issues. Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) is a hot-headed C.I.A. operative whose drinking problem leads to his dismissal. In order to take revenge, he sets out to write his memoir, a word he can't…
Anything But Advanced
In this age of instant information exchange, progression from relative unknown to buzz band can happen fast. Take, for example, the New York duo High Places. It formed after a pen-pal friendship between Mary Pearson and Rob Barber resulted in Pearson's relocation to New York from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Beginning in early 2007, the freshly formed…
Being In Two Places
In a nation largely made up of immigrants, American art has always been rooted in both native and foreign soils. The 11 Latino and African American artists chosen by SPACES curator Angelica Pozo for the show Bi-Lingual find their formal choices and subject matter in the sometimes-confining gaps between cultures. The boundaries they explore are…
Eddie Montgomery
For nearly a decade, Montgomery Gentry (singers Eddie Montgomery and Troy Gentry) has produced honky-tonk music for the masses. The duo's Top 10 hits number in the double digits, and its latest album, Back When I Knew It All, has contributed to that number. Calling at 9 a.m. one recent morning from a place identified…
Dining Guide
Downtown 4th Street Bar & Grill 402 Euclid Ave., 216-298-4070. Noisy and fun-loving, this 100-seat restaurant is part of the Corner Alley complex, a high-energy hangout featuring 16 lanes of bowling and a fashionable martini bar. With cheese here, bacon there, and deep-fried goodness nearly everywhere, spa cuisine this is not. But thanks to zesty…
Death Proof
Metallica. The biggest – if not greatest – heavy-metal band of all time. After 27 years, the group can still pack arenas and stuff stadiums, if only for the undeniable awesomeness of thrash classics like "Creeping Death." Fifty thousand fans chanting "Die/Die/Die" at Wembley Stadium – it doesn't get bigger or badder than that. Rick…
C’mon, Get Happy
Are we a nation of whiners, as John McCain's chief economic adviser would have us believe? Are we merely suffering the effects of a "mental recession"? Well, judging by some of the charitable happy-hour deals around town, I just may have to agree. Never before has there been such an abundance of good, cheap grub.…
Summertime Blues
The older that blues guitarist Colin John gets, the less excited he gets about up-and-coming blues guitarists who try to turn the music on its head. "It's not an admission of defeat at all – it's just that … I don't really see anything new happening in the genre, other than having to twist it…
The Conception Of Slavery
Despite having been married four years, the two pink lines that heralded my first and only pregnancy 12 years ago were a big surprise. I was in a healthy marriage and a healthy body. I wasn't opposed to the idea of a baby, I just hadn't thought about it much. Sex was a recreational activity,…
Your Complete Concert Calendar
THIS JUST IN A Cursive Memory/Rocket To The Moon/Brighten/A Homecoming Menu: Thu., Oct. 16. 6:30 p.m., $8. Musica. The Alternate Routes: Wed., Oct. 1. 8:30 p.m., $10 (LiveNation.com or Ticketmaster). House of Blues. American Rockstar/Burning Vegas: The Josh Miktarian Memorial. Sunday, October 26. 7 p.m., $45 (LiveNation.com or Ticketmaster). House of Blues. Ascension of the…
Short Takes On New Arrivals
Life During Wartime A paralyzed young man's plight is at the center of Body of WarFormer talk-show host Phil Donahue first met paralyzed Iraq War veteran Tomas Young during a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Donahue, whose MSNBC talk show was an early media casualty of war, decided to tell Young's story in…
Culture Jamming: The Stain Event
TOP PICK Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (Rhino) This little-seen movie barely made it into theaters in 1981, so it's no surprise that it never received a proper home-video release. Stains follows a female punk-rock band (led by a sneering Diane Lane) that flirts with fame and fights with its tourmates, a group featuring…
