Milk
Gus Van Sant’s docudrama about the life of activist Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), California’s first openly gay elected politician, who helped transform San Francisco’s Castro District into a gay-friendly neighborhood, is a return to form for the filmmaker who hasn’t had a movie of consequence in some time. Penn is terrific as the eccentric politician…
Slumdog Millionaire
Danny Boyle’s latest is an irresistible, ingeniously structured hodgepodge of Bollywood (the souped-up romanticism and Day-Glo colors) and Charles Dickens (a classical narrative arc). The story of 18-year-old street kid Jamal (Dev Patel, amiable if emotionally opaque) raised in the Mumbai ghetto who makes a killing on that country’s version of Who Wants to be…
Delgo
This computer-animated feature is a heroic fantasy evidently aimed at childish mindsets that thought Star Wars: The Phantom Menace didn’t have enough Jar Jar Binks. The setting is a nameless mythic realm where two humanoid races co-exist uneasily, one a faintly Jedi-like tribe of saurian semi-mystics, the other a haughty bunch with fairylike wings who…
Nothing Like the Holidays
A Christmas celebration takes a turn for the worse when Anna (Elizabeth Peña) announces that she plans to divorce Edy (Alfred Molina), her husband of many years, because she suspects he’s been having an affair. The adult children all react differently, and we soon learn each has his or her own set of problems. Maurico…
The Tale of Despereaux
For whatever reason, rodents have a rich film history, from Disney’s 1950 Cinderella to last year’s Oscar-winning Ratatouille. The Tale of Despereaux is the story of a young mouse (Matthew Broderick) whose bravery brings together a royal family and breathes life into a village obsessed with soup. Oddly enough, Despereaux the mouse gets relatively little…
Some Peter, Some Pan
Rumor has it that the debtor prisons of Merrie Olde England are making a comeback. But let us dwell on the positive. Obama won and Beck Center has finally dumped its annual Christmas offering, Beauty and the Beast, for a true object of delight: the 1954 musicalization of James M. Barrie's Peter Pan. The timing…
No Man Is An Island
Anyone who cares that the place where the Cuyahoga River pours out into Lake Erie remains undeveloped – one of the few areas where a person can walk along the shore and touch the water – owes a debt to the late Ed Hauser. There's no telling how many people he introduced to that scrap…
Russian, Around
There is no such thing as a cursed location, only cursed businesses (and bad landlords). But a reviewer does begin to question the validity of that statement on his third visit to the same address in a handful of years. Proof that 30519 Pinetree is under no hex can be found in its track record.…
Grace Potter
When Grace Potter writes a song, steps up to her Hammond B3 and starts to sing, she drifts through a musical wormhole back to the days of Bonnie Raitt (when Little Feat had her back) and Janis Joplin, when she was contemplating Pearl. There's no way Potter should have evolved this far as a singer-songwriter…
King Of The Castro
Beverly Hills Ð Some 15 years ago, Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho) had the opportunity to make a docudrama about the life of activist Harvey Milk, California's first openly gay elected politician, who helped transform San Francisco's Castro District into a gay-friendly neighborhood. Oliver Stone was originally going to make the…
Britney Is Back
Britney Spears Circus (Jive/Zomba) Spears' Project: Comeback has been in full swing for a year now. Last year's Blackout was a tentative step back to relevance after endless months of head-shaving, cooter-flashing antics that eventually landed the paparazzi-magnet star in the loony house. Like Blackout, Circus features a carnival of burbling electro-pop mixed with a…
Around Hear: Dead Boys, Dino, Dink
The new book Hang on Sloopy: The History of Rock & Roll in Ohio catalogs national and local musicians and their connections to the Buckeye State – from the Your Hit Parade big-band era to Alan Freed, through the emo-punk age of Alternative Press magazine. The story begins and ends in Northeast Ohio. "Easily 40…
City Chicken
On a frigid morning, the soil on the half-acre lot beside Bodnar-Mahoney Funeral Home on Lorain Avenue crunches under your feet like a hard-candy shell. Jocelyn Kirkwood, co-founder of the fledgling Gather 'round Farm, is tossing feed to 16 hens and their fat rooster prince. Shifting from foot to foot, Meagen Kresge, the operation's other…
Local Arts News
It's hard to imagine a better medium for high-school students than slam poetry. Slam poets write and deliver their own rants, and well-articulated emotion pays off. It doesn't cost any money. PlayhouseSquare is once again offering its Slam U workshops in preparation for competition that will select a team of four finalists and one alternate…
End-of-the-world Follies
Do you ever get the feeling that somebody else is controlling your life, and that person is probably a gum-chewing 13-year-old with a mean streak and a short attention span? How else can we explain the shit we have to deal with on a daily basis? That is just one of the many cosmic questions…
Culture Jamming: Sights For Sore Eyes
Chowder Volume 1 (Cartoon Network/Warner) Chowder is a purple blob boy who works as a chef's apprentice. He likes to eat. He usually makes a mess in the kitchen and annoys the hell out of everybody. And his animated TV show is a surreal trip through Yellow Submarine-style pop-psychedelia via the Food Network. This DVD…
Capsule Reviews Of Current Releases
At Home Among Strangers, Stranger at Home (USSR, 1974) – A train gets robbed by a group of bandits in the first movie directed by future Oscar winner Nikita Mikhalkov. Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. At 8:45 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 11. Australia – Is Baz Luhrmann's sprawling epic Australia a love story? An adventure pic?…
Through The Woods
The artist T. R. Ericsson stands in the woods wearing a dark suit. Each of the 13 graphite-on-paper works in his solo exhibit, Narcissus, now at Shaheen Modern and Contemporary Gallery, shows him in a slightly different position, but always with his head bent, hand to his ear. This gesture would have meant nothing 20…
Margot & The Nuclear So And So’s
The music industry is filled with stories of artists delivering albums to record companies, only to see their bottom-line-minded bosses reject the work. There are tons of websites and books dedicated to these "lost albums." Indie-rockers Margot and the Nuclear So & So's were all set to add their contribution to this pantheon when they…
Covers Your Nut
Canton Ballet presents The NutcrackerBy the middle of the 19th century, when Alexander Dumas wrote his interpretation of what became everyone's favorite Christmas ballet, the story was already nearly half a century old. The Nutcracker ballet traces its origins to E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1816 book, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, which, like the familiar ballet,…
Showboys
Two years ago, the Killers ventured outside their flashy Las Vegas hub and headed to the surrounding desert for Sam's Town, a wide-eyed look at America through the mythical scope of their dusty idealism. It was very big and kinda gaudy, and owed a huge debt to U2 and Bruce Springsteen. And it's not nearly…
Wu-tang Lead This Week’s Concert Picks
No Method to the Madness Wu-Tang Clan at House of Blues on Wednesday, December 17 You never know who or what you're getting with the Wu-Tang Clan. It was a rare night back in the day when all nine members of the venerable hip-hop crew would be onstage at the same time. And even then,…
Down Home For The Holidays
Charming is the word for the singing and story-telling now onstage at Actors’ Summit in Hudson. It’s unusual to see talented actors who are also accomplished musicians, but director MaryJo Alexander has assembled a superb cast to celebrate Sanders Family Christmas.
A Little Something For The Kids
If you take your 9-year-old son to see the Cleveland Play House production of A Christmas Story, you needn't fear that the experience will have him pining for "an official Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot, range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and a thing that tells time." He may be the same…
No Cursing Required
On one tune, rapper Mr. 44 calls himself a "legendary rapper." On another, he boasts, "My flow like a sugar cane/Rhymes so sweet." Judging by his lyrics and delivery, you'd think the guy would have a huge ego. But meet him in person and you get a different impression. Soft-spoken and courteous, Mr. 44, who's…
Southern Discomfort
Movie critic Godfrey Cheshire's debut documentary, Moving Midway, is ostensibly about transporting a 160-year-old house from one location to another. But it's really about century-old race relations and how they tie into Cheshire's knotted family history. When New Yorker Cheshire went to Raleigh, North Carolina in 2004 to document his cousin Charlie Silver's plan to…
Short Takes
Slumdog Millionaire is a rags-to-riches fairy taleDanny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire stormed through the fall festival circuit like a Kansas twister, racking up critical huzzahs and Oscar buzz like it was the second coming of Juno (last year's Fox Searchlight fest/crix/awards season darling). As much as I enjoyed Slumdog – it was one of the few…
He’s Seen The Light
You'd think it would be easy to identify Matisyahu after a show. The rapper/reggae singer dresses in a black suit with a broad-brimmed hat, wired-rimmed spectacles and a beard so long, it does ZZ Top proud. But after a recent performance in Jacksonville, fans mobbed one of Matisyahu's promotion crew by mistake. "It's amusing," says…
Local Reviews
Mudfoot Mudfoot EP (self-released) myspace.com/mudfootcleveland Mudfoot's MySpace "sounds like" blurb might be the most accurate self-description in the history of popular music: "A guy with huge sideburns and a hot chick with a giant bush are about to get it on." Burly-voiced singer Mike Martini cut his teeth playing funk-injected rap-rock in Unified Culture, but…
Local Foodie News
After two years of darkness, it's a delight to see the lights back on at the old Sage Bistro location. Just before Thanksgiving, chef-owner Pete Joyce opened the doors to Bistro on Lincoln Park (2391 W. 11th St., 216.862.2969, bistroonlincolnpark.com), his 70-seat Mediterranean restaurant. Like many recent arrivals, the Bistro is an ingredient-driven operation, where…
