Emotional Rescue
Given the manipulative tendencies of many mainstream pictures, Stepmom easily could have slipped into a sticky morass of sentimentality and melodrama. Instead, it proves a genuinely affecting movie that approaches its adult themes with intelligence, maturity, and rare authenticity. The film stars Susan Sarandon as Jackie, a divorced mother of two, whose ex-husband Luke (Ed…
Regional Beat
Fall in Union United We Stand (Basement Boy) By and large, metal expresses the angst and social misplacement of the years between the onset of acne and the declaration of a college major. That realization came courtesy of the local boys Fall in Union, whose debut United We Stand could stand next to 90 percent…
Unchained
Today, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee owns the most famous penis on the Internet–but his generously proportioned man part wasn’t the source of his initial burst of fame. Lee’s been a popular personality since the early ’80s, when he and bandmates Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, and Mick Mars burst onto the hard-rock scene with 1983’s…
The Straight Dope
Lately I’ve been hearing nasty little rumors that my favorite addiction is just that . . . an addiction! Is it true that Chap Stick and others of that ilk contain ingredients that make you long for more? Is it true that the evil executives of these companies are preying on hapless lip-lickers such as…
A Little Christmas Cheer
I don’t know why, exactly, but every year around this time, I seem to end up writing about, uh, drinking. It might have something to do with the stress of trying to choose between the Chia Pet and the Smart Clapper. Decisions, decisions … Or maybe it’s just that I’m not much of a holiday…
Gifts of Gag
Ho-ho-ho! It’s that time of year when the Mouth gags up a slew of seasonal greetings to many of our fine subjects. We had a long shopping list this year, but these teeth grate at long cash register lines. So Mouth’s just sending out holiday wishes to our favorite chewables. Remember, comrades, it’s the thought…
Letters
Wrong Man for the Job What a shame that newly, wildly revamped and modernized Scene would allow its writers to take the same tired, rockist attitude toward new music. David Powers reviews Portishead’s latest Roseland NYC Live [“Playback,” December 3] as if comparing it to a Bruce Springsteen CD. It’s clear from his first paragraph…
Bungee Man
An end table is about the last place to see the creations (or more appropriately, creatures) of glass artist Dale Chihuly, which flail and snake like sea monsters, sucking up everything in their vicinity. His flashily colored works are also mythical in size: the Laguna Murano Chandelier–a tentacled quasar entangled with sharks and mermaids–is made…
Dance, Fools, Dance
Footloose, extracted from the popular 1984 film of the same name, is a Crayola crayon of a musical, dedicated to the old West Side Story proposition that teenagers will shrivel and die if not allowed to defy their elders and dance their keisters off. Paradoxically, this new-age show is opening its extensive 35-city tour amidst…
Agony and Adoration
With Christmas breathing down our necks, the thought of another yuletide extravaganza can send a mere mortal into conversion or convulsions. However, if you’ve never seen Karamu’s Black Nativity, or if you haven’t seen it recently, you are offered a special dispensation, for without it one may go to one’s grave believing Christmas to be…
Death of a Dandy
TO ALL I LOVE, Do not grieve for me–my nerves are all shot and for the last year I have been in agony day and night–except when I sleep with sleeping pills . . . So began the note written on May 29, 1957, by film director James Whale. After placing it on a blotter…
Focus on Freshness
At Parker’s, the food’s the thing. Nothing–not glitzy decor, fussy presentation, or overwhelming portion size–is allowed to interfere with a diner’s appreciation of the impeccably fresh, attentively prepared dishes that flow out of this Ohio City restaurant’s kitchen. Chef and co-owner Parker Bosley, 60, has long been a luminary on the Cleveland dining scene. He…
Night & Day
Thursday December 24 Jingle bells will ring in University Circle tonight with a carillon and handbell concert in the English Gothic sanctuary of the Church of the Covenant, which has more sacred music directors (four) than it has Presbyterian ministers (three). The church’s longtime director of bell choirs, George Leggiero, orchestrates the belltower harmonies, while…
Barber Shop Quartet
Picture a crowded family roadster. The driver, eyebrows furrowed, weaves through detours and calls directions through the commotion of kids spilling over the backseats. Pranks, insults, inside jokes, and laughter accompany every cross-country mile. That roadster could belong to Chalkline, the Mentor-based hardcore band that takes pride in its collective immaturity. Consider Matt Jauch (guitar/vocals)…
Skeleton Crew
Wearing scratchy collars and forced smiles, the men in the antique photograph seem rather stiff. But not as stiff as what’s lying before them: a human cadaver, freshly dissected, pulp clinging to bone. A well-appointed gent in a derby holds an amputated arm. Another, the blade they used to saw it off. It’s a repulsive,…
Canadian Gothic
He was sweating and clutching clumps of his long blond hair. Finally, he couldn’t stand it. The promoter of the event, a Toronto folk festival, burst on stage and interrupted Sue Hutton mid-song. “He was saying, ‘You can’t be doing this. You can’t be doing this,'” she remembers. The promoter said she was too loud,…
Meet Joe Young (Again)
In 1933, producer Merian C. Cooper, director Ernest B. Schoedsack, and pioneering animator Willis O’Brien created one of this century’s most indelible and powerful archetypes: King Kong. Then they did a peculiar thing: As if appalled at what they had wrought–but also delighted at the money it made them–they spent much of the rest of…
Makin’ the Scene
Whenever a big show rolls through town, radio stations jostle to attach their call letters to the event. They park their love vans outside the venue, play the visiting artist into the ground, offer loge seats to the caller who knows the name of the singer’s cat, etc. So when Aerosmith comes to Cleveland, as…
Life Is Semisweet
British actress Jane Horrocks is thrice-gifted: She can act, she can sing, and she can sing like Judy Garland. And like Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, and a host of other legendary performers. Horrocks’s ability to mimic the singing and speaking voices of these artists lies at the heart of Little Voice, a genre-defying…
Livewire
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy The Outsiders The Odeon December 14 To swing or not to swing? After several decades of relative obscurity, the neo-swing revival crested in 1998, effectively dividing the music-listening public into two camps: those who laud swing as a refreshing alternative to, well, alternative, and those who look upon the whole business…
As We Like It
Geniuses often come across unimpressively in the movies. Amadeus presented Mozart as a giggling fop. Both Kirk Douglas and Tim Roth gave us Van Gogh as a pathetic head case. I.Q.’s Albert Einstein was a cupid-playing old duffer. Ken Russell’s freaky depictions of Liszt and Mahler speak for themselves. When Tim Burton made a loving…
Miles Ahead
When Miles Davis put out Bitches Brew in 1970, he brewed controversy. This album marked the Great Divide of his career. He had boasted that he could put together a rock band to rival Jimi Hendrix, and Bitches Brew was the result. Many critics denounced it as a sellout. Nonsense. Although Bitches Brew became Davis’s…
Southern Cross
The talents of Maya Angelou–she is or has been a teacher, memoirist, prize-winning poet, actress, civil-rights activist, editor, playwright, composer, dancer, producer, theater and TV director, and advisor to three Presidents–range so far and deep that no feat she accomplishes could come as a surprise. Give this quick study three weeks in med school and…
Playback
Method Man Tical 2000: Judgement Day (Polygram/Def Jam) Five years ago, Wu-Tang Clan turned the hip-hop world on its ear. In the middle of the laid-back G-funk of the Dr. Dre era, the Wu proved that things were still hectic and hardcore on the East Side. The Clan is full of talent, but one cat…
