Ghosts Of Wayne County
Due to a series of strange and confusing events that I can no longer keep entirely straight, I have become the spokesman for the family of a dead girl named Tina Harmon. In December, Tina's brother and I convinced a county prosecutor to close the case so that the records of an investigation into her…
New Year, Lots Of Stuff To Do
Thursday 1.1 TOMMY'S NEW YEAR'S DAY PANCAKE BREAKFAST Tommy Fello boasts that he's Cleveland Heights' most passionate arts patron. And on the first day of the year since 1999, he's proved the claim by flipping hundreds of flapjacks at his Coventry Road restaurant for Tommy's New Year's Day Pancake Breakfast which benefits the Heights Arts…
Promissory Nites
Crystal-balling the '09 half of the 2008-09 theater season, more than a few promising items materialize through the prophetic mist. PlayhouseSquare has the year's most anticipated billing, with the much-awarded musical version of Mary Poppins. But that assured blockbuster won't arrive until summer (July 17-August 9). Before then, the downtown showcase launches the '09 national…
Holy Block Buster!
At the end of last year, when a flurry of Oscar-hopeful films hit theaters, it was clear two movies stood out from the crowd. One was the Coen Brothers' intense No Country for Old Men, a murder saga that found Javier Bardem giving his all in one of the best bad-guy roles of all time.…
Capsule Reviews Of Current Releases
Bedtime Stories – When Marty Bronson (Jonathan Pryce) has to sell his mom-and-pop motel to developer Barry Nottingham (Richard Griffiths), he does so with the understanding that his son Skeeter (Adam Sandler) will eventually run the place. Skeeter does take over but as the maintenance manager. Skeeter gets his chance to advance when Barry announces…
’08 Dining Balance Sheet
Big gains were in short supply in '08, not only in the Dow, but also at the dinner table. This year's most notable newcomers include entries from heavy hitters like Zack Bruell, Marlin Kaplan, Carl Quagliata and John McDonnell. Bruell completely reworked the old That Place on Bellflower locale into L'Albatros, a contemporary French brasserie.…
A Ring Of Truth
Don't read this book before you go to bed. Like a piece of chocolate ganache cake, it'll sit with you, rich in complex flavors but giving you an ache. But this ache will rest on the left side of your chest, just under the fifth rib, in the region of your heart. For this is…
Our Cinematic Top Ten Lists
TOP TENS Charles Cassady Jr. 1. Iron Ma:n I freely admit that I never saw Iron Man. But all year I heard from people who did. People who hated comic books told me they loved Iron Man. People who hated movies loved Iron Man. People who loathed and despised all form of human expression and…
Never Too Early
There seems little point in recapping the disastrous year in Cleveland sports. Helping the Browns' front office box up their belongings would be more fun. So instead, let's look forward with the second installment of Scene's 2009 Cleveland Indians preview. Today I'm joined by Jay Levin, proprietor and editor of LetsGoTribe.com, and past contributor to…
Rules That Matter
Rule No. 1: You are not the center of the universe. I call them the "I" people. Here's one you might recognize: "Hey Jodie, how's it going?" says I person, while waiting for Jodie to finish up at the copy machine. "Sort of a tough one today," says Jodie, thinking that maybe, just maybe, her…
Viva La Rock
You can have your TV on the Radios, your Vampire Weekends and your Girl Talks. The best music in 2008 didn't come from a laptop and didn't involve sampling a bunch of shit. And it didn't come from anthem-oriented blowhards like Nickelback or 3 Doors Down. And it had nothing to do with the Jonas…
Oh Romeo
If there's one lasting soundbite from Romeo Crennel's tenure as head coach of the Cleveland Browns, it's what he said during training camp last year after Braylon Edwards had his foot gashed by Donté Stallworth while running around barefoot. Unintentional comedy aside, it encapsulated Romeo perfectly – grandfatherly and a poor choice to be the…
Our Lists Of The Top Ten Albums Of The Year
TOP TENS Chris Drabick 1. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar) – As bleak and desolate as its creator, Justin Vernon, and his northern Wisconsin surroundings, Emma is a devastatingly direct and moving record that functions as equal parts confession and depressive howl. Vernon turned bad winter into good. 2. Vampire Weekend (XL) -…
Frost/Nixon
Ron Howard’s intelligent drama, derived from the Peter Morgan stage play, aspires to history written with lightning, but Oliver Stone’s majestically flawed 1995 Nixon was there first, with more fire and operatic flair. This one feels like history written as a People nostalgia piece. The subject is a series of ballyhooed 1977 TV interviews done…
The Reader
At its best — which fortunately is most of the time — The Reader feels like the glory days of Miramax, the mom-and-pop (literally) company that Harvey and Bob Weinstein started three decades ago in their parents’ basement. Combining the literary pedigree of Bernhard Schlink’s acclaimed 1995 best-seller, an acclaimed director (Stephen Daldry of The…
Doubt
Playwright/screenwriter/director John Patrick Shanley’s adaptation of his own stage drama is directed with Clint Eastwood austerity and set in a working-class Catholic parish and parochial school in 1964 NYC. There, schoolchildren are kept in line by stern principal Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep in a hedge-clipped Bronx accent), a flinty alpha female of the old ways,…
Valkyrie
Writers Christopher McQuarrie (The Way of the Gun) and Nathan Alexander went to great lengths to make sure everything in this Bryan Singer film about an attempt to assassinate Hitler was accurate or as close to accurate as possible. Based on the true story of German Resistance fighter Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise), who led…
Bedtime Stories
When Marty Bronson (Jonathan Pryce) has to sell his mom-and-pop motel to developer Barry Nottingham (Richard Griffiths), he does so with the understanding that his son Skeeter (Adam Sandler) will eventually run the place. Well, Marty gets his wish. Sort of. Skeeter does take over but as the maintenance manager. Skeeter gets his chance to…
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Director David Fincher bookends The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with two pieces of American history: U.S. troops fighting in World War I and the looming threat of Hurricane Katrina. In between, a timeline of historical and not-so-historical events plays out as one man grows up, or more accurately, becomes a boy. “There are no…
