New Found Man
Love him or not love him, Lasse Hallström has done it again: the human frailty, the sorrowful past, the hopeful future, the triumph of love and family over crushing despair. Ever since he broke out in 1985 with his Swedish feature Mitt Liv Som Hund (My Life as a Dog), the director has been spewing…
Duke, Where’s My Car?
The tricked-up charms of James Mangold’s Kate & Leopold may be precisely what the moment demands — as long as you accept the existence of chivalry, the possibility of time travel, and the stream of bubbles emanating from Meg Ryan. Skeptics need not apply. Having toured the psychiatric ward in Girl, Interrupted and slogged through…
The Second Annual Art Modell Awards
It’s often said that the media are too negative. Such is the beauty of America, where scumbags like us can trade in the failings and misery of others to earn handsome livings. Yet the holiday season is a time for reflection, a moment to count our blessings, take stock of our good fortune, etc., etc.…
A Poster Child No More
Burton’s salon is hanging by a thread. “I’d say business is about a third of what it once was.”Dorothy Burton seemed perfect for the role. It was September 1999, and construction on a new shopping center at the corner of East 105th Street and St. Clair Avenue was set to break ground. Pitched as the…
DARE to Be Different
University of Akron professor Zili Sloboda baffled colleagues when she announced her new research project: DARE. “Your career is over,” they told her. Sloboda’s peers had reason to believe she had cast herself away to the Isle of Elba. DARE, an acronym for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, is taught in 80 percent of the nation’s…
Busting Little Suzie
Unlike most suburban councils, which tend to resemble Inbreds Anonymous, with their merry backbiting and low-rent buffoonery, the Lakewood City Council is a model of good government. It’s the most densely populated city between New York and Chicago. Its newest housing stock is 70 years old. And though it’s home to approximately 12,897 bars, there’s…
‘Hood Goodness
Back in the day, kids would beat the crap out of each other and shake hands afterward. Now, they get right to the gunplay. Oh sure, they took drugs then, too, but only the “natural” kind — none of that synthetic stuff like “wet.” Former-hustler-turned-filmmaker Ralph Lamarr Johnson and his best buddy, Donald Dawson, are…
Competition Breeds Losers
Stop treating our students like products: Thank you for the superb article about private school welfare [“Plaid Skirt Welfare,” November 29]. For some reason, elected officials and citizens have abdicated our responsibility to the public school children of Ohio. The basic premise of allowing “competition” is flawed in so many ways. First, competition means there…
Sly Foxx
When he first auditioned for Any Given Sunday director Oliver Stone to play quarterback Willie Beamen, an embittered bench-warmer prone to fits of vomiting before each snap, Jamie Foxx was sure he’d blown it. Stone, as subtle as an ice pick to the cornea, said as much–loud enough so Foxx, walking away with head in…
The Lanky Pranksters
Sure, they’ve made some boneheaded moves — like getting stranded on Gilligan’s Island and falling in with the Scooby gang for a lame mystery or two. But when it comes to basketball skills, the Harlem Globetrotters still have all the right moves. And although the name-brand players, like Meadowlark Lemon and Fred “Curly” Neal, have…
Whitey’s Oil & Lube
Even more compelling than the aromas of simple cooking that drift through the air at Whitey’s is the faint, singularly enticing fragrance of time and place. A little musky, a little bittersweet, it’s a nonetheless comforting amalgam of nearly 50 years’ worth of food, beer, and cigarette smoke, tempered by the cool, clean air that…
Food Fete
Joanne Eldridge sets aside the seven days of Kwanzaa to celebrate her African American heritage. She pays tribute to ancestors, friends, and family members who have overcome racial battles, from slavery to segregation. She does this through traditional methods (the lighting of candles, the ritualistic commemoration of the seven principles) and also through food. Appropriately,…
Past Tense, Future Perfect
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times . . . it all depends on whom you’re asking. This was the year that saw seemingly popular and well-established restaurants like OZ (Tremont), MacLaren’s Cuisine (Twinsburg), and Napa Valley Grille (Beachwood) go down with the faltering economy. Other smaller but worthy dining…
New Year’s Eve 2001
Now’s the time to make your plans for New Year’s Eve. Following is a list of parties and activities taking place around Northeast Ohio this year. Please call venues to confirm information. CLUBS & RESTAURANTS Abbasso/Bottom’s Up: House DJs Travis Owens and Quantum rock in 2002, as guests gorge on an all-you-can-eat gourmet buffet and…
Nightwatch
Billy PriceOne evening at the White Birch Inn in Spring Valley, New York, a New Jersey teenager named William Pollak became Billy Price, taking his nom de guerre from bluesman Lloyd Price. Need you now ask, 35 years later, where Pollak/Price’s musical sentiments reside? Price took to the stage that amateur night and knocked them…
With Eleven You Get 10
It’s almost easier to pick the year’s worst than its finest. Among them were Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (Nic Cage, who might be retarded), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (Kevin Smith proves you can make a movie with your head up your ass), The Center of the World, and Intimacy (highbrow porn, which is so…
Adult Content
This year, a lot of things got put into perspective within the music industry. Of course, September 11 affected the public’s appetite for entertainment of any sort, but even before the tragic events of that day, the music-buying public was clearly beginning to embrace less flippant, more earnest sounds. Pop’s reigning titans, N’Sync, saw the…
Crazy Man on Campus
Appropriately, A Beautiful Mind does not offer a literal translation of the life of John Forbes Nash Jr., the mathematician whose work on game theories won him a Nobel prize in 1994. The film leaves out significant events, people, and places; it amalgamates central figures, disguises prominent locations, and hides the tinge of scandal that…
Soundbites
It’d take a lawn mower to trim the abundant chest hairs the Cleveland music scene sprouted this year. With more than a dozen national releases from local punk and metal acts, the town definitely lived up to its “Cleveland rocks” sloganeering in 2001. Of course, there were also plenty of quality releases from those who…
Clay Feet
The most daunting thing for an actor is to portray a god, and when that god comes equipped with a tangle of myths and the quickest left jab in history, the actor’s job can soon verge into guesswork. To Will Smith’s credit, he has managed to get at least partway inside Muhammad Ali’s skin. He…
Setting Son
It took Andre Dubus all of 18 pages to communicate the grief that fills the two-plus hours of Todd Field’s In the Bedroom, a wrenching bit of filmmaking based on Dubus’s short tale “Killings.” Both story and film tell the same tale in the same solemn and gripping tone, with the same horrific and poignant…
