Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (US, 2008)
The first zombie-chicken musical splatter flick, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead is as good/bad as Troma gets and totally lives up to its moronic moniker. Set principally at a fast-food emporium (American Chicken Bunker) inconveniently built atop an Indian burial ground (don’t you hate when that happens?), the film is a typically broad, chaotic…
Quantum of Solace
Casino Royale, the first Bond film to star the brooding Daniel Craig as the debonair spy, borrowed heavily from the Bourne franchise and did some reinventing of its own. And it goes way deeper than the leaps and bounds of the breathtaking chase scene. Bond killed men with his bare hands (just like Bourne!), he…
Santouri: The Music Man (Iran, 2007)
Banned in Iran, Santouri follows Ali (Bahram Radan), a popular singer-songwriter and player of the santoor (an ancient stringed instrument), as he spirals into heroin addiction and destroys his life and career. Radan gives a gut-wrenching performance as the film’s talented but severely flawed protagonist who loses everything and alienates the people closest to him…
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
A lovely adaptation by British filmmaker Mark Herman (Little Voice) of a novel by Irish author John Boyne, a fable about an 8-year-old German boy, Bruno (Asa Butterfield), whose father, Ralf (David Thewlis), is an ambitious Nazi kommandant. The family relocates from its comfortable Berlin mansion to “the countryside” (actually Poland) after his father is…
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Escape 2 Africa picks up where the other Madagascar left off. The four animals — lion Alex (voiced by Ben Stiller), zebra Marty (Chris Rock), giraffe Melman (David Schwimmer) and hippo Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith), who were raised in captivity and pampered in a New York City zoo all their lives — are still stranded…
Pro-labor Agenda
"What kind of restaurant makes you cook your own food?" asked Bill Murray's character in Lost in Translation. A number of them, come to think of it. Consider participatory meals like fondue, steak on a stone and shabu-shabu, the Japanese delicacy that so perplexed Murray. These festive meals require not only a healthy sense of…
This Week’s New Releases Get Reviewed
Mudvayne The New Game (Epic) They're still weird-looking, just not as much as they used to be. The four members of Mudvayne now look like dudes with overly thought-out facial hair, not aliens or mutants. Similarly, their music isn't as intricate or progressive as it was on 2000's L.D. 50 and their masterpiece, The End…
Walk On The Wild Side
In 1973, a year after Lou Reed reached the Top 20 with "Walk on the Wild Side" – an unlikely pop smash about transvestites, junkies and blowjobs – he followed up his biggest hit with the totally ambitious and kinda pretentious Berlin. The tough, harrowing song cycle about a drugged-out couple deteriorating in the German…
License To Thrill
There was a time when James Bond set the standard for action movies – cool gadgets, fast cars, faster girls, and plenty of shaken and stirred thrills. Then the Cold War-era spy went into outer space, tangled with Octopussy and generally became an immortal superhero who saved the world in one live-action cartoon after another.…
Short Takes
Mockumentary takes on the trials and tribulations of a toilet cleanerIn a Homeland Security/Janet-Jackson's-nipple era where the ninnies and metrosexuals at PBS panicked that Ken Burns' documentary The War would have actual Army guys swearing, the MPAA slapped a mere PG-13 on the Australian import Kenny, despite the dialogue's repetition of the s-word about a…
Around Hear: Pagan Worship
Pagans frontman Mike Hudson will read from his memoir Diary of a Punk at 7 p.m. Wednesday, November 19, at the Rock Hall (1100 Rock and Roll Blvd.). The reading will be followed by a Q&A session and a long-form interview by Rock Hall Education Department Manager Jason Hanley, covering the singer's transition from punk…
Joe The Receiver
The play that most aptly and succinctly defines Joe Jurevicius happened on December 16 last year against Buffalo. The stadium was enveloped in a roaring beast of a snowstorm; another two inches fell during the game. Line markers were covered, leaving the refs to guess the line of scrimmage. Wind chills were in the teens.…
Lined With Silvers
Just in time to give us a thankful Thanksgiving, Beck Center has selected an ideal theatrical frame for Dorothy Silver's effulgent slide show of the human condition. Cleveland's grand dame of theater is sharing her beatific glow these days during the second half of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads 2, an evening of monologues starring societal…
Get Out!
Thursday 11.13 JOSH BLUE Josh Blue has been "rolling like a rock star" ever since he scored the top prize on the fourth season of Last Comic Standing in 2004. For the past seven months, he's been juggling his role as a first-time dad while playing on the U.S. Paralympics soccer team. And when he's…
Accepting Nothing
In his memoir The Circle of Hanh, poet Bruce Weigl wrote that the Vietnam war ruined his life and gave him his voice. But when he reads at the Bertram Woods Branch of the Shaker Heights Public Library, as part of the Poetry Not in the Woods Series, he doesn't plan to read war poems.…
Change? Really?
Former Judge Burt Griffin remains one of the finest jurists to have sat on the bench. His recent essay "A Real Chance for Change" (October 29) seems to miss a trenchant point. A "94-year-old black veteran of World War II"; a former U.S. Ambassador; a reformed addict; and a high school faculty advisor all seem…
Smoking For The Art
For a recent show at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, native Clevelander T.R. Ericsson burned digital photographs into silkscreens and then printed them by placing ashtrays full of smoldering cigarettes beneath the screens, which recreated the image in a sepia nicotine stain on the paper behind it. The process required anywhere from 15 to…
Amps To Eleven
Japanese power trio Borishas captivated hipsters and headbangers alike for several years now. The metal cultists have been onto them since 1996's Absolutego and 1998's Amplifier Worship, while the skinny-jeans set climbed on board the Boris bus with 2003's Akuma No Uta (with its cover art paying tribute to Nick Drake's Bryter Layter) and/or 2006's…
The Mighty Casey Strides Out
Looking back on the eve of its 50th anniversary, Dobama has experienced two major eras during its run as Cleveland's oldest alternative theater. The first was governed by Don Bianchi and his co-founder and wife Marilyn, who died in 1977. Don continued to manage the theater in gradually diminishing fashion into the mid-'80s. During the…
Fast And Furious
It's a pretty safe bet that Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox won't be lining up at Best Buy to snag a copy of Chinese Democracy when Guns N' Roses finally releases its 17-years-in-the-making album in a couple weeks. "I don't understand what bands do in the studio for all those months," says the 26-year-old singer, songwriter…
Open The Doors And See All The People
Photographer Michael Levy – white, middle-class and Jewish – took on the project of documenting the social, emotional and spiritual life of Cleveland's African-American churches following a chance assignment from The Plain Dealer, where he was formerly a staff photographer. It was a project fraught with the danger that it would present the fawning stereotypes…
Les Paul
Mention "Les Paul" to any rock 'n' roller, and it's almost certain he or she'll think of the classic guitar manufactured by Gibson. If you ask them who Les Paul himself is, they're likely to give you a blank look, or mumble that he's some old guy lost in the sands of time. Paul, the…
Money And The Bank
National City Bank shows up quite a bit in arts events around town. Flip through the programs, and you'll see the bank's advertisements almost as frequently as you see them on billboards around town. NCB made a major gift to the Cleveland Museum of Art's expansion and underwrote the current season for Opera Cleveland. It's…
The Bottle Rockets And Hawthorne Heights Lead This Week’s Shows
Good Golly, Miss Holly Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs at the Beachland Tavern, Friday, November 14 Holly Golightly has spent the better part of the past two decades proudly bearing the garage-rock banner, first with all-girl Billy Childish offshoot Thee Headcoatees in the early '90s and then in her subsequent solo career (including 2003's Truly…
The Fabulous Food Show And More
The third installment of the Fabulous Food Show will take over the I-X Center from Friday, November 14, through Sunday, November 16. Food celebs Paula Deen, Guy Fieri, Curtis Stone and Jason Roberts will be on hand to present cooking demos and sign autographs. Homegrown stars Michael Symon, Rocco Whalen and Dante Boccuzzi, among others,…
The Audacity Of Hot
Cleveland can now claim the Sexiest Woman Alive on its list of famous former residents: In its November 2008 issue, Esquire named Halle Berry its Sexiest Woman Alive. The accompanying article, photo spread and cover shot make a convincing case. Aside from the obvious fact that she's totally way hot, it's a bold pick. As…
Person Of Interest
At 2:10 p.m., on October 27, 1989, classes end for the fifth graders of Bay Village Middle. The school doors open, and here comes Amy Mihaljevic, dressed in green pants and a pale green shirt with lavender trim. Her dirty-blonde hair hangs, a little disheveled, over her earrings – turquoise horse heads, mounted on gold…
Totally Michael
A goofy musician hailing from Indiana, Totally Michael has spent the past few years finding a balance between well-crafted tunes and performance-based humor, playing shows in just about any bar, basement or club that would have him. He considers himself more of an MC who sometimes plays guitar, but he's generating something wholly different with…
Person Of Interest
At 2:10 p.m., on October 27, 1989, classes end for the fifth graders of Bay Village Middle. The school doors open, and here comes Amy Mihaljevic, dressed in green pants and a pale green shirt with lavender trim. Her dirty-blonde hair hangs, a little disheveled, over her earrings – turquoise horse heads, mounted on gold…
Culture Jamming: Knight Shift
TOP PICK Batman: The Brave and the Bold (Cartoon Network) It's been a great year for the Caped Crusader: First, he pulverized every superhero movie ever made with The Dark Knight, then he starred in one of the year's best videogames (Lego Batman) and now he's got a brand-new animated TV show. The weekly series…
