Swiss Cheese
Poor old MGM — the once-golden studio that has been battered and abused by ever-changing ownership and management for nearly three decades now — still has one sure-shot franchise among its assets: the James Bond series, whose longevity is astounding. If nothing else, the series’ overseas popularity keeps the films profitable, even when their domestic…
Roamin’ Centurion
A tangible sense of sadness and longing hangs over The Legend of 1900, the mesmerizingly beautiful and poetic new film from Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore, best known in the United States for his Academy Award-winning Cinema Paradiso. Based on a dramatic monologue by contemporary Italian novelist Alessandro Baricco but filmed in English (a first for…
E-Wreck
As Keith Eckmeyer recalls it, the whole thing started with an experiment. “My buddy called the county and asked 10 questions,” says the 42-year-old Kent resident. “Then I called and asked the same 10 questions. We got totally different answers.” That was four years ago. Since then there have been civic resolutions, community meetings, public…
Brain Lock
A blustery wind whips the year’s first snowfall down East 22nd Street, over the cars zipping down I-90, into puddles filled with decaying leaves and icy water. It’s that wet, bone-chilling November cold mothers warn about: the kind that leaves clothes soaked and gives birth to pneumonia. But the inside of Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court…
Edge
Be true to your school! South High students Timothy and Tabatha Braddock, who were suspended but not charged in the wake of the make-believe massacre, are refusing their reassignment to a new school. The Braddocks got letters over the weekend notifying them they’ve been “involuntarily transferred” to a school in Maple Heights, according to lawyer…
Vegetable Matters
Though it technically could be considered a manly retreat, the Carrot Room is not exactly dude central. An inflatable bunny reclines on the couch, carrot-side down, while a puppet brandishes a root vegetable. Twinkling orange lights recall the dewy ambiance of Mr. McGregor’s garden patch. “I don’t spend too much time here,” says Jeff Chiplis,…
The Party’s Over
Picture one of the richly laid banquet tables in a 17th-century Dutch still life, with its abundant cheeses, olives, oysters, and melons. Now imagine photographs that show what is left after the banquet is over. There is a half-empty coffee cup. A half-dozen glistening grapes on an otherwise empty plate. A single uneaten melon with…
Top of the Morning
The only thing missing from Ensemble Theatre’s glowing production of Morning’s at Seven is some sort of memento: perhaps a barker hawking pennants, proclaiming the event the World Series of Acting. On two genteelly dilapidated porches, the cast, in its small-town Depression finery, calls up a lost world once chronicled on Saturday Evening Post covers.…
Signs of Promise
Okay, I admit it. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to my dinner at MacLaren’s Cuisine. A lunch visit in early September had left me unimpressed. Relatively large price tags on dishes that seemed oddly conceived and haphazardly executed, accompanied by uninspired breads and desserts from commercial bakeries, served by an inexperienced and uninterested waitstaff, gave…
Side Dish
With Landry’s Seafood Restaurants Inc. of Houston pulling the plug on its Landry’s Seafood House in the Flats, the national chain will replace the relatively sedate eatery with a Joe’s Crab Shack, a more casual concept that the company says is “better suited” to the location. Company PR materials politely describe Joe’s atmosphere as “energetic,…
Backward Rhythms
As the name of its latest release, the double-CD Revés/Yo Soy (Backwards/I Am), suggests, Café Tacuba likes to play with words in the same way it likes to play with the different popular musical styles of Mexico and the rest of Latin America. Revés, the first of the two discs, is a tweaked, all-instrumental collection…
Counting Blessings
Misery loves company, and for the past five years, fans of the Counting Crows, specifically lead singer Adam Duritz, have had plenty with which to commiserate. Duritz continually writes about lost relationships, identity crises, and an uncertain future — just the kinds of things that sell records. In addition, Duritz possesses the appeal of an…
Sex Machine
Andre Williams adapts. If he’s working a Chicago blues club, he’ll do tunes from his salad days in Detroit. If he plays the Knitting Factory in New York, he’ll mix country and blues, as he has all these years. And if the club is superfunky, he’ll do the dirty material. Always a pro, he says…
Mission: Poetic
Friday nights don’t have to be filled with loud music, noisy people, and a futile search for intelligent life in a smoky bar. Which is why local poet Vince Robinson formed 3rd Friday Soul Poetry @ Another Level, a monthly gathering of words and music at the non-alcoholic, smoke-free club/coffee bar. “This was just something…
Livewire
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Gund Arena November 14 When Bruce Springsteen dismissed the E Street Band at the end of the ’80s, die-hard fans felt betrayed. One of rock’s most successful franchises had been dismantled, and Springsteen’s solo albums and scaled-down tours failed to generate the same kind of frenzy as his…
French Toasting
Strongsville has a history. Really, it does. And for the past few years, it’s been celebrated in a series of melodramas centered on a holiday feast at Don’s Pomeroy House. The Pomeroys were among the early settlers in the area, and their tale has been recounted in a continuing saga that unfolds around a table…
Playback
Marilyn Manson The Last Tour on Earth (Nothing/Interscope) God Is in the T.V. (Nothing/Interscope) There isn’t really much point in releasing a live Marilyn Manson album. Sure, the freak puts on a great show, but it’s got little to do with the music. Manson’s live performances are thrilling because of the visuals — the singer…
The Feckless Horseman
“The spectre is known at all the country firesides by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow,” writes Washington Irving in his original fantasy. Thanks in large part to the silly, watered-down fun of the animated Disney version, the Horseman and his victim, the gangling and gallant Ichabod Crane, have firmly lodged themselves…
Soundbites
Pleasure Void will celebrate the release of its new album, a five-song EP, with a show on November 20 at Blind Lemon (11729 Detroit Avenue, Lakewood). Cincinnati’s Fairmount Girls and Cleveland’s Secret Servix will open the concert. Pleasure Void (no relation to Pleasure Zone, the cheesy soft-porn flick Cinemax shows every Friday night) originally formed…
