Brother Grim
Why would an internationally acclaimed artist make a pilgrimage to Germany’s Black Forest? Viennese psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim, in a famous book called The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, sets forth one possibility. “Since ancient times,” Bettelheim writes, “the near impenetrable forest in which we get lost has symbolized the dark,…
Encore
Seascape. Fights have been breaking out on street corners about the relative merits of Edward Albee’s Seascape, currently playing at the Cleveland Play House. You are urged to get your keisters over there to find out for yourselves. Some defend it as dramatic caviar, others scornfully denounce it as an overripe anchovy. This theatrical bone…
Grace Under Pressure
Café Grace, Cyndie Bender’s Chagrin Falls dining spot, is clearly a work-in-progress. Unfortunately, the progress is slow and, even after a much-needed shake-up in the kitchen in October, food preparation has a number of notable rough spots, and service continues to be remarkably amateurish. That’s surprising, too, since Bender apparently knows something about the world…
Side Dish
Just as soon as the turkey leftovers are packed away, it will be back to the kitchen for bakers Mike and Elizabeth Vernon. The Akron couple own and operate Biddie’s Bakery, a mail-order gourmet cookie company on Baird Street, and the upcoming Christmas holiday is their busiest season. No wonder, with the delicious and beautifully…
Homeward Bounds
It’s the eve of Hefner’s first U.S. tour, and bassist John Morrison, just back from a recent European tour, is focused on the little details that go into preparing for an overseas venture. “I’ve got lots of washing to do,” he says via phone from his home in London. “Fortunately, my girlfriend is really kind.…
Home Is Where the Art Is
Not all big city art dealers are out to make a buck — some are out to make a difference. At least that’s what Bernice Steinbaum, owner of one of New York City’s best known contemporary art galleries, hopes to do with the newly opened Here Here Gallery, a nonprofit venture on a mission for…
Detroit’s Funk Soul Brother
Jazz is a word being thrown around techno circles, primarily as a way of defending the merits of the form to incredulous critics. For sneering rockists who dismiss techno as either disposable Muzak or numbingly abstract because of its largely instrumental nature and failure to revolve around easily digestible pop hooks, the example of jazz…
Jingeling Bells
For a lot of local baby boomers, the countdown to Christmas began with Mr. Jingeling’s ting-a-ling tune. Mr. Jingeling’s jingle lingers for countless Clevelanders, whose minds will, inexplicably and without provocation, erupt into the refrain: “On Halle’s seventh floor/We’ll be looking for/You to turn the key.” As all true believers know, Mr. Jingeling was Santa’s…
Deconstructing Punk
In Roger Sabin’s Punk Rock: So What? The Cultural Legacy of Punk — a scholarly reassessment of the punk movement, which includes extensive end-of-chapter notes sometimes as revealing as the text itself — a varied group of writers and lecturers explore the wider phenomenon of punk. They go beyond its manifestation as a musical force…
Christ on a Crutch
The last time Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in an apocalypse-themed action movie with a Guns N’ Roses theme song was in Terminator 2, the biggest and loudest action movie that had thus far ever been seen. Since that time, he’s produced one bona fide balls-to-the-wall action flick (True Lies), one pale imitation (Eraser), and a parade…
Livewire
Chris Cornell Odeon November 18 Chris Cornell’s transition from Soundgarden frontman to solo artist isn’t going as planned. We were supposed to understand Cornell’s digression from his former band as some sort of maturation. In return, the talented singer was supposed to deliver a convincing argument for going solo in the form of a powerful…
See How They Run
How do you make a sequel to a nearly perfect film? Toy Story, the 1995 hit from Disney and Pixar, was not only the first fully computer-animated feature; it was also as brilliantly written and directed a film as any of the classic Disney releases. Pixar did nearly everything right — from story, dialogue, and…
Playback
Beck Midnite Vultures (DGC/Geffen) On his giddy new album Midnite Vultures, Beck summons the funky spirit of Prince and parties up with himself like it’s 1981. Not only does he “cold step” to a J.C. Penney employee with “a fresh pack of gum” in the falsetto-soaring slo-groove “Debra,” he also serenades her with the Princely…
Journey Into Darkness
Be forewarned: In the continuing quest to get people to pay attention to their films by any means necessary, the marketing wizards at Artisan Entertainment have been misrepresenting Felicia’s Journey to an even greater extent than they did The Minus Man. No doubt hoping to attract a young male demographic, Artisan has been running an…
Soundbites
If there’s one guy who deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and isn’t, it’s Johnnie Johnson. The pianist, famous for co-authoring Chuck Berry songs such as “Maybellene,” “Back in the U.S.A.,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” and “Rock & Roll Music,” has been nominated but not elected to the Rock Hall. Biographer…
French Miss
Roundly criticized when it was first released in France back in 1991 — less on artistic grounds than for what the French viewed as director Leos Carax’s unbridled egoism (egregious even by French standards) and profligate attitude toward other people’s money — The Lovers on the Bridge (Les Amants du Pont Neuf) in recent years…
Dueling Jocks
Craig Callander slouches in Rocky River’s Courtroom #2, crammed into a wooden chair too small for his giant six-foot-four, 270-pound frame. Despite his commanding physical presence, framed by a boxy black coat, his radio alter ego — Sweetass Sassafras — remains invisible. In this crowded courtroom, Callander’s personality is reduced to whispers between him and…
Redeemed!
Kooks. Zealots. Terrorists. Patriots. Sovereign Citizens. Defenders of the Faith. They’re out there. Well, out there, anyway. Living on the dun landscapes of the plains states or Godforsaken places like eastern Montana, where people get suspicious if you’re not carrying a gun. It was in Montana that the Feds had to wait around for 81…
Edge
Heartbreaker! It was an awkward and emotional scene at the Free Times Friday afternoon, as Randy Siegel cleaned out his desk after six years at the helm of the paper founded by his father, Richard. The staff surprised him with flowers and a card, forcing Siegel to make a platitudinous farewell speech instead of a…
Livin’ La Vida Polka
In this era of all-night raves and metallic pants, polka hedonism is grossly underrated. Like any other under the colored lights, the polka lifestyle can be vital and variegated, glamorous and grueling. “We eat, drink, dance, and make love,” 82-year-old Eddie Basiewicz says of polka trips taken with his girlfriend, Patty Baker. A favorite spot…
Hell of a Noel
Marisol, an incoherent horror show by Jose Rivera, is enveloping Cleveland Public Theatre like a great noxious fart. This satanic flea circus is laboring under the delusion that it is Christmas entertainment. It is a work solely for the palates of misanthropes, sadists, and connoisseurs of Japanese animation. For anyone else, it has the potential…
