Rocknrolla
The convulsively entertaining RocknRolla is Guy Ritchie’s strongest outing to date, even if it is just another of his trademark boys-with-guns gangster flicks. Narrative cohesion has never been Ritchie’s strong suit, and it takes about a half-hour to realize that the film’s shaggy-dog story doesn’t make a lick of sense. What truly matters are the…
Saw V
The Saw movies started coming out around the same time as the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Now both are looking to be pretty losing propositions. With Saw V, even the gorehound viewers will have to admit that the blades are looking pretty dull. The serial killer Jigsaw (Tobin Bell in flashbacks) actually died a few…
What Just Happened
Barry Levinson directed this breezy satirical comedy about Hollywood, based on veteran movie producer Art Linson’s memoir What Just Happened: Bitter Tales From the Hollywood Front Line. In it, Robert De Niro stars as Ben, an aging producer struggling to hold onto his A-list ranking while dealing with multiple personal and professional headaches. Ben’s newest…
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Roommates and BFFs Zack (Judd Apatow mascot Seth Rogen, sporting enough unbecoming facial hair to make him resemble a Sasquatch monster) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks in an unintentionally amusing segue from her recent stint as Laura Bush in W.) are so cash-strapped they can’t afford to pay their rent or utility bills. Director Kevin Smith…
Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (US, 2008)
Evidently your hep-cat pose in New York City art and music circles will deflate if you blank on the name “Arthur Russell.” The quiet, thoughtful Iowa-born fellow was a skilled cellist who fled the cornfields for the boho climes of San Francisco, New York City and the “Kitchen” experimental/avant-garde scene of the 1960s an ’70s.…
Klimt (Austria/France/Germany/Britain, 2006)
John Malkovich sneers, mumbles and sleepwalks his way through a pretentious, incoherent, historically fallacious fantasia on the life of Gustav Klimt, the Viennese symbolist painter of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose erotically charged images helped define the art nouveau style — and whose famous painting “The Kiss” has adorned many dorm-room walls.…
The Haunting of Molly Hartley
While the trailer for this movie makes it look something like The Exorcism of Emily Rose, it’s really just another half-baked horror film. The story revolves around 17-year-old Molly (Haley Bennett), a troubled teen who hopes to make a fresh start at a new school. But she suffers from delusions as she’s constantly haunted by…
Soul Men
Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac play Louis Hinds and Floyd Henderson, a couple of retired soul singers inspired to make a comeback when their partner Marcus Hooks (John Legend) dies. The plot is pretty conventional as Louis and Floyd take a road trip from Los Angeles to the Apollo in New York,…
Kung Fu Panda
As Po Ping, a portly, kung fu-loving panda bear, Jack Black gives his freshest, funniest comic performance since his breakout role in Richard Linklater’s The School of Rock. Fortunately, this CGI ’toon from DreamWorks Animation factory has several things going for it besides Black’s rambunctiously funny vocal turn. Directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne have…
Get Out!
Wednesday 10.29 SEINFELD CAMPUS TOUR The suits at Sony Pictures Television think sitcom fans can't get enough of puffy shirts, Junior Mints and Estelle Costanza dolls. That's why they're rolling out the Seinfeld Campus Tour bus, a 60-foot-long museum-on-wheels that comes to Case Western Reserve University today. Not that there's anything wrong with that. "People…
Secret Machines, Paul Rodgers, Illa J, And Moore Get Graded
Queen & Paul Rodgers The Cosmos Rocks (Hollywood) The superstar collaboration has long been a rock staple, with varying degrees of success. When the combinations work, egos are checked at the door and the participants' talents click to create a new entity. In less-than-successful circumstances, marquee personalities either clash like plaids and polka dots or…
Mushroomhead Leads This Week’s Concert Picks
A Headbanger's Halloween Mushroomhead at the Agora Theater, Friday, October 31 Mushroomhead's annual Halloween show arrives just in time for a new memento for the occasion: The Mushroomhead Volume II DVD. Featuring two-and-a-half hours of footage, the disc ends where 2005's Volume I left off. Most of the clips document the latest Mushroomhead album, 2006's…
A Real Chance For Change
A tear welled up in the eye of my friend, James Calgie, as we had lunch together last week. "What does it mean if Barack Obama is elected?" I had asked him. "It means that a black mother can truthfully tell her child, 'You can be anything you want to be,'" said the 94-year-old black…
Around Hear: Ticket For The Next Level
The New Music Seminar will bring music-industry executives and representatives from 15 major labels to Cleveland on Saturday, November 1. Power brokers from labels (G-Unit) and festivals (Warped Tour) will speak and greet local musicians at the Crowne Plaza (777 St. Clair Ave.). "The Midwest is a place that's untapped," says festival organizer Carlos "Tone…
Teenage Wasteland
When the guys in the Academy Is … decided to name their third album Fast Times at Barrington High, they were referring to the collective nostalgia for their blurry high-school days. It really had nothing to do with unleashing their inner Spicolis. "The past just disappeared from my mind," says bassist Adam Siska. "That can…
Stuck Inside Of Mobile
We're told at the beginning of The Order of Myths that Mobile, Alabama, celebrated the first Mardi Gras in the United States in 1703 – 15 years before New Orleans was even a city. Last year, Margaret Brown and a film crew set out to document Mobile's annual Mardi Gras celebration and discovered that things…
Local Arts News
The directors of arts organizations meeting with Cleveland Foundation arts program officer Kathleen Cerveny should remember to congratulate her on her victory in the recent Haiku Death Match, presented last week by Heights Arts as part of its Joy of Text festival. Cerveny came out on top against six other competitors. In the final round,…
Culture Jamming: Hoop Dreams
TOP PICK NBA 2K9 (2K Sports) Our favorite videogame hoops series (for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) celebrates its 10th anniversary with its best outing yet. A new Shot Stick feature lets you change shots mid-air, and single-player opponents now adapt more readily to your style and strategy. And the five-on-five online multiplayer is…
Not Over Yet
The collapse of American finance capitalism, being an event beyond the control of Karl Rove and the Republican apparatus, may well be the decisive factor in electing Barack Obama president. Or so say the pundits. That analysis, however, underestimates the risks that lie ahead this final week before the election and the qualities of Obama's…
A Formula For Fun
Ten years ago, America's kids were being spoon-fed prefab music by Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys – in other words, fluffy, ephemeral stuff without roots or history. It didn't seem like a propitious time, but that was the year Kevin Richards, head of Cleveland Heights' Fairmount School of Music, launched Roots of American Music…
He’s Still The One
Nixon's Nixon, now onstage at Actors' Summit in Hudson, was first produced in 1995 – 20 years after the events that toppled the Nixon administration. Playwright Russell Lees speculates Nixon's final meeting with Kissinger on the night before he resigned. Given the number of imatators who have declaimed with arms on high that "you won't…
By Any Other Name
"Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose," famously chanted Gertrude Stein in her 1913 poem "Sacred Emily." Elsewhere, Stein explained that she liked simplicity, "but simplicity produced by complication." She could have been talking about so-called camera-less photography, especially as it begins to be practiced now in the digital age. Practitioners of…
Shoe Fetish
On Sunday afternoon, Nike and Next hosted the LeBron James Block Party in North Randall to celebrate the release of the limited-edition Nike Zoom LeBron VI sneakers. One hundred pairs were available – 25 each of the four designs – which were fashioned after characters from the "LeBrons" commercials. The event was originally scheduled for…
Amy Ray
As half of the folk duo the Indigo Girls, singer-guitarist Amy Ray has pretty much done and seen everything a pop star can imagine. She was on a major label for a good chunk of her career and had a couple of hits that charted. So perhaps that's what fuels her punk-inspired solo career, which…
A Make-or-Break Year: Scene’s Endorsements
President Even if you've only recently tuned in to the presidential campaign, you've probably heard that one of the candidates has been less than honest about his religious beliefs. That he was raised in one tradition but now wants everyone to believe that he's deeply committed to another, apparently to make himself more electable. Turns…
Marc Broussard
In spiritual terms, it can be agreed that everyone has a soul. In musical terms, having soul isn’t so universal. Soul might be relatively intangible as a physical property, but it doesn’t require an inordinate amount of listening time to determine if an artist has it. On their worst days, under the most challenging circumstances,…
How A Bill Becomes A Law (maker)
Overcast skies hang stagnant over Chagrin Falls, contrasting with the festive scene outside the old Town Hall. Red, white and blue bunting droops from the walls. A quartet of middle-aged women stands on the steps, singing patriotic songs in four-part harmony. Cardboard cutouts of President Bill and Senator Hillary Clinton greet visitors. Only the red…
A Hollywooden Life
In the oily waters of books about film, Cleveland native Scott Eyman has earned a reputation as a writer of intelligence, perception, knowledge and accuracy. Over nine books about such titans of moviemaking as Ernst Lubitsch, John Ford and Louis B. Mayer, he's demonstrated that he not only gets his facts and people straight, but…
For Those About To Rock
How many years has it been since AC/DC's last album? Five? Ten? Twenty-five? Does it really matter? As long as there are kids getting high in their Camaros on Friday night and strippers twirling their ta-tas for lunchtime buffet feasters, there'll be AC/DC. The perpetually youthful Australians will still be around after the rest of…
Staging Area
With Macbeth at the Hanna, A Chorus Line at the Palace and Robert Dubac's Male Intellect playing at the 14th Street Theatre, PlayhouseSquare was positively jumping on a recent Friday night. And it appeared that everybody was having their pre-show supper at Bricco. Most restaurants look better full than empty. Many function better too. That…
Local Foodie News
Ha-Ahn (3030 Superior Ave., 216.664.1152), a Korean café, has opened inside the Golden Plaza. Located in the old Golden Bakery spot, across the hall from Superior Pho, the seven-table eatery serves traditional Korean-style dishes and a few Japanese ones as well. Despite the modest setting, Ha-Ahn starts diners off with an array of house-made banchan,…
Capsule Reviews
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Germany, 1926) – A Middle Eastern prince battles with an evil sorcerer in this, the first feature-length animated film. Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, November 5. Appaloosa – A decent enough western in the old-school tradition, Appaloosa reunites Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen for the…
No Nude Tale To Tell
With his embarrassing, shot-in-Pittsburgh romantic comedy Zack and Miri Make a Porno, former Sundance whiz kid Kevin Smith officially becomes culturally irrelevant. Like John Waters, whose shock-at-all-costs modus operandi became depressingly passé once gross-out comedy went mainstream with the Farrelly Brothers (you just know Waters is still kicking himself for not thinking of the Farrellys'…
Little Box, The Day Of The Dead, And Bang And Clatter
A REGULAR PTA MEETING Pretentious Tremont Artists draw the crowd at the Literary, Friday, October 31 Timothy Herron is president of the PTA, and Brian Pierce is vice president. They conduct their regular business meetings at 9 p.m. every Friday at the Literary Café in Tremont (1031 Literary Rd.). The business: a drawing salon, open…
The Democratic Process
With the election just days away, here's a book about how democracy really works. In How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative, Allen Raymond, formerly employed by the Republican National Committee, tells the story of how power corrupts, absolutely. He should know; he served prison time for his role in the phone-jamming…
Ghost Town
The following is excerpted from Cleveland Ghosts, by Charles Cassady Jr., from Schiffer Publishing, schifferbooks.com. Though an appetite for horror films and pulp-gothic fiction has always been strong here, the paranormal and Cleveland would seem an unlikely pairing. This was a pragmatic manufacturing town. A city of shop floors and second shifts and third shifts.…
Rags And Riches
The old adage says that the clothes make the man. It's as practical and self-evident as advice gets. Don't wear a jumpsuit to a wedding unless Britney Spears is involved. If you're going on a date, bypass the tattered T-shirt and sweatpants for something clean and slick. Simply: Dress to impress. What the adage doesn't…
Short Reviews Of Current Releases
A Motley Crew Colorful criminal lowlifes animate Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla Maybe the career obits written for British bad boy – and former Madonna hubby – Guy Ritchie were a tad premature. After the twin debacles of Revolver and Swept Away, it was easy to dismiss the writer-director of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and…
Local Disc Reviews
Roy King Trios (self-released) Recorded at Painesville's Suma Recording, this album by Kent State grad Roy King is an eloquent affair that showcases not only his drumming abilities but also the skills of guest pianists Joe Hunter, Dan Maier and Leo Coach. That comes across clearly on the first track, "Lullaby of the Leaves," which…
