Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
This documentary about political advisor Lee Atwater shows the extent to which Republicans have become a “stealth party,” as one pundit puts it, advocating on behalf of the common man and giving him nothing in return. Atwater, who influenced the nefarious tactics of Karl Rove and got the first Bad Bush into office, was the…
Body of Lies
The web of deceit in this taut political thriller tangles more than the CIA agent played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Everyone in the movie, all the way down to DiCaprio’s seemingly throwaway love interest, is keeping secrets. All the double-crosses, lies and cagey spy stuff ultimately boil down to: Who’s screwing whom? DiCaprio’s Roger Ferris is…
The Duchess
There are a lot of reasons to like this historical biography starring Keira Knightley as Georgiana Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire (1757-1806), an ancestor of Princess Diana. One of them has nothing to do with the movie itself: Knightley, whose modest bustline is highlighted by the movie’s tightly corseted costumes, protested the studio’s plan to…
The Express
The Express isn’t just another sports movie. While it’s ostensibly about the career of Ernie Davis (Rob Brown), the first black athlete to win the Heisman Trophy, and how his career was tragically cut short, it’s about much more than that. The film stars Dennis Quaid as Ben Schwartzwalder, a former American soldier who took…
Momma’s Man
When thirtysomething Mikey (Matt Boren) curls up in his bed in Momma’s Man, it’s like he’s returning to the womb. Since Mikey has just cancelled his return flight to L.A., where his wife and infant daughter await him, it’s a safe bet that retreating into the cocoon is what his extended visit with Mom and…
Quarantine
Quarantine is a remake of a Spanish film ([Rec]) that was itself influenced by the documentary style of The Blair Witch Project and the basic premise of 28 Days Later. A TV news crew tags along with the fire department on a routine call to help a sick old lady in an apartment building. Turns…
Here And Loathing
We Clevelanders are like the awkward teens at the dance, completely convinced that every other city is prettier, more popular and completely blemish-free. We walk into the room – any room – certain that someone is going to spot our inadequacies. So in an effort to lessen any potential blow to our egos, we apologize…
Arts News
The Bang and the Clatter Theatre's Akron chapter, A Shot Rings Out, has found yet another new home at 29 North High St., in the building that houses Mocha Maiden and the concert venue Musica. Co-director Sean Derry describes it as "old storage space," slightly smaller than previous locations, but adds, "We like the area,…
Chasin’ Mason
Annette Butler is running for Cuyahoga County prosecutor. If this is news to you, don't blame yourself. The Plain Dealer hasn't written about her. You haven't seen much in the way of campaign literature or yard signs because Butler can't afford them; she's raised about 1 percent of the amount that her opponent, Democratic incumbent…
Sisters Of Mercy
TORONTO – As one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood, 14-year-old Dakota Fanning usually gets what she wants. So when she decided she wanted to portray Lily Owens in the film version of Sue Monk Kidd's award-winning novel, The Secret Life of Bees, it wasn't like anyone was about to tell her no. And…
Your Complete Concert Listings
THIS JUST IN Aziz Ansari: Sat., Nov. 22. 10 p.m., $15. Grog Shop. Bang Camaro/Hot Rails: Fri, Dec. 12. 9 p.m., $12. Grog Shop. Gene Bertoncini Trio: Thu., Nov. 13: 8 p.m., $15. Nighttown. The Bottle Rockets/Terry Anderson & the Olympic Ass Kickin' Team: Sat., Nov. 15. 8 p.m., $15. Beachland Tavern. Harry Connick, Jr.:…
Stigma? We Can Only Hope
Cleveland Scene was shut out of the first half of Pat O'Malley's sentencing last Friday, along with Cleveland Magazine, because, for the first time in recent history, court proceedings actually started on time. At 9:01 a.m., as Judge David Dowd entered his courtroom at the Akron federal building, a U.S. Marshall said we were too…
Dr. Philly Tales
As a card-carrying Sondheimite, I've struggled with my Into the Woods ambivalence ever since Bernadette Peters magnificently cutsied her way through the 1987 Broadway original. Working out this dilemma by way of many analyzed dream sequences, I concluded that I needed to face my fairy tales straight up, with simple embellishments – such as a…
Weekly Dining News
I wove through a platoon of protesters (alleging use of non-union labor and health-code violations) to take a gander at the just-opened Cadillac Ranch (200 Euclid Ave., 216.685.0000, cadillacranchhome.com). My first impression of the sprawling restaurant and bar is that it looks like Hard Rock Café with a mechanical bull. Sporting a pick-up-truck-chic decor, the…
Baseball Has Been Good To Me
One of the advantages of being a Cleveland fan living far from Cleveland is that I don't have to feign a level of interest in the Browns that they don't deserve. I've always been a baseball guy. My father was a baseball guy, and my son is a baseball guy. Baseball is like that. Football,…
A Gridiron Guy
Dennis Quaid doesn't look particularly imposing. The guy's relatively short and thin and, dressed smartly in a black suit, looks more cosmopolitan (and even metrosexual) than rough-and-tumble. And yet, he's often cast in sports movies where he gets to play the hard-ass coach who barks orders at his players like some kind of drill sergeant.…
Your Weekly New Release Round-up
Ray LaMontagne Gossip in the Grain (RCA) Over the past four years, Ray LaMontagne has crafted some of the saddest, most beautiful music out there. His voice can be gentle and subdued, but at times it's so pain-ridden that it can bring tears to your eyes. Not a fame-seeker, LaMontagne would rather perform in the…
News From The Arts World
It's become tradition in the non-profit arts world that when longtime leaders step down, their jobs are split in two. The nature of the business seems to compel people to perform above and beyond the call of duty, at least in terms of time spent and money earned. That's certainly the case with Joyce Casey,…
Thai-ed And True
A taciturn, buttoned-down professional type checks into a beachside hotel out of season and falls in love – slowly, hesitantly – with the beautiful, if lonely, woman who works there. Everything is sunshine and lollipops until tragedy intercedes. Sound familiar? That's the same basic set-up of Nights in Rodanthe, the latest Nicholas Sparks tearjerker currently…
Mogwai, Jolie Holland, And Cold War Kids Lead This Week’s New Releases
Mogwai The Hawk Is Howling (Matador) Post-Young Team, Mogwai has become easier to take for granted. These Scottish lads are so painfully great at what they do – insinuating various musical styles into their serpentine, instrumental drift and roar – that every successive record fails to move the bar any higher. Mogwai effortlessly compresses creeping…
Your Complete Concert Calendar
THIS JUST IN A Celebration for a Change: An Evening Of Music for the Obama Campaign: Tue., Oct. 28. No cover. Featuring Wallace Coleman, Tommy Wiggins' Crooked River Groove Allstars, Brand New Hat, Natural Facts, Blue Lunch, Crazy Marvin, Wallace Coleman Blues Revue with Kevin Okey, John Lucic, Chip Fitzgerald, Rockin' Robin, George Lee, Mark…
Flatlanders
There's no escape. In Plato's cave or Plato's closet, contemporary minds don the hand-me-downs of their global culture one leg at a time. You are what you see and what you hear every day, everywhere, stitched across your butt and montaged over the doors of perception. "Pop" artists in the late 1950s were among the…
Thai-ed And True
A taciturn, buttoned-down professional type checks into a beachside hotel out of season and falls in love – slowly, hesitantly – with the beautiful, if lonely, woman who works there. Everything is sunshine and lollipops until tragedy intercedes. Sound familiar? That's the same basic set-up of Nights in Rodanthe, the latest Nicholas Sparks tearjerker currently…
A Bloody Good Show
Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore will make you laugh – even when you think you shouldn't. It will also make you turn away, as scenes of carnage are enacted just a few feet away in the Bang and the Clatter's intimate Sometimes in the Silence theater. It's no more real than Godzilla battling Mothra,…
Driving Force
If you didn't know any better, you might mistake Family Force 5 for a gimmick group. After all, the Atlanta quintet melds rock, hip-hop, punk and club music for something it calls "crunk rock." Its singer's name is Soul Glow Activator. And costumes, props and lavish sets are essential to the band's live show. But…
Get Out!
Thursday 10.9 TEAM LUNGEVITY Four siblings and a family friend form tonight's Team Lungevity, which will pour shots, shake martinis and tap draft beer to make some cash for lung-cancer research. Just don't ask team captain Jennifer Christie to make you anything from too far back in the day. "My mom ordered a Harvey Wallbanger…
Not A Sure Thing
I was wondering when the remorseless wheels of the remake mill were going to grind up The Sure Thing, Rob Reiner's well-remembered rutting-teen-comedy-with-a-brain starring John Cusack as the youth going cross-country to rendezvous with a sexy golden girl; would he or wouldn't he figure out that the demure brunette accompanying him was his soul mate…
Alejandro Escovedo
Veteran Austin-based singer-guitarist Alejandro Escovedo has persevered through three decades of rough-and-tumble rock 'n' roll and lived to make an album about it. He's seen his ballyhooed punk / garage bands the Nuns, Rank and File, and the True Believers come and go. He's also eluded death after a really bad bout with hepatitis. All…
Taj Mahal
For some, it may be hard to believe that Taj Mahal's new album, Maestro, celebrates the blues legend's 40th year of recording. For me, it's hard to believe that it's been only 40 years. My initial exposures to Taj Mahal as a teen – first on a Columbia compilation called Superock, then on late night…
We Are Demo
It's the ultimate Akron-bands concert, and it's a benefit for the Democrats: Devo and the Black Keys will play a rally for the Summit County Democratic Party at the Rubber City's Civic Theatre this Friday, October 17. "The last couple elections, we were living in California, and you're around all these people that thought Al…
American Woman
Lucinda Williams' country – both the land where she lives and her general music genre — is populated by losers, cheaters, drunks, junkies and a bunch of folks who checked out a long time ago. There's a timeless and dusty quality to her songs, going all the way back to 1988's Lucinda Williams, a blues-folk…
Raw Power
Back in the late '70s, the Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde offered herself as a tough-as-nails female role model and effectively changed the course of punk/new wave going forward into the '80s. Blending the visceral hyperactive crunch of punk, the pop melodicism of new wave and a galloping roots rhythm, Hynde and the Pretenders found a winning…
Derf’s Got A Book!
Derf's new graphic novel, Punk Rock & Trailer Parks, is set in Akron in 1979, when the Rust Belt city suddenly found itself on the cutting edge of the music scene. Derf has two appearances and book-signings coming up this weekend. From 6-8 p.m. Friday, October 17 (before the Devo concert), he'll be at Square…
Rippin’
"I've never been so busy in my life," says Tim "Ripper" Owens, on the phone from Texas, where he's warming up for his first U.S. tour since his controversial split with Iced Earth late last year. Owens is juggling three bands these days. He's now on tour with guitar god Yngwie Malmsteen. Owens sings on…
Nick Lowe
Veteran singer-songwriter Nick Lowe can truly say he's been there. The guy started playing pub rock in the U.K. in the '70s and was a co-founder of Stiff Records, working with many of the label's punk bands. Now, the creator of hits like "Cruel to Be Kind" and "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and…
Documentary Theater
In the last days of July and the first days of August 2005, Ohio was mourning the deaths in Iraq of 22 soldiers from our state. Around the same time, actor and writer Michael Tisdale came home to Cleveland from New York to be with his family after the death of his father. While he…
Safety In Numbers
In less than a year, the Parma-based Jigsaw Entertainment Group has become one of the largest players in the Cleveland music scene. The group controls four clubs, one in every major sector of the city: the Jigsaw Saloon, Peabody's, the Hi-Fi and, as of October 1, the Agora. The company will fund expansions and a…
Size Matters
I am writing late to thank Cleveland Scene and staff writer Dan Harkins for the great piece on Cleveland Council reduction ("Cuts Like A Knife: Cleveland Council 'right-sizes' for the suburban business elite," September 10). Recently all of us in Cleveland got a taxpayer-funded campaign mailing from Council President Martin J. Sweeney explaining the six…
Capsule Reviews Of Current Releases
Appaloosa – A decent enough western in the old-school tradition, Appaloosa reunites Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen for the first time since 2005's A History of Violence. This time, Harris and Mortensen play hired Wild West lawmen instead of mobster adversaries. Their relaxed, easygoing camaraderie is the best thing in Appaloosa, giving it the timeless…
Sound Advice
Like the past few years, 2008 is shaping up as more of the same for music fans. There was something to get excited about early, with the January release of Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut, a strong contender for Album of the Year released at the halfway point – My Morning Jacket's Evil Urges in June…
Super Natural
In the mid-1950s, sculptor Richard Hunt's strongly symbolic, deeply physical, sensuous manner was recognized as an original and important voice on the national scene. Categorized with artists like Helen Frankenthaler and Cy Twombly as a "second generation" abstract expressionist, Hunt's roughly cascading, winding, dancing forms connect with fundamental psychological and natural conditions. Balanced as if…
It’s Tribe Time? Really?
This is the first in a series of previews looking at the 2009 Indians. In each installment, I'll chat with a Tribe writer/blogger. Today's guest: Steve Buffum, who contributes a regular column to TheClevelandFan.com. VG: Culprit numero uno in the Tribe's summertime malaise was the bullpen. Who solidified themselves as go-to guys next year? Is…
Culture Jamming: Holy Time-killer!
TOP PICK Lego Batman: The Videogame (Warner Bros. Interactive) It has nothing to do with The Dark Knight, but this super-fun videogame (for pretty much every console out there) is almost as cool as the blockbuster movie. A bunch of villains – name 'em, and they're probably here – try to take over Gotham City,…
Double Duty
Singer-songwriter Doug McKean says he didn't set out to make a double album. When he started recording the songs that would appear on his two new CDs, Concerto for Second Fiddle and Unquiet, he just knew he had too much material for just one record. "The 21-piece puzzle didn't fit together, but the two 10-…
Noises On
The cheeriest place to be these days as light fades from the October sky is Cleveland Play House, where Noises Off, Michael Frayn's comic classic, has just begun a laugh-filled run. You probably know the story. A touring company of middling, muddling British actors is rehearsing a bedroom farce called Nothing On. It's midnight, they…
Get Out!
Thursday 10.16 JAKE JOHANNSEN Marriage to a New Zealand-born actress has changed comedian Jake Johannsen's outlook on the world. For one thing, life down under certainly doesn't mirror the one he had in his native Iowa. "I love America, but I think that people really need to get out of America and see some other…
Experience Matters
G.D. Harris has been dancing with the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company for 18 years, which means he's had a longer performing career than most dancers can count on. And that has landed him significant parts in a lot of works. He turns 40 in a couple of months and admits that it's a challenge dancing…
Ioo,ooo Welcomes (and Counting)
There are only a handful of Gateway District restaurants equipped to handle the blitz of a pre-game dinner rush. Flannery's Pub is one of them. This is, after all, a bar that does more business on a single St. Patrick's Day than its neighbors do in a good week. So compared to the tipsy mob…
L.A. Story
Not much happens in the stripped-down, near-silent The GoodTimesKid, the second feature by indie filmmaker Azazel Jacobs. But that's kinda the point. Taking place over a 24-hour stretch in a ramshackle area of Los Angeles, this slight, minimalist film focuses on three too-cool-for-school characters, two of whom share first and last names. Rodolfo Cano (played…
Melody Makers, Joe Satriani, Melody Makers, And The Toadies Lead This Week’s Concert Picks
Sindust at 8 p.m. Saturday, October 11, at Peabody's The guys in the local hard-rock band Sindust are such perfectionists, they weren't even happy with "Heartache Lottery," the propulsive single from their last album that got some rotation on regional rock radio. As a result, they re-recorded the tune and included it on Not Trust…
Short Reviews Of Current Films
Appaloosa – A decent enough western in the old-school tradition, Appaloosa reunites Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen for the first time since 2005's A History of Violence. This time, Harris and Mortensen play hired Wild West lawmen instead of mobster adversaries. Their relaxed, easygoing camaraderie is the best thing in Appaloosa, giving it the timeless…
Saintly
Daniel Thompson's tribute to the slain activist Ralph Delaney begins, "There are saints in the city / Moving through the streets / Through sadness and shadow / No fiery chariot from the sky / Only an ordinary, beat-up station wagon / Earthbound, moving toward the fires / Along the picket line at Greyhound / Where…
Your Weekly Arts Picks
VIVA series begins with sounds of Cape Verde, Saturday, October 18Born in 1975 – the same year her homeland, the West African archipelago known as Cape Verde, split from Portugal – Lura's music is at the intersection of those cultures. She sings in the Creole language of the islands, and the Latin-influenced sound is not…
Local Disc Reviews
Turbo Lovers Outstanding (Cracked Piston) myspace.com/youngstownturbolover The Turbo Lovers started back in 2004, but their new album, Outstanding, is the first time founder and guitarist Bradlee Van Lisko recorded with an actual band and not just hired musicians. On first listen, the guitar tones sound too much like AC/DC. After a few more plays, however,…
A Poem Is A City
A POEM IS A CITY Mac's Backs and Visible Voice Books celebrate Bukowski Friday and SaturdayReeling with alcohol and details of the banal, Charles Bukowski's prose and poetry got plenty of readers' attention and inspired several movies. But almost 15 years after his death, academics still, for the most part, have left him alone. What…
The County’s Pre-election Witch Hunt
On Tuesday, October 7, I attended a Cuyahoga County Board of Elections (CCBOE) meeting. I wanted to make sure absentee-vote totals were going to be separated from election-day vote totals. What I observed was a witch hunt. The GOP is applying pressure to the board to sniff out questionable voter-registration cards, especially those by effective…
Coldplay Leads This Week’s Concerts
The Martin Chronicles Coldplay at Quicken Loans Arena at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 21 Chris Martin knows his audience. Or at least he hopes he does. Coldplay's frontman thought long and hard about his band over the past couple years, quite possibly coming to the same conclusion many of us have: Coldplay's good and all,…
Rock The Vote
This Moment in Black History has already cast its vote for the presidential race with "Obama (The Pres Is You, the Pres Is Me)." The punk-funk anthem updates the song "Allah Wakbar" by '60s Nigerian Afro-psych-rock group Ofo the Black Company. The Cleveland band had been toying with the tune for more than a year…
Culture Jamming: An Offer You Can’t Refuse
TOP PICK The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration (Paramount) The greatest movie of all time gets a jump on the holidays with this terrific five-DVD set. Director Francis Ford Coppola tweaks his 1972 epic and its 1974 follow-up, The Godfather: Part II (1990's The Godfather: Part III is here too, but the less said about it,…
Canton Crazies
Cramped inside a small booth at Joe's Bar, a dingy downtown Canton joint, the guys in Lovedrug talk about their love for their hometown, a city known more for being home to the Pro Football Hall of Fame than its rock scene. "People blow my mind in Canton," says guitarist Jeremy Michael Gifford. "I go…
Local Disc Reviews
American Werewolves The Lonely Ones (Robot Monster) myspace.com/aw After nearly a decade and three records, this furry and furious Cleveland horrorcore band is now headed down its own dark path through the underworld. The Lonely Ones is ferocious, hardcore-indebted, oldies-style rock 'n' roll that's more Dion than Danzig. On "Never Seen by Waking Eyes," sandpaper…
