Mar 13-19, 2013

Mar 13-19, 2013 / Vol. 27 / No. 3

Cover Story

The ugly truth in Sociales: Débora Arango Arrives Today

Jarring. Moving. Honest. Blunt. Looking at Colombian artist Débora Arango’s best paintings is like listening to Bob Dylan belt out a song decrying the criminal legacy of racism. It ain’t pretty, but you’re going to stay for the whole song. The last “best show” at the Mint Museum Uptown, Hard Truths, featured Alabama painter Thornton…

Scott Lucas

CD review: Nö Pöwer’s No Peace

It would do a disservice to Nö Pöwer’s singularly dominating density and momentum to describe the group using its antecedents. That said, please accept this reviewer’s apology. Charlotte’s Grids was once one of the most underrated heavy bands in the South. A noise-rock ensemble with fuzz that congealed with molten intensity, the group’s menacing heft…

Jordan Lawrence

Theater review: Peter Pan

When it premiered here in 2004, during the centennial of James M. Barrie’s original, Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux’s ballet version of Peter Pan was already a marvelous marriage of Neverland and Rossini. In its return engagement at Knight Theater, the North Carolina Dance Theatre production is even more resplendent than before. Photo credit: Jeff Hahne Two new…

Perry Tannenbaum

Where to find Youtiao and other baked Chinese favorites

When The Chinese Dynasty, in Matthews, closed in January, I immediately missed its Saturday dim sum trolley filled with Chinese delicacies, including congee (juk), a rice porridge that has become increasingly popular with gluten-intolerant hot cereal fans. Fortunately, Grand Asia Market (4400 Potters Road, Stallings, 704-821-0899) houses a stunning first-rate Chinese bakery; a steamed bun…

Tricia Childress

Beyond bacon

Looking back, the early years of the bacon craze seem like a time of innocence. We took it for granted that any problem, culinary or otherwise, could be solved with various preparations of pig belly. Our collective fixation was like that of a teenage boy who just wants to masturbate all the time. The thrill…

Ari LeVaux

CFS screens We Have a Pope

So, heard any good Pope jokes lately? Charlotteans can partake in their own papal drama when they check out We Have a Pope, the latest offering from the Charlotte Film Society. Co-written and directed by Nanni Moretti (whose Cannes winner The Son’s Room was brought to town by the CFS back in 2002), this Italian…

Matt Brunson

Bizarre crimes from Charlotte police files (March 14 edition)

Spinning Your Wheels: Police caught a burglar in the act last week after he got stuck in his own crime scene. A man called police to his north Charlotte house once he saw a suspect trying to steal from him. The suspect backed a pickup truck into the victim’s yard, close to where a hot-water…

Ryan Pitkin

Stoker: The truth about Charlie

STOKER***1/2DIRECTED BY Park Chan-wookSTARS Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite among his own films, Shadow of a Doubt is an exemplary 1943 thriller in which a teenager (Teresa Wright) in complete adoration of her mild-mannered Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) is shocked to learn he’s actually a serial killer. Stoker, the first English-language film from…

Matt Brunson

OK to put The Call on hold

THE CALL**DIRECTED BY Brad AndersonSTARS Halle Berry, Abigail Breslin There’s something cheerfully stupid about thrillers like The Call, wherein a protagonist who’s seemingly as brilliant as Sherlock Holmes eventually becomes as dim-witted as Forrest Gump. In this case, that would be Jordan Turner (Halle Berry), a 911 operator who blunders in an attempt to save…

Matt Brunson

Dance show blends technology and art

If there weren’t already so many dance festivals in Charlotte, they’d probably call the upcoming Working With a festival, too. Five local choreographers are coming together under the Martha Connerton/Kinetic Works umbrella to present a themed program of new, innovative dances. All of the pieces in this collaboration will be blending dance with other art…

Perry Tannenbaum

Letters to the editor: March 14 edition

Packing heat Just a note to tell you that I appreciated what I thought was a well-balanced piece on your experience at the firing range (“Girls & Guns,” March 7). The editor stated clearly that the piece wasn’t designed to debate some of the contentious issues associated with guns. Nonetheless, there was a line in…

Wicked is as wicked does

Good or evil? In Wicked, you may find yourself asking ‘Which witch is which?’ The Tony Award-winning Broadway musical – created by Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz, based off of the book by Gregory Maguire, and inspired, of course, by Frank Baum’s timeless series and the 1939 motion picture – gives us the scoop on…

Anita Overcash

UNCC Film festival screens foreign flicks

UNC Charlotte’s International Film Series and Tournées French Film Festival is showcasing a series of contemporary foreign films on select days through March 25. The festivities include screenings of Une vie de chat (A Cat in Paris), an animated film about a girl whose cat takes her on a nighttime adventure involving rooftop runs with…

Anita Overcash

High in sodium: Motoi Yamamoto

Watching Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto’s “Floating Garden” salt installation be trampled on by children and adults, isn’t as momentous as it seems. Rather, it was sad to watch the installation — started on Feb. 18 by Yamamoto, who spent a staggering 85 hours on its intricate design, prior to its completion on March 1, and…

Anita Overcash

The House of Blue Leaves: A realistic tapestry

Ah, the joys and sorrows of magical thinking! They have a special zest — and pathology — in the bizarre wishfulness of American life and globally in the strange lucky-charm permutations of the Roman Catholic Church. John Guare brought them both to New York City in The House of Blue Leaves, first staged a matter…

Perry Tannenbaum

Weekly horoscope (March 14-20)

Pisces The Fish (Feb. 18-March 19): Jupiter will bring improvements to your domestic life. This may manifest in a new home or other property, such as a car. It especially favors home decorating or expansion projects. Opportunities to improve and augment family relationships will be presented. For All Signs: Mercury turns direct this week, on…

Vivian Carol

Inside the lion’s den: Oscar D’Leon

The Who’s Pete Townshend once noted that rock will not solve your problems, but it will let you dance all over them. Not to dispute an elder pop statesman, but if Townshend replaced “rock” with “salsa,” his quote would hit closer to the mark. Vigorous and sensuous, salsa is the Pan-American music of liberation and…

Pat Moran

Life in the Monroe Zone

Things are rarely as bad as they seem, even in the unpredictable, rancorous world of Charlotte politics. That’s why now and then it’s good to step back from our own problems and get a laugh out of someone else’s predicament — er, I mean, gain a broader perspective. This brings us to Monroe, our neighbor…

John Grooms

eNOugh is enough

I meet Julie Owens and her father, the Reverend Bob Owens, at Cabo Fish Taco in early February. Listening to him crack “dad” jokes and belly laugh, it’s hard to imagine that they lived through — and survived — the stuff of horror films. Julie met her future husband David in early 1987. He was…

Megan Henshall

Now taking submissions for CL’s Fiction Contest

Some of the most memorable works of fiction, to me, are stories that center on religion and spirituality. I’ve probably read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha a handful of times since I was first introduced to it in high school, and one of my all-time favorite short novels is Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor’s haunting tale of a…

Mark Kemp

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