May 7-14, 2014

May 7-14, 2014 / Vol. 28 / No. 11

Cover Story

Baring our souls: The return of Angels in America

As a student at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2004, Berry Newkirk had an important decision to make: Should he drop trou on stage? He was 20 years old when he first played Prior Walter in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. The Tony-award-winning play contains the briefest of nude scenes, featuring a doctor examining Prior, a gay…

Page Leggett

Bizarre crime from Charlotte police files (May 8)

Training wheels: An officer pulled over a white Cadillac with an expired tag and found a cocky, if inexperienced, driver behind the wheel. The driver lied about his birth year before admitting he was only 14. He told officers that his mother was aware that he was out driving and had told him to be…

Ryan Pitkin

Only Lovers Left Alive: Detroit Rock City

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE ***1/2 DIRECTED BY Jim Jarmusch STARS Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston Trust Jim Jarmusch to craft a vampire flick that’s less about frightful fangs puncturing exposed necks and more about the existential crisis that’s rocking the modern world. With Only Lovers Left Alive, the innovative writer-director has fashioned a bloodsucker saga that’s…

Matt Brunson

Meet the Neighbors

NEIGHBORS **1/2 DIRECTED BY Nicholas Stoller STARS Seth Rogen, Zac Efron Like the beer at a college kegger, the comedy Neighbors flows smoothly for much of the time, only spurting and gasping in those moments when it’s been tapped dry. Seth Rogen, who has been paired on-screen with more beautiful women than any other affable…

Matt Brunson

Fading Gigolo fades in the stretch

FADING GIGOLO **1/2 DIRECTED BY John Turturro STARS John Turturro, Woody Allen In 1980, audiences caught a glimpse of a full-frontal Richard Gere in American Gigolo, in a sequence that doubtless aided his ascension as a Hollywood hunk. John Turturro doesn’t go similarly buck naked in Fading Gigolo — heck, he actually showed more skin…

Matt Brunson

All my mothers

I didn’t have a mother growing up. I had five. The last time I saw my mom, I was 7. It was a Monday in April, the first official day of spring break, and my brother, sister and I were spending the day at our aunt Rita’s house while my parents worked. A day of…

Nancy Floyd

South Park game only for those not easily offended

Immature. Offensive. Hysterical. South Park: The Stick of Truth is not only a hilarious and entertaining game but also an extremely intelligent and witty satire of fantasy role-playing tropes. Developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by UbiSoft, it’s a 2-D role-playing game based on Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s animated series South Park. The player…

Adam Frazier

Three questions with Sylvain Mousset, 5Church’s wine director

Sylvain Mousset’s affinity for wine isn’t a romanticized, boy-meets-wine French love story, although he is very much French. As a young person, if asked the difference between a Rhone and a Bordeaux, he was as clueless as the next non-French guy. Mousset admits his wine knowledge wasn’t innate but, instead, learned through years of exposure,…

Lauren Blake

Amigo makes music among friends

“That’s me trying to write a song by Flannery O’Connor,” Amigo’s singer/guitarist and chief songwriter Slade Baird says. He name-checks the late, great Southern author, who once noted, “While the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted,” as he discusses “Old Testaments and Nail Bombs,” a disturbing little ditty off the Charlotte trio’s…

Michael Walsh

What’s behind Johnnyswim?

Musicians often become weary of being asked the same questions over and over by writers. On this April morning, Johnnyswim — Abner Ramirez and Amanda Sudano — are in the band’s New York City publicist’s office for a day full of phone interviews. So far, they tell me, they’ve had plenty of coffee and forgone…

Jeff Hahne

Weekly horoscope (May 8-14)

For All Signs: This is a week that may provoke confrontations and battles. If the energies were to be acted upon favorably, everyone would put their cards on the table and opposing parties would be brought to a point of cooperation. There are two sets of opposing planetary energies. The first is Venus opposite Mars,…

Vivian Carol

Mr. Charles on Mr. Sterling

I recently visited one of my favorite eateries on my side of town, Mr. Charles Chicken and Fish off Statesville Avenue, and walked into a very spirited discussion about the Donald Sterling controversy. For as long as I can remember, wherever older black men have gathered, there have been deep conversations on almost any topic.…

Charles Easley

We’re fracked

When the General Assembly’s short session convenes May 14, lawmakers will pave a smoother — and shorter — road to fracking in North Carolina. They’re backed by advocates of fracking, some of whom see those against it as little more than speed bumps. “As a general rule, environmental folks aren’t interested in the truth —…

Sara Patterson

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