Apr 10-16, 2013

Apr 10-16, 2013 / Vol. 27 / No. 7

Cover Story

Food Issue 2013: Charlotte chefs sharpen their knives for culinary contest

Gentlemen, wield your weapons — the Queen City has called to claim her culinary king. And how will she determine the winner of this honor? With Creative Loafing’s first-ever Iron Fork competition, naturally. The event, which takes place Wednesday, April 17, at CenterStage@NoDa, is inspired by the Food Network’s hit show The Next Iron Chef.…

Laura Camilo

Django Unchained, Repo Man, The Running Man among new home entertainment titles

(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray and DVD.) DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012). Exciting. Funny. Gratuitous. Inflammatory. Insensitive. Stylish. Stupid. Sophisticated. Grab any adjective out of a hat and chances are it will apply to Django Unchained, writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s messy mashup of the Western and the blaxploitation flick,…

Matt Brunson

Charlotte Film Society screens Even The Rain

Using the Bolivian water crisis as the subject matter for Even The Rain (También la lluvia), director Icíar Bollaín packs an intense rebellion into his 2010 Spanish drama. The flick is based around a film crew who comes to Cochabamba, Bolivia, to shoot a period piece about Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the New World. Sebastián…

Anita Overcash

Paths of Glory screens at ImaginOn

Arguably the greatest anti-war film ever made, Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 masterpiece feels like a mule kick to the stomach no matter how many times a person has seen it. It’s World War I, and a French outfit led by the courageous and honorable Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas) is ordered by a pair of glory-seeking generals…

Matt Brunson

Bizarre crimes from Charlotte police files (April 11)

Last Stop: Employees at CATS contacted police last week after fearing that one of their former co-workers would hurt someone in the company. The disgruntled employee in question was fired from CATS, unmercifully on April Fool’s Day, after serving as a bus operator for 12 years. After a “termination hearing” the man announced that he…

Ryan Pitkin

Ginger & Rosa: Fanning the flames of talent

GINGER & ROSA**1/2DIRECTED BY Sally PotterSTARS Elle Fanning, Alice Englert Elle Fanning’s astonishing performance in Ginger & Rosa makes me recall the first time she impressed me, as one of the youthful leads in J.J. Abrams’ 2011 summer hit Super 8. All of the young actors were well-cast, but they nevertheless all felt like movie…

Matt Brunson

Trance a hypnotic thriller

TRANCE***DIRECTED BY Danny BoyleSTARS James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel Director Danny Boyle’s mindbender of a movie Trance, suggests what would happen if Christopher Nolan ever elected to make a film while suffering from a persistent hangover. Nolan, responsible for such twisty gems as Inception, Memento and The Prestige, would probably have to be suffering from some…

Matt Brunson

42: Here’s to you, Mr. Robinson

42**1/2DIRECTED BY Brian HelgelandSTARS Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford Here’s to you, Mr. Robinson: a new motion picture you can call your own. It’s been 63 years since the release of The Jackie Robinson Story, in which the baseball legend starred as himself, and now the first African American to play in the major leagues steps…

Matt Brunson

The Vagina Monologues return to Charlotte

Read my lips, say the 13 local artists who will present Eve Ensler’s call to female self-realization and empowerment, The Vagina Monologues. Three Bone Theatre’s maiden production, piloted by their managing artistic director Robin Tynes, will feature performances by Carmen Bartlett, Frances Bendert, Rachael Houdek, and Becky Schultz in the full range of V-Day favorites.…

Perry Tannenbaum

Monophonics baptize Charlotte in the funk

It was almost a “Clapton is here” moment last May at the Double Door Inn. What started out as a small Thursday night crowd slowly developed into a packed house as patrons contacted friends via cell phones and told them about the energetic performance being put out onstage. But it wasn’t Slowhand who had people…

Jeff Hahne

The times they are a-changin’

The title of artist Marek Ranis’ exhibit, White Supremacy — The End, could be misinterpreted. It isn’t built around the idea of racism being dead in the South; after all, we’ve seen Ku Klux Klan members and neo-Nazis rally in Charlotte as recently as November 2012. But in more general terms of global powers, the…

Anita Overcash

Book review: Ron Rash’s Nothing Gold Can Stay

Four years ago, when Western Carolina professor Ron Rash published Serena, his stunning novel of greed and murder in early-20th century North Carolina’s timber industry, I wrote, “If he can avoid the publishing world’s penchant for labeling any author who’s born below Maryland a mere ‘Southern writer,’ with all of that term’s implied limitations, Rash…

John Grooms

Blumenthal jazz series aims to fan improv flames

At the height of my trad-jazz fever in the late ’90s, I made a pilgrimage to the historic Village Vanguard in New York City to catch one of the last living members of the old guard, tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin. Between songs in a searing set which suggested Griffin was still worthy of his The…

John Schacht

Previewing a Pearl of a production

It was at Spelman College, a historically African-American university in Atlanta, where Janinah Burnett received the sort of education that can be traced to her current standing as a soprano for the Metropolitan Opera. “At Spelman, a lot of my peers were classically trained,” Burnett recalls. “It was the first time I had heard anyone…

Pat Moran

GOP bills ensure less voting, fraudulent or legitimate

You have to feel for the Republican majority in the General Assembly. Their strange obsession with supposed Democrat-sponsored voter fraud continues unabated, but they just can’t seem to find enough ways to restrict Dems’ voting rights. They’ve already thrown their support behind the controversial voter ID bill, which would require North Carolinians to produce a…

John Grooms

Ain’t nobody got time for another YouTube stereotype

A former student sent me a YouTube video meant, no doubt, to make me laugh. Houston news station KPRC interviewed local Michelle Clark describing a hail storm and the damage it caused to her apartment building. “Man! Those jokers was big,” she said. She described the hail as the “size of a quarter, doggone!” Her…

Charles Easley

Weekly horoscope (April 11-18)

Aries The Ram (March 20-April 19): This is the beginning of a fresh two year cycle in your relationships, whether business or personal. You are probably recommitting to a situation or letting one go so you can move forward. For All Signs: The sign of Aries is supercharged right now. This has been in progress…

Vivian Carol

Charlotte’s space oddity

Space: The final frontier. Time to strap on your helmets and call ground control, because outer space is about to get kinky. Charlotte’s own Purgatory, the fetish/kink/BDSM party and show that’s part performance, part marketplace and part dance rave, celebrates its 10-year anniversary with a science fiction-themed bash that’s sure to be — wait for…

Natalie Howard

Metal Alliance Tour a mind-grinding look back at thrash

With thrash metal, the past is never far from the present. This is true with the various iconic bands still peddling their rapid-fire riffs and torrential rhythms and with younger groups which closely adhere to the examples their forebears set. It’s a genre that’s formulaic by design, one obsessed with technical precision within its time-tested…

Jordan Lawrence

Theater review: Petie

Where are Eli Newman and Sam Faulkner when we need them? The young, diminutive, cute-as-a-button stars of recent productions of Seussical, both of them sprinkling a saccharine patina over that trivial musical at Theatre Charlotte and ImaginOn, would be perfect for the title role of Lori Fischer’s more serious and adult Petie, a Starving Artist…

Perry Tannenbaum

Doctor’s orders: An interview with Dr. Jill Stein

Editor’s Note: While most presidential candidates try their best to avoid jail, the Green Party’s Dr. Jill Stein is regularly touted away from protests or political rallies in handcuffs. Days before the 2012 election, she was arrested in Texas for resupplying Keystone XL pipeline protesters. Liberals and Occupier types praise her as a breath of…

Joanne Spataro

Food Issue 2013: 20 must-try dishes in Charlotte

“What’s your favorite cuisine?” and “Where do you go to eat?” are two questions I get a lot. My answer generally annoys some since the response is spontaneous, not preset. I do not have a favorite restaurant or even a style of cuisine. I am not one for tedious meals or uninteresting chefs. Nor should…

Tricia Childress

Recent

See all

Gift this article