Apr 11-17, 2018
The Mural Express, art on the Blue Line; Girl Develop It; Day Brown; Green’s Lunch; Shakespeare Carolina; Alan Yamamoto
Wolf Alice delights, energizes Charlotte crowd
North London rock quartet fills Visulite with raw emotions.
Filmic Festivities at RiverRun
The legal drinking age in the U.S. is 21, but the RiverRun International Film Festival deserves cascading champagne as it celebrates its 20th birthday. The acclaimed film fest, held annually in Winston-Salem, will mark two decades of sustained success in the usual manner, by offering a heady mix of movies from around the world. Over…
Rampage: Every which way but satisfying
RAMPAGE ** (out of four) DIRECTED BY Brad Peyton STARS Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris Critics have often been accused of unfairly dissing a movie because it’s not the one they imagined in their head, placing the finished product at a disadvantage for not satisfying any preconceived notions of where the story should have gone. Perhaps…
Isle of Dogs collars creativity
ISLE OF DOGS ***1/2 (out of four) DIRECTED BY Wes Anderson STARS Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton It probably doesn’t need to be reiterated, but here goes anyway. Despite a rating that allows for the admission of children, despite the animated nature of the piece, and despite the focus on our cuddly canine companions, Isle of…
The Blotter: Computer Gangs
A Parent’s Nightmare In two separate police reports filed on the same day at the end of March, police noted that graffiti had been found on West 5th Street that read, “KOS 132” in spray paint. The code was sprayed across five windows of a local motorsports business and on the garage door of an…
Father Figures, Molly’s Game, Up in Smoke among new home entertainment titles
(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray, DVD and Streaming. Ratings are on a four-star scale.) ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD (2017). It didn’t exactly require all the money in the world, but Sony nevertheless had to cough up a sizable chunk of change to reshoot certain…
Brian Hester Has Taught Some of Charlotte’s Best Artists, But Now He’s Out to Make His Own Name
When I saw Brian Hester sitting at the bar at Hawthorne’s Pizza on Monroe Road, looking up at the televisions with one hand on his Hoppyum IPA, he looked nothing like the countless artists I’ve met around the city in my years with Creative Loafing. And he’s cool with that. Hester calls himself an amalgam,…
Listen Up: Kevin “Mercury” Carter Shares the Gift on ‘Local Vibes’
Just three years ago, only Kevin “Mercury” Carter and two close friends were aware of his magical singing voice. Luckily for all of us, those friends were able to convince Kevin to break out of his shell and share his talent, and that’s how his first release, Mercury, came about in 2015. In our 38th…
News of the Weird: High Point’s Low point
Mistaken Identity Around 4:30 a.m. on March 22, in High Point, North Carolina, 911 dispatchers received a surprising call from a man informing them he had broken into a business. “Yes, this is Jesus Christ, and I just broke into the Pizza Hut,” claimed 46-year-old Richard Lee Quintero of Greensboro, according to WFMY TV. “Jesus…
Shakespeare Carolina Delivers Spanish Gold in a Rat Pack Update
With a king who tries futilely to outwit fate, and a wrongfully imprisoned prince who has time — and fate — on his side, Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s Life Is a Dream hearkens back to a couple of revered Greek tragedies, Oedipus Rex and Prometheus Bound. First produced in 1636, the script also bears…
Alan Yamamoto Marshals Troops for ‘War Requiem’
[Image-1] The irony of “The War Requiem,” the British composer Benjamin Britten’s pacifist magnum opus, is that mounting a performance of the piece is a logistical feat akin to planning and executing a military campaign. Just ask Alan Yamamoto, the arts division director at Central Piedmont Community College and former resident conductor of the Charlotte…
The First Check Off My Summer Bucket List
Despite my having gone to Charleston this past weekend for a wedding, I still managed to check off a new restaurant-slash-nightlife vibe in the Queen City before I left. If you read my article last week, you may remember I decided that my summer bucket list was going to be focused on eating my way…
The Mural Express
We hopped on the Blue Line at Woodlawn and took it up to University City to find some of the best murals within walking distance of the light rail. We tried to give credit where due, but if you know of someone who created a piece that went uncredited, give us a shout at backtalk@clclt.com.…
A Green’s Lunch Hot Dog is Forever
When Green’s Lunch first opened its doors, Calvin Coolidge was the president. Prohibition was in full effect. And women had won the right to vote less than a decade earlier. Dating back to 1926, Green’s Lunch is Charlotte’s oldest restaurant. A lot has changed in the past 92 years, but this hot dog joint has…
Local Developers Join Forces to Help Women Thrive in Growing Field
Brittani Burns watched in amazement as the young woman next to her at Central Coffee — after asking permission — pulled up Burns’ website, typed something into the URL and was suddenly looking at the site’s HTML coding. Until that moment, Burns, a photographer by trade and relative newcomer to website development, had thought the…
Charlotte Rapper/Singer Day Brown Steps Up to the Mic
[Image-1] HE WAS 17 and on top of the world — Dayleen Brown, a kid from Charlotte, dancing on BET and appearing in commercials for AT&T, K-Swiss and Foot Locker. He was rising up the ranks in the dance world, having studied under some of the top choreographers in the biz: Tony Testa (Michael Jackson),…
