Cover Story
5 Artists Who Will Not be Ignored
Keep an eye out for Charlotte activists and artists Marcus Kiser, Manoj Kesavan, Eric Ndelo, La La Specific and the UrbanZue Art Gallery in 2017
The Great Wall: Thick as a Brick
THE GREAT WALL *1/2 (out of four) DIRECTED BY Yimou Zhang STARS Matt Damon, Tian Jing Perhaps not since Roman centurion John Wayne ambled up to Jesus on the cross in The Greatest Story Ever Told has an American actor looked so uncomfortably out of place as Matt Damon in The Great Wall. Set in…
Fist Fight as much fun as an ax to the head
FIST FIGHT * (out of four) DIRECTED BY Richie Keen STARS Ice Cube, Charlie Day The appointment of the monstrous Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education is the worst thing that could possibly have happened to the U.S. school system, but placing a very distant second would probably be the release of Fist Fight. Aggressive…
Arrival, The Edge of Seventeen, One Million Years B.C. 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.) ARRIVAL (2016). The best picture of 2016, Arrival deservedly earned eight Oscar nominations, although its snubs in the categories of Best Original Score (for nitpicky reasons, it was deemed ineligible), Best Visual…
‘A Day Without Immigrants’ Draws More than 7,000 to Charlotte’s Marshall Park
Businesses across the city shut down today in protest of recent ICE raids while more than 7,000 people rallied in Uptown to support the immigrant community. CL reporter Jasmin Herrera was there to shoot photos while the crowd marched from Marshall Park to the center of Uptown and back again. Related Stories
The Blotter: Double the Payout
Pay It Forward State employees filed a police report last week after a gas station employee thought they had outsmarted the system, only to find they may be the dumbest person playing the lottery. According to the report, someone working at a place that sells lottery tickets took one that had already been paid out…
Weekly Horoscope (Feb. 16-22)
For All Signs The eclipse energy of this month continues its background effect on everyone. The world’s structures are so precarious that some may have collapsed. Indeed, whether global or personal, anything built on sand rather than solid ground, is showing cracks and signs of impending change. That means issues that have been developing for…
Local Woman Calls Out TV News Crew for Invasion of Privacy
Emily H. awoke at 5 a.m. on Jan. 3 from the sort of dream that often accompanies a deep, cold medicine-induced sleep. But she quickly realized she was in an entirely new kind of nightmare, and it was all too real. While Emily slept, a stranger had broken into her home, come up the stairs,…
Friends Remember Kelly Call
Charlotte’s food and music community lost a beloved leader last week when Kelly Call passed away suddenly at 50 years old. Call was a fixture in the Plaza Midwood and NoDa neighborhoods; she’s owned or co-owned a number of popular Charlotte haunts, including Creation and Stash Pad, and served as a manager at Charlotte staple…
Charles Easley Is Bringing Nerdy Black
For Charles Easley, the inner city streets of Houston, Texas, where he spent his childhood, were lonely, and that was fine with him. Easley grew up a nerd — a description he says still fits him — more interested in comic books and Saturday morning martial arts films than playing a game of pick-up basketball…
A Weekend of Boo Lovin’ and New Experiences With a Splash of Vom
I’m not going to lie to y’all, 2017 thus far has been pretty lit. Even though the month of January flew by and we’re a paycheck away from the end of February, I’ve been so busy finding adventures it feels like New Year’s Eve was over six months ago. Stoke, check. Salud Beer Shop, check.…
VIDEO Explore More CLT-based Activist Art
Charlotte’s art scene is often seen as a fairly empty or one-dimensional canvas. That’s far from the truth. After reading my cover story on five Charlotte artists to look out for in 2017, take some time to explore and discover the hotbed of talent swarming around the hornets nest. With the national attention the city…
How To Make a Movie Rock and Roll
The executive producer tells how his team made the documentary Live from the Double Door Inn
Look to Art and Face-to-Face Conversations in 2017
Everybody knows it’s a bad idea to sit alone staring at a computer screen, reading the comments sections of news websites. But we still do it. And in them we find some of the vilest words and ideas that human beings are capable of thinking and expressing. On Sunday, Feb. 12, I made the mistake…
Make Your Own Vietnamese Soup
Only if you’ve been living under a rock at the bottom of the ocean for the last decade have you missed the ascendency of pho, Vietnam’s internationally beloved comfort food. The steaming meal is soup and salad in the same bowl, a fragrant beef broth in which delicate rice noodles and meat parts comingle with…
5 Pho Hotspots in Charlotte
Check out these local pho eateries, from the University Area down to Matthews. Pho Real Vietnamese Restaurant Where: 440 McCullough Dr., Ste. 206 When: Mon.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Fri-Sat; Sun. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. More: phorealclt.com Saigon Palace Where: 5215 South Blvd. When: Mon.-Fri. 11 a.m.-10 p.m. More: 704-529-0098 Pho Hòa Where:…
