Feb 17-23, 2016

Feb 17-23, 2016 / Vol. 29 / No. 52

Cover Story

Charlotte chefs prep tomorrow’s culinary tastemakers

Fine dining restaurants are contradictory microcosms. Out front, guests sit in a quiet, linen-draped cocoon with solicitous servers moving quietly between tables. In back, cooks ply their trade amid noise, pressure, heat and ribaldry. We food lovers have absorbed an image of the professional kitchen as a place filled with shouting, knife-wielding maniacs kept under…

Alison Leininger

The Witch casts a seductive spell

THE WITCH *** (out of four) DIRECTED BY Robert Eggers STARS Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson One of the most memorable sequences in the otherwise much-ado-about-nothing revenge yarn The Revenant is the one which finds Leonardo DiCaprio’s character getting savagely mauled by a bear. Yet even that grizzly comes across as only slightly more menacing than…

Matt Brunson

Risen: Keeping the faith

RISEN **1/2 (out of four) DIRECTED BY Kevin Reynolds STARS Joseph Fiennes, Tom Felton The small companies that have been producing all those faith-based films that routinely pop up in theaters have financially done so well, it’s surprising more major studios haven’t jumped on the Biblical bandwagon. One outfit that has seen the writing on…

Matt Brunson

Bizarre crime from Charlotte police files (Feb. 18)

Smooth Criminal A 45-year old north Charlotte woman called CMPD after discovering that she had been robbed for her skin lotions. The larceny took place in the afternoon, when an unknown suspect apparently entered the woman’s home “with the intention to permanently deprive” the victim, and her dry elbows, of $38.61 worth of lotion. Though…

Madeline Lemieux

Weekly horoscope (Feb. 18-24)

For All Signs: The Chinese New Year of the Monkey began on Feb. 8th. The astrology of the Chinese is based on the lunar calendar, rather than the solar calendar of the Western world. The New Year always begins on the second new moon following the winter solstice, so the date varies from year to…

Vivian Carol

Black Mass, Trumbo, Vincent Price set among new home entertainment titles

(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray and DVD. Ratings are on a four-star scale.) BLACK MASS (2015). Practically unrecognizable with that bald pate and those blue-sky contact lenses, Johnny Depp projects ferocious intensity as real-life crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, whose Trivial Pursuit claim to fame is…

Matt Brunson

Three questions for Lucious Wilson of Flying Biscuit Cafe

For those of us ready to slide out of our pesky New Year’s resolutions and back into anything with an adjustable waistband, February is National Pancake Month and we will be celebrating hard at Creative Loafing. Lucky for us (and flapjack lovers everywhere), the Flying Biscuit Cafe takes National Pancake Month pretty seriously. When a…

Madeline Lemieux

Fundraiser for Levine Children’s Hospital pays tribute to the ’80s

Three times a year, a fundraiser is held at the Neighborhood Theatre for the Levine Children’s Hospital. The concert series features numerous local bands coming together to pay tribute to various musicians for a good cause. Past performances have included tributes to the Everly Brothers, outlaw country, the music of New York City, The Doors…

Jeff Hahne

CD review: Serfs’ Day Hang

With a bass riff and a jangly guitar chord, Serfs kicks off its first full-length album, Day Hang, with “Can’t Get Control.” The song’s blend of noise pop and indie rock even finds goth subtleties — think Bauhaus — from time to time in the lyrical presentation. “Slowpoke” follows with fuzzed out finesse that’s raw…

Jeff Hahne

A closer look at the Repower Our Schools report and transitioning CMS to solar

Just weeks after the release of an extensive report detailing ways in which Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools could conceivably transition completely to solar energy over the coming decades, the path to making it happen remains unclear. The report, created by the North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center at North Carolina State University, describes how CMS could meet…

Ryan Pitkin

Is what’s right for your child right for all children?

In 2013, on the day I dropped my son Lucas off for his first day of school as a CMS student, President Barack Obama was also celebrating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. As I left Lucas sitting on the rug in his Pre-K classroom, surrounded by his new brown, black and white…

Ailen Arreaza

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