Feb 20-26, 2013

Feb 20-26, 2013 / Vol. 26 / No. 52

Cover Story

A legend comes to life in Fela!

You probably didn’t grow up playing Fela Anikulapo Ransome-Kuti at parties, and he probably wasn’t the soundtrack to your first kiss. After all, the Nigerian rock star, who would have been 75 this year, recorded his last original track 20 years ago. Even at the height of his popularity, he refused to perform abroad, and…

Emiene Wright

Ain’t that Peculiar

The Peculiar Rabbit1212 Pecan Ave., 704-333-9197. Hours: Sunday 10 a.m. to 12 a.m.; Monday 5 p.m. to 12 a.m.; Tuesday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 12 a.m.; Friday 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.; Saturday 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Late night menu: weekends from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. www.thepeculiarrabbit.com. Like Zooey Deschanel, Plaza Midwood…

Tricia Childress

3 questions with Izzat Freitekh, owner of La Shish Kebob

Located in an unassuming strip mall on Charlotte’s colorful east side, La Shish Kebob shares its space with an Ethiopian grocery store, a Middle Eastern bakery and an African-American barbershop. But come lunchtime, patrons of those other establishments are likely to smell the roast lamb and spices distinctive to La Shish. The small eatery specializes…

Emiene Wright

Bechtler exhibit gets personal

It’s not an exaggeration to say that love is in the air at Bechtler Museum of Modern Art. The museum’s latest exhibit showcases more than 50 pieces by some of modern art’s most renowned figures including Joan Miró and Alexander Calder. Joan Miró, Le lézard aux plumes d’or, artist book, 1971 © 2013 Successió Miró…

Anita Overcash

The Whipping Man comes to Actor’s Theatre

Look carefully before you think this show has anything to do with that Newbery Medal-winning book you read in grade school – The Whipping Boy, by Sid Fleischman. This is The Whipping Man, by playwright Matthew Lopez. In the play, set during the Civil War, an injured Jewish Confederate soldier returns home to find that…

Anita Overcash

New Mint exhibit showcases Debora Arango

Colombian artist Debora Arango wasn’t exactly what you’d consider “popular” in her native land when her artwork first surfaced there. That’s not because she wasn’t a gifted artist – using vibrant brushstrokes and zesty figurative detail, her paintings pop with expressionist flair – but rather because of the controversial political and social context that they…

Anita Overcash

Charlotte Film Society screens The Turin Horse

Inspired by an emotional incident involving Friedrich Nietzsche and a horse, The Turin Horse (A torinói ló) is a Hungarian film shot in black and white. Its plot tells the story of a rural farmer and his very routine life, involving his family and a horse. It’s been described by director Béla Tarr as being…

Anita Overcash

Bizarre crimes from Charlotte police files (Feb. 21)

Pump’d: A man called police last week after an unknown suspect monkeyed around with his car at a gas station. The man said he started pumping gas and went inside the station for a cup of coffee. When he returned to his vehicle, the gas pump was removed, a banana left in its place. The…

Ryan Pitkin

Theater review: Big River

Since there isn’t a dramatic adaptation worthy of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, you’ll want to jump aboard every time Roger Miller’s musical adaptation rolls into town. Huck’s raft first came to Charlotte in 1991 at Theatre Charlotte before docking at CPCC Summer Theatre – the best version seen here- six years later. Once…

Perry Tannenbaum

A Snitch in time

SNITCH**1/2DIRECTED BY Ric Roman WaughSTARS Dwayne Johnson, Susan Sarandon Let’s face it: 2013 has so far been a brutal year for multiplex action stars. Jason Statham’s Parker has grossed $17 million, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Last Stand has earned $11 million and Sylvester Stallone’s Bullet to the Head has scraped together an especially anemic $9 million.…

Matt Brunson

Argo, Best in Show, Laura among new home entertainment titles

(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray and DVD.) ARGO (2012). The best picture of an admittedly weak year (go here for the complete look at the Best & Worst Films of 2012), director-star Ben Affleck’s Argo is an amazingly proficient film in which great swatches of humor…

Matt Brunson

Weekly horoscope (Feb. 21-Feb. 27)

Pisces The Fish (Feb. 18-March 19): Give attention to the lead paragraph. Mercury is turning retrograde in your sign and will be more likely to affect your daily affairs than many of the other signs. It isn’t easy for you to make decisions in the first place, but don’t even try to finalize anything while…

Vivian Carol

Lawmakers kick the underdogs

While most of the nation handed President Obama an impressive, five million-vote victory, North Carolina “rejoined” the Old South, which held on to its traditional ornery brand of conservatism while smacking Obama in the region by six million votes. More ominously, the state’s turn toward the past is being carried out by a legislature with…

John Grooms

Holy Ghost Tent Revival conjures up the spirit

“The Mayan King” is the only song that could start Holy Ghost Revival’s Sweat Like the Old Days, the Greensboro band’s second LP. Released in 2012, the album represents a seismic shift for the regional favorite. Renowned, energetic live shows full of tantrums of sweat, banjo and brass unite in a revved-up old-time sonic style,…

Jordan Lawrence

The Oscars: Politics as usual?

After Sunday, I’ll either be hailed as a visionary or condemned as an idiot. Feb. 24 is when the 85th Annual Academy Awards ceremony takes place, and as that date approaches, I’m becoming increasingly isolated on my particular island of Oscar prognosticators. Given all the seismic activity surrounding Argo, more and more scribes are altering…

Matt Brunson

PaperHouse Theatre, Citizens of the Universe’s humble beginnings

PaperHouse Theatre and Citizens of the Universe aren’t performing simultaneously at Wine Up in NoDa right now, but the upstairs dive just past 36th Street has nurtured both companies in recent months. The less fringy of the two, PaperHouse began life back in November with Penny Penniworth, a deliciously swift takedown of Dickens and the…

Perry Tannenbaum

North Carolina’s HRC Gala returns to Charlotte

Denise Bauer is excited to be a first-time table captain for North Carolina’s Human Rights Campaign gala, held Saturday in Charlotte. Her duties include selling dinner tickets — which cost between $96 and $225 — to 12 people who will sit at her table. Bauer didn’t know this when she started donating to HRC, the…

Joanne Spataro

Historic tar-sands action at Obama’s door

For the first time in its 120-year history, the Sierra Club engaged in civil disobedience, the day after President Barack Obama gave his 2013 State of the Union address. The group joined scores of others protesting the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which awaits a permitting decision from the Obama administration. The president made significant pledges…

Amy Goodman

Fela! comes to Charlotte

The first time I saw the name Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the Nigerian singer and revolutionary was on the cover of Option, a music magazine of which I would later become the editor. It was 1986 and Fela, I learned, was the inventor and main exponent of Afrobeat — a mix of funk, jazz, the West…

Mark Kemp

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