Jan 14-20, 2015

Jan 14-20, 2015 / Vol. 28 / No. 47

Cover Story

Charlotte artists show support for cartoonists killed in Paris attack

Last week, two brothers stormed the offices of a satirical newspaper in Paris, France, and killed 12 people, many of them cartoonists and journalists. As reported by The Economist, Charlie Hebdo “was targeted because it cherished and promoted its right to offend: specifically to offend Muslims.” The world responded with sadness, outrage and hashtags: #JeSuisCharlie…

Kimberly Lawson

The Wedding Ringer: Seek an annulment

THE WEDDING RINGER*1/2DIRECTED BY Jeremy GarelickSTARS Kevin Hart, Josh Gad The workable premise of The Wedding Ringer posits that the awkward, overweight Doug Harris (Josh Gad) doesn’t have a single friend in the entire world, which becomes a problem when his pretty fiancée Gretchen (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting) wants to meet his best man and the groomsmen…

Matt Brunson

American Sniper hits its mark more often than not

AMERICAN SNIPER**1/2DIRECTED BY Clint EastwoodSTARS Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller The weakest of the eight newly announced nominees for the Best Picture Academy Award, American Sniper nevertheless turns out to be one of the better Clint Eastwood releases of recent vintage. But like most of his latter-day films in the director’s chair, efforts like Invictus and…

Matt Brunson

Blackhat: Computer blues

BLACKHAT**1/2DIRECTED BY Michael MannSTARS Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis I suppose it’s a matter of seasonal perspective. Released in the graveyard month of January, the stomping ground of such theater-clearers as I, Frankenstein and Movie 43, Blackhat seems comparatively as worthy of Oscar gold as something like No Country for Old Men or 12 Years a…

Matt Brunson

Analyzing Oscar’s 2014 Crop

(For the year’s best movies as chosen by Academy members, film critics and moviegoers, head to the bottom of the page.) “Everything is awesome,” states the Oscar-nominated song of the same name from The LEGO Movie, but that clearly wasn’t the case for many of the contenders when the nominations for the 87th Academy Awards…

Matt Brunson

No Place Like Home

Home is where the heart is, or as the case may be, where the collection of severed animal heads is. The animal heads in our particular collection were killed and taxidermied by strangers, then purchased by my uncle at garage sales. While I could see how there’s a certain level of pride in displaying something…

Nancy Floyd

Weekly horoscope (Jan. 15-21)

For All Signs: The cosmos has several tense aspects this week. It is one of those times in which war or some other violent activity is a likely development. Unfortunately, that has been all too frequent in the past year. Energy will be high and nerves may be a little frayed. On the global level,…

Vivian Carol

Bizarre crime from Charlotte police files (Jan. 14)

What Did That Bar Do To You?!: After being asked to leave a Plaza Midwood-area restaurant, an unruly suspect took a fork and began carving into the bar’s countertop. As they were escorted from the premises, the person knocked over tables and plants on the patio before being arrested nearby. That’s not the way to…

Jeff Hahne

nuVoices Festival features familiar faces

Are all the new voices that Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte is presenting at its third nuVoices Festival truly new playwrights venturing forth with their first plays? Not at all. In the case of the four playwrights coming to town this week’s festivities, Jan. 15-18, these are experienced hands bringing us works that have never been…

Perry Tannenbaum

South Eastern Music Conference shapes dreams into reality

LaShanda Goldston has been writing songs since she was in high school. Now 35, she works full-time and sells her music to local R&B and hip-hop artists on the side. While the Greensboro music scene is close-knit, she says it’s limited, so she makes the three-hour round-trip drive to Charlotte almost every weekend to network…

Emiene Wright

Blood Ties offers a grown-up take on family drama

The bonds between three siblings, neglected for 20 years, are still taut enough to cut in Blood Ties, a new play by Charlotte native Kenya Phifer-Jones that premieres at Duke Energy Theater Jan. 23. It is Phifer-Jones’ first full theater production on a professional stage, but at 39 the playwright isn’t your typical ingénue. She…

Emiene Wright

Three questions with chef Jay Pierce of soon-to-open ROCKSalt

The best grits I’ve ever eaten in my whole life were cooked inside a cast-iron cauldron and stirred with love by a barefoot, beer-drinking Jay Pierce during an annual industry gathering on a farm in Virginia. That’s the first time I met Pierce, who was then the executive chef at Lucky 32 in Greensboro. There,…

Keia Mastrianni

Sylvan Esso is razing the bar

Nick Sanborn can remember when his life changed last year. He and his Sylvan Esso bandmate, Amelia Meath, were in a lighting store when they got a phone call offering them a spot as the Europe and U.S. tour opener for Tune-Yards for two months. Sanborn says that’s the moment he knew he could finally…

Jeff Hahne

River Whyless goes with the flow

Part of the first line in author John Steinbeck’s To A God Unknown reads, “When the crops were under cover on the Wayne farm near Pittsford in Vermont, when the winter wood was cut …” But just a sliver of the sentence inspired a whole song for the Asheville-based indie-folk band River Whyless. The song…

Anita Overcash

LittleSpoon Eatery is detail-oriented

You might think all farm-to-table chef shops are hyper-focused on the food. Not quite. While many still have a sourced-menu that often reads like an Ancestry.com pedigree — or is reminiscent of the TV show Portlandia’s hilarious “Farm” episode that has a binder containing life documents and photos of “Colin,” the chicken that would be…

Tricia Childress

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