Jan 31 – Feb 6, 2012

Jan 31 - Feb 6, 2012 / Vol. 25 / No. 49

Cover Story

The Woman in Black: Harry Potter and the deathly shallow

THE WOMAN IN BLACK ** DIRECTED BY James Watkins STARS Daniel Radcliffe, Ciaran Hinds Before they largely imploded in the mid-1970s, Britain’s Hammer Film Productions spent two decades producing lush, atmospheric horror flicks, in the process re-igniting filmgoer passion for classic monster movies and making genre superstars out of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Two…

Matt Brunson

The Grey: Colorless action tale

THE GREY ** DIRECTED BY Joe Carnahan STARS Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney After presenting Mexico City as the ultimate hellhole on Earth, Tony Scott’s 2004 Man on Fire ended with a credit stating that the city was actually “a very special place.” Sydney Pollack’s 1993 The Firm assured us that Cayman Island officials look down…

Matt Brunson

Machine Head rocks The Fillmore Charlotte (2/7/12)

MACHINE HEAD One of the more intriguing metal bands on the circuit, Machine Head’s menacing thud is colored of late with classical and Latin guitar shadings. For almost two decades, the quartet has churned their grind and thrash apropos to the genres, but they’re always looking forward and aren’t afraid to delve into experimentation and…

Samir Shukla

Henry’s Rifle plays The Milestone tonight (2/5/12)

HENRY’S RIFLE John Alfred’s one-man band hammers out raw Americana playing mostly banjo along with harmonica, guitar, heaps of foot-stompin’ and plenty roots-drenched howling. Alfred’s messy mix of blues, country, folk and hillbilly can be raucous or surprisingly sublime. Whether taking the banjo for a pleasant stroll or strumming it into a runaway train, the…

Samir Shukla

Super Bowl shopping?

If you want to spend your day amongst fabulous clothing, shoes and jewelry and enjoy the Q.C.’s biggest Super Bowl Sales, here’s where you need to be.

T. Strong

Mike Doughty at The Evening Muse (2/3/12)

MIKE DOUGHTY Former lead singer of Soul Coughing, Mike Doughty, struck out solo some years ago. Since then, he’s abandoned the talk-singing poetry jam feel of his old musical outfit to pen straightforward, melodious pop songs driven by acoustic guitar. Though delivered in his signature gravely growl, Doughty’s brand of pop is of the head-nodding,…

Rachel Bailey

John Howie Jr. and the Rosewood Bluff at Snug Harbor (2/3/12)

JOHN HOWIE JR. AND THE ROSEWOOD BLUFF Though John Howie lent his plaintive, resonant baritone to Two Dollar Pistols for 13 years, his more recent project is anything but a Pistols reboot. In John Howie and the Rosewood Bluff, the country vocalist and songwriter adopts an electric honky-tonk character punctuated by haunting pedal steel lines.…

Corbie Hill

The Loudermilks at Snug Harbor tonight (2/3/12)

THE LOUDERMILKS These days any appearance by the Edwards boys and their crack rhythm section is cause for suds-hoisting celebration, and a reminder that brothers Alan and Chad remain among the best songwriters this region’s produced. Jon Pareles of the New York Times wrote of a 2002 show by Lou Ford, their previous incarnation, that…

John Schacht

Lydia Loveless at Double Door Inn tonight (2/2/12)

SCOTT H. BIRAM/LYDIA LOVELESS If you remember when the venerable Double Door featured the better country rock bands of the era rolling through town on a regular basis … well, those AARP discounts come in pretty handy, don’t they? Hopefully it’s more than ’90s nostalgia bringing these two Bloodshot artists through, and the start of…

John Schacht

Bizarre crimes from Charlotte police files (Feb. 1)

Teamwork: Employees at a local Burlington Coat Factory called police last week after a mother-daughter duo hatched a plan to steal from the store. An employee told officers she saw the older woman attempting to leave without paying for a shirt and pants. As the employee approached the woman, her daughter attacked the employee physically.…

Ryan Pitkin

Khyre Strong

College life is usually where people go to find themselves. So I wasn’t at all surprised when this UNC Greensboro student, better known as my 18-year-old son, showed up on my doorstep during the holidays rocking a style different from the one I shipped him off to school with. Khyre Strong says he “dresses for…

T. Strong

Weekly horoscope (Feb. 1-Feb. 7)

Aquarius The Waterbearer (Jan. 19-Feb. 18): This is a week in which you may be the chatterbox of the season. Your mind is racing around rapidly and you are connecting the dots in new and different ways. You are verging on a big change in your work status, but the time isn’t quite right until…

Vivian Carol

An overground classic On the Verge

Down in the South, we don’t hear as much onstage from Eric Overmyer as they do out West, where the playwright was born and schooled, or up North, where his hip, brainy slickness is more in demand. During the Loaf Era, we’ve missed out on Overmyer’s musical, In a Pig’s Valise, and many readers may…

Perry Tannenbaum

Capsule reviews of films playing the week of Feb. 1

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN Finally, here’s one seven-year itch that can be scratched. When 2004’s The Polar Express made film history as the first animated movie to be created wholly by employing the motion-capture process, we instantly recognized that we were in the presence of something ghastly. Awkward and unsightly, the ersatz innovation rendered all…

Matt Brunson

Baleadas, pupusas at Copán Restaurant, Restaurant Las Americas

Baleadas have a lyrical name and an unforgettable taste. This Honduran street food is making its way onto more menus throughout Charlotte while its street food sibling, the Salvadorian pupusa, has already muscled its way onto even more. Both are humble foods. While a pupusa has all the comforting components of a grilled cheese sandwich…

Tricia Childress

Her lip gloss is cool: Elle VJ owner launches BEAUTÉ

When LaVonndra Johnson, owner of the women’s boutique Elle VJ, was a kid, her first lessons in makeup application came from watching her grandmother, who utilized only two products: pressed powder and lipstick. “She used her lipstick for everything,” Johnson says. “She would put her pressed powder on and then she would take her lipstick…

Kimberly Lawson

Obama’s late payment to mortgage-fraud victims

In his State of the Union address, many heard echoes of the Barack Obama of old, the presidential aspirant of 2007 and 2008. Among the populist pledges rolled out in the speech was tough talk against the too-big-to-fail banks that have funded his campaigns and for whom many of his key advisers have worked: “The…

Amy Goodman

Occupy Charlotte struggles with new camping ban

Protesters reacted calmly when police arrived at the Occupy Charlotte campsite on East Trade Street around 7 a.m. Monday, ordering the group to comply with a new city law banning camping on public property. At press time, no violence had erupted and no arrests were made, although it was possible that might change as police…

Rhiannon Fionn

Braveyoung’s DIY defiance and heady atmospheres

It would seem to anyone outside the band that Braveyoung has weathered crises that would derail most other acts. External forces imposed an abrupt name change in 2009 (Braveyoung was originally called Giant) and then, just last September, shut down the band’s high-profile community show space just days before a show by modern black metal…

Corbie Hill

3 questions with Chris Phillips, chef at Restaurant X

The Davidson Housing Coalition’s annual Souper Bowl, happening this year on Feb. 4 at Davidson College, is no challenge for Chef Chris Phillips. He’s been a repeat winner at the soup competition, but it’s not all about winning. The event raises money for the nonprofit organization’s HAMMERS (Hands Around Mecklenburg/Mooresville Making Emergency Repairs Safely) program,…

Anita Overcash

CD Review: Brett Netson’s Simple Work for the Road

The New Black; Release date: Nov. 29, 2011 Brett Netson fronted one of the darkest indie psych-jam bands of the ’90s in Caustic Resin. Yet he’s better known for his alliance with fellow Boise guitar heroes Built to Spill, who use the same brooding elements to make much more interesting music. Netson’s played with BtS…

John Schacht

Charlotte’s affable prophet: Sidney L. Freeman

On Jan. 12, Charlotte quietly lost one of its big heroes, the Rev. Dr. Sidney L. Freeman. A longtime minster of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Charlotte, Freeman was one of the leaders who helped transform our town. That his death went relatively unmarked in the larger community is another indication of our seeming disregard…

Jay Leach

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