Film Clips
NEW RELEASES THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES Why should fictional movie characters be the only ones to have any fun in being placed at the center of madcap “mistaken identity” farces? The Emperor’s New Clothes, adapted from Simon Leys’ novel The Death of Napoleon, dumps the legendary French leader into an innocuous comedy that largely stays…
See & Do
JULY24 WEDNESDAYMoby, one of the few short, bald 30-somethings to achieve massive pop-culture fame, will appear tonight at 8pm at the Grady Cole Center with special guests Azure Ray and Dirty Vegas. Tickets are $25, available by calling 704-522-6500. The 107.9 Wednesday Happy Hour Free Concert Series continues today at Gateway Village with Edwin McCain…
Coop D’etat
It’s 8:15 on a Saturday night. Outside, trees dance frenetically in advance of an approaching storm. Upstairs inside the old brick building at the corner of Central and Pecan Avenues, however, things are relatively quiet. Here at The Perch, members of Charlotte’s homegrown sketch comedy club are preparing for the second week of “audience favorite”…
Dunce Bitten
I’m a 34-year-old guy who’s ready to settle down and start a family, but I can’t even get a date! I don’t think I’d know a woman was interested unless she came out and said so. Because I’m such a dating dunce, it takes enormous effort for me just to ask a woman out to…
The National Snooping Network
Operation Snitch is coming next month to a neighborhood near you.The government doesn’t call it that, of course. The administration’s program has been christened, more benignly, Operation TIPS — the Terrorism Information and Prevention System. But the national snooping network, despite reassuring noises from the Justice Department and the Homeland Security chief, will be anything…
Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser:A number of years ago, things were very bad between my wife and myself and I became involved with a co-worker. I became distant to my wife, made excuses that it was because of my workload and started keeping secrets. We eventually divorced and I became involved with my co-worker. It is now…
The Other World Cup
The World Cup just ended, or is it just ready to get started? For Jonathan Robertson and Mark Carpenter of Charlotte, the real World Cup begins on August 28. But they play a different brand of soccer. Instead of taking place on a huge grassy field, the games for this championship will be held on…
Stargazer
For All Signs Mars, the ancient god of war, is making particularly difficult aspects this week and affecting a majority of the 12 signs. There is likely to be an underlying sense of fear, anger and hostility all around us. However, there is not a really appropriate outlet for this energy, so many will also…
The Tipping Point
Feeling the urge to check out someplace new last Friday night, a gaggle of friends and I headed to 5th Street, home to The Hungry Duck. The building’s housed a few different establishments over the years, usually changing with the prevailing tide of whatever trend’s sweeping through town. Now, the place is nicely swathed in…
Baiting the Hook
Bait isn’t just for fishing and hunting — it applies to dating as well. After all, dating is essentially a socially acceptable hunting trip. We use all kinds of bait to attract members of the opposite sex. We wear perfumes and colognes, spend thousands of dollars a year on clothes, cosmetics, jewelry, you name it,…
Hootie & the Blowhards
Augusta National Golf Club would do well to follow the adage popularized by filmmaker Spike Lee and “Do the right thing.”That, Mr. Club Chairman, William (Hootie) Johnson, will stop the letters from coming and cease the drumbeat of calls for Augusta National, site of the Masters, to open its doors to female members. And it…
Art & Hyperbole
SELF by Marc Quinn<a There's something rotten in Nigella Lawson's new kitchen: a gory, melting head of human blood.Blood, and other bodily fluids, have permeated the contemporary art scene over the last few years, and art in Europe always seems to be more intense, more encompassing, more there as part of daily life, than the…
For The Children
“I’m going outside to slit my wrists,” I informed my editor last week. “I give up.” I had just received a press release that should be sent to everyone who has ever voted for a county bond package or anyone who might consider voting for one in the future. It was quite enlightening. It seems…
Chronicler of the Everyday
Although it took him nearly 12 years to fill this slender volume of seven stories, Richard Russo’s new collection proves worth the wait. Released on the heels of his last novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls, The Whore’s Child explores how even the simplest hopes and dreams are often difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.…
The Dry Season
Look around your neighborhood and others that you visit, and you’ll notice that there are two kinds of lawns in Charlotte right now. You have your regular lawns, the ones that haven’t seen more than a few drops of water in months and months. These lawns are identifiable by their brown and crispy nature. Then…
Arts Agenda
arts agenda Classical Music American Guild of Organists Summer Recital Series featuring Larry Stratemeyer. Sun., July 28, 7:30 p.m. St. Patrick’s Cathedral, 1621 Dilworth Rd. 704-588-1290. American Guild of Organists Summer Recital Series featuring Jay Oden. Sun., Aug. 4, 7:30 p.m. All recitals are free and open to the public. However, a free-will offering will…
The Blotter
Divine Intervention? A local church may be looking a little bare after someone dug up $350 worth of bushes at the front entrance. After digging them out, he or she, not wanting to engage in wasted effort, stole them. Perhaps The Big Man prefers flowers outfront instead. I’m Number One: A Charlotte man recently reported…
Colombia On South
In a section of South Boulevard well south of SouthEnd, where fun and diversions are overshadowed by an industrial area, one space in a strip shopping center seems to have had more rebirths than Cher’s hair (OK, wig). In the past five years it has been the home of a Lebanese fish restaurant, a chicken…
News of the Weird
Earnhardt lives on: In June, an Interlachen, Fla., farmer named a goat (which he said came from a long line of show goats) Li’l Dale when it was born with a white marking in the shape of a “3” on its brown coat (and which the hundreds of Floridians who flocked to see it thought…
Good Eats
All Around Town Anntony’s Caribbean, 400 S. Tryon St., 704-339-0303; 2001 E. 7th,, 704-342-0749. All locations have different owners. A hint of the tropics; rotisserie chicken with Jamaican jerk sauce, ribs, Paradise Island fish special, curries, and Caribbean styled greens. $$ Brixx Wood-Fired Pizza, 801 Scott Avenue, 704-376-1000; 225 E. 6th Street, 704-347-2749; 16915 Birkdale…
Emo-tional Rescue
The term “emo” means many things to many people. Some see it as a style of music that serves to pump some blood back into the oft-times soulless genre of “alternative” music. Some see it as a warning sign that you’re about to experience interminable woe-is-me bleating, a la Dashboard Confessional. Worse yet, to many…
Chronic No More
Chronic plays their farewell show Friday at Midtown 51
Music Menu
WEDNESDAY 7.24 Moby / Azure Ray — Listening to Moby’s records of late conjures up spectral ends of the music rainbow; then again, the dance music innovator has always played by his own rules. The new record is no different, as the pieces can go from indie rock to bluesy-gospel tearjerkers to his flamboyant disc…
Soundboard
Wednesday, Jul. 24 Arnie’s Tavern, Huntersville Scott Johnson Bayou Kitchen Bill Noonan Big Al’s Pub, Mooresville Socialite Cajun Queen 7th Street Gator Band Cajun Queen, Pineville 7th Street Gator Band II Charleston Chops, Cornelius Kent Steel Connolly’s Craig & Rich Acoustic * Double Door Inn The Interstellars w/ The Cause The Evening Muse The Turnstiles…
Brains, beauty & brawn
Perhaps wary of the controversy that surrounded the liberal handling of factual material in films like The Hurricane and JFK, the makers of A Beautiful Mind (***1/2 out of four) went out of their way to make it known upfront that their movie was “a semi-fictional story” and “a distinctive departure from the source material.”…
