Mar 2-8, 2016

Mar 2-8, 2016 / Vol. 30 / No. 2

Cover Story

London Has Fallen: Trump card

LONDON HAS FALLEN *1/2 (out of four) DIRECTED BY Babak Najafi STARS Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart President Trump hasn’t even taken office yet, but here we’re already being force-fed the first motion picture under his new world order. London Has Fallen suggests the sort of film Leni Riefenstahl might have made had she bade Hitler…

Matt Brunson

Zootopia: Animal planet

ZOOTOPIA ***1/2 (out of four) DIRECTED BY Byron Howard & Rich Moore STARS Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman For the sake of the children — heck, for your own sake — be sure not to rapidly skim the multiplex marquee and accidentally amble into Zoolander 2 instead of Zootopia. While one ranks as an atrocity worthy…

Matt Brunson

Weekly horoscope (March 3-9)

For All Signs: March is an eclipse season this year. The new Pisces moon of the 8th and the Libra full moon of the 23rd are both eclipsed. In ancient times eclipses were believed frightening, heralding negative omens, especially in regions of their visibility. Contemporary astrologers now perceive these seasons as periods that relieve critical…

Vivian Carol

Bizarre crime from Charlotte police files (March 3)

Plenty of Fish We’re not sure what message an Uptown man was trying to send when he tipped over his girlfriend’s 50-gallon fish tank, but we’re hoping she took it as a clear sign that it’s time to cast her reel elsewhere. The tipping point came during a heated argument, and caused the woman to…

Madeline Lemieux

LGBT groups can’t act as if HIV isn’t their problem

Eight years ago, one of the nation’s leading LGBT civil rights advocates shocked the community and the nation with a bold proclamation. “HIV is a gay disease,” said Matt Foreman, then executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, at the group’s annual Creating Change conference in 2008. Foreman was met with a firestorm of…

Matt Comer

Father Comes Home from the Wars takes a singular look back

Sometimes it’s the winner who adds prestige to the prize. Despite its princely $100,000 payout from Columbia University, you probably never heard of the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History. The importance of the prize is likely to grow now that Lin-Manuel Miranda has snagged the fourth annual award for his…

Perry Tannenbaum

But, what is Butoh?

Fitting into the vein of “dance experiences,” Butoh (pronounced boot-oh) never quite caught on in the way that silly entertainment forms like karaoke did. The unfamiliar Asian dance form emerged during the late 1950s in post-World War II Japan, where it deviated from more traditional dance-theatre styles of that time. Butoh brought new aesthetics to…

Anita Overcash

Deer Tick’s calming clarity

John McCauley needed a break. He needed time off — from music for his sanity, and from drugs for his own well-being. It had all gotten to be too much of a routine. It was a few years ago that McCauley met his future wife, fellow musician Vanessa Carlton, and his record label owner suggested…

Jeff Hahne

Pho and beyond at Saigon Bay Vietnamese Cuisine

A bowl of pho presents itself with the familiarity of an old friend intertwined with the mystery of a new lover. The broth — whether an austere northern Vietnam variety or the bodacious southern style — is the soul of the dish. A chorus of crushed large black cardamom pods, star anise, cloves, shallots, ginger,…

Tricia Childress

A gathering of Charlotte’s tastemakers

We all know Charlotte’s food scene is exploding. Spurred by a clingy “steak and potatoes” reputation, our city’s restaurants, breweries and farms have in the past decade produced an astonishing harvest of innovative tastes. Area chefs are finally shrugging off the shadow cast by Charleston’s low-country cuisine and Atlanta’s New South glitz, and are working…

Alison Leininger

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