Mar 25-31, 2015

Mar 25-31, 2015 / Vol. 29 / No. 5

Cover Story

Four state lawmakers from Mecklenburg County are the new order

Twitter exploded the February morning a 32-year-old state senator arrived at the General Assembly on a snow day. “I think I’m the only legislator in the building. Let me take care of a few things,” posted Jeff Jackson, who later tweeted about expanding Medicaid and raising teacher pay. “This is going to be like Night…

Michael A. Cooper Jr.

Get Hard: You gotta have Hart

GET HARD**1/2DIRECTED BY Etan CohenSTARS Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart For a movie that spends so much time wallowing in gay panic, Get Hard should be an early frontrunner for the title of the year’s worst comedy; instead, it provides enough sharp satire on other fronts — and finds one of its stars fully coming into…

Matt Brunson

Wild Tales: Mild but mirthful

WILD TALES***DIRECTED BY Damián SzifrónSTARS Ricardo Darín, Oscar Martinez An anthology film that calls itself Wild Tales can only truly deliver on its moniker by offering stories comparable to the insane likes of, say, Luis Buñuel’s 1929 Un Chien Andalou (with that infamous eyeball-slicing scene), John Waters’ 1970 Multiple Maniacs (featuring a character called The…

Matt Brunson

Go with the flow at Winston-Salem’s RiverRun film fest

Would it be acceptable to call the RiverRun International Film Festival an Academy Award winner? After all, the long-running Winston-Salem fest scored two major victories from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences this past calendar year. In January 2014, shortly before the 16th annual shindig, RiverRun was accepted as a qualifying festival for…

Matt Brunson

Bizarre crime from Charlotte police files (March 26)

Ah, nuts: A 63-year-old south Charlotte woman phoned police after she noticed several items missing from outside her home. Among the items that were stolen were a planter with boxwood, a lantern and a stone chipmunk holding a bowl of nuts. Did You Think You Won A Contest?: Police were called after a woman says…

Jeff Hahne

Weekly horoscope (March 26-April 1)

For All Signs: This week may have everyone reeling, to one degree or another, in the changes precipitated by the past six weeks. We are in the pocket between the full moon eclipse of March 20 and the upcoming new moon eclipse on April 4. The chances are high that you and everyone you know…

Vivian Carol

Girls on Girls

I go to the gym three days a week. While there, I subject myself to all kinds of torture. Painful, gut-wrenching stuff dreamed up by my trainer, a 52-year-old man with the body of an action figure. I sweat. I curse. I call on Jesus, hoping for some kind of supernatural help. Then I leave,…

Claire Gibson

Undateable in the Queen City

Single people now have a remedy to feeling better about their loneliness: By watching NBC’s Undateable. The series, which had its second season premiere on March 17, revolves around five guys — plus two main female characters — who spend their time shooting the shit in a local bar discussing relationships gone wrong. One of…

Anita Overcash

The Normal Heart continues Charlotte’s struggle with a tough topic

Thirty-five years after a new illness began afflicting gay men, local theater companies shouldn’t have trepidations about staging a drama which recaptures the original anguish of the AIDS crisis. Yet, as the fine Theatre Charlotte production of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart reminded us on opening night, bringing up the subject in the Queen City…

Perry Tannenbaum

Three questions with Oscar La Fuente of Evoke

Oscar La Fuente didn’t always know he wanted to lead a culinary life. His dad used to own a carpentry shop, and La Fuente thought he was destined to join the family business. But after just three years of whittling wood, he decided he couldn’t see himself in that profession for 40 years and turned…

Sara Workman

Broods adjusts to life as world travelers

Only two years ago, Georgia Nott was at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. She was never one to put in time studying, like her older brother, Caleb. She preferred working on music. When the siblings decided to drop out and pursue their electronic music duo, Broods, full time, their musician parents were surprisingly…

Jeff Hahne

CD review: Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly

Hip-hop has always involved some sort of braggadocio. Take spotlight-stealer Kanye West, for example. Yep, being an asshole is one way to do it. The other way is the “put up or shut up” method. Compton’s Kendrick Lamar released a stellar album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, in 2012, but many felt his guest spot on…

Jeff Hahne

More than tacos at RuRu’s

It’s spring. Finally. Prime time for good food and music on Charlotte’s quintessential patio at RuRu’s Tacos & Tequila. It’s the current and most compelling rustic incarnation at The Villa, the Tuscan-style home built in the 1920s by heiress Blanche Reynolds, now divided into multiple businesses. (And for long-term Charlotteans who remember drinking by the…

Tricia Childress

Waving pom-poms for Loretta Lynch

One chilly Thursday evening earlier this month, I made my way to the Levine Museum of the New South after work. The Uptown venue was hosting the latest installment of its “New South for the New Southerner” series, and the program promised to discuss the rise of female leadership in Charlotte. As the woman at…

Kimberly Lawson

Mad Monster Party: Fright Nights

“To a new world of gods and monsters!” toasted Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) in the 1935 horror classic The Bride of Frankenstein, a sentiment that comes up lacking when discussing Charlotte’s Mad Monster Party. Created by California kids Eben McGarr and Joe Moe, this annual event, back in town for the fourth time, indeed offers…

Matt Brunson

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