May 29 – Jun 4, 2013

May 29 - Jun 4, 2013 / Vol. 27 / No. 14

Cover Story

The 3rd Annual Film Issue

Grab the buttered popcorn and large soda, because it’s time to settle back in your reclining seat and check out the cinematic contents we’ve prepared for this special issue. First, CL freelance writer Page Leggett takes a look at Charlotte’s recently established food & film venues, Cinebarre and Studio Movie Grill. Then CL film critic…

Matt Brunson

Papergirl returns to the Q.C.

Cyclists and art-lovers alike will soon be taking to the streets of Uptown to distribute their expressive, artistic propaganda to an unsuspecting public for … free. It’s all thanks to Papergirl, an organization founded by Aisha Rominger in Berlin, Germany in 2006. It was formed as a response to laws that equated putting up posters…

Bo McMillan

CD Review: Motel Glory’s Weekend Treasures, Monday’s Trash

In Devil Sent the Rain, Tom Piazza’s insightful book about music, America and the backwash of failing levees, the author calls the blues a big river that runs through the middle of our culture. “Every notable form of American music… is a city, or a village, along that river,” Piazza writes. So what does a…

Pat Moran

CD Review: Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City;

Since the release of its self-titled debut in 2008, Vampire Weekend has wooed listeners with its unique and catchy brand of hyper-literate, quirky Ivy-League pop. Despite critical accolades, the band has also carried a college radio/teenybopper stigma through its 2010 release, Contra, which has challenged the band’s legitimacy. However, with its new album, Modern Vampires…

Bo McMillan

Waiting on Lou Reed is no hassle

Most people anticipate meeting Lou Reed with the same dread zoologists reserve for coming into contact with the Mucaque monkey. Piss him off and he not only spits in your eye, but a month later you drop dead from the Herpes B virus. I guess I was lucky. In the late ’70s, I got to…

Peter Gerstenzang

For a home-cooked meal, call …

For $10, a pedicab can take you and your friends down the street to the next bar. With a few clicks and swipes on your iPhone, Amazon will send you a book or a microwave. These days, life is all about convenience. This is especially true when it comes to food. The average American spent…

Kelly Davis

Where to find it: A baguette française

Bread is simple and complex, yet infinitely connected to memory and place. One reader searches for the crusty French-styled baguette he became accustomed to while living in Africa. Anyone who has frequented the boulangeries in Paris can tell you that the French baguette is hard to reproduce. The classic baguette has a crispy golden exterior…

Tricia Childress

Bizarre crimes from Charlotte police files (May 30)

Stop, Drop, Roll: Police responded to an indecent exposure call at a west Charlotte bus stop and found a man who would try anything to stay out of the back of a police car. The man was alleged to have shown his penis to a group of people walking down the sidewalk and screamed profanity…

Ryan Pitkin

Theater reviews: Le Villi, Matsukaze and more

If you get a ticket to see the Le Villi/Mese Mariano opera twinbill at Sottile Theatre, you won’t need to sit close to hear the singing star. Jennifer Rowley is the most powerful soprano voice to hit Spoleto Festival USA since Sondra Radvanovsky sang the title role of Verdi’s Luisa Miller in 2000. Radvanovsky had…

Perry Tannenbaum

Now You See Me: Nothing up its sleeve

NOW YOU SEE ME ** DIRECTED BY Louis Leterrier STARS Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo I daresay that making the entire Grand Canyon disappear would be an easier feat of magic than trying to whip the screenplay for Now You See Me into something remotely logical. The theme of the movie is misdirection — the magician’s…

Matt Brunson

After Earth: Barren territory

AFTER EARTH *1/2 DIRECTED BY M. Night Shyamalan STARS Jaden Smith, Will Smith This nepotism thing can sometimes be a real bitch. When Winona Ryder backed out of The Godfather: Part III due to exhaustion, Francis Coppola cast his daughter Sofia in the pivotal role, and her wretched performance kept that movie off-balance for its…

Matt Brunson

Theater review: War Horse

Even as I watched the fabulous Tony Award-winning production of War Horse in New York more than a year ago, the question arose in my mind, partly because the thrust stage at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre seemed so perfect: How well would a show like this fare on the road – at conventional proscenium…

Perry Tannenbaum

Weekly horoscope (May 31-June 5)

Gemini The Twins (May 20-June 21): Mars, the warrior, enters your sign this week and will be traveling with you for six weeks. This energy is helpful in defining boundaries. Periodically we need to examine who we are and are not. Often, something is eliminated. Courage and physical strength is increased. For All Signs: I’ve…

Vivian Carol

Going the extra miles

Support local theater! The importance of this statement can’t be expressed enough and in the case of Miles & Coltrane: Blue (.), a musical from Concrete Generation and The Stephen Gordon Group, it’s crucial — how else are they going back to Scotland to eat haggis again? I kid. The production premiered in Charlotte back…

Anita Overcash

Can ‘Hornets’ save the Cats?

Suddenly, Charlotte’s excited about basketball again, just days after Bobcats owner Michael Jordan announced that, yes, the team would change its name to the Charlotte Hornets beginning next year. Bobcats fans, as well as hoops fans who don’t care one way or the other about the Cats, plus city boosters and, especially, sports-clothing retailers, are…

John Grooms

Fall Out Boy’s Save Rock tour hits Fillmore

When major label emo-pop survivors Fall Out Boy play the Fillmore on June 1, it’s under the premise that they’re saving rock ‘n’ roll. That’s the name of the band’s new album, after all, as well as its current tour. It’s a smart-ass title, obviously, and with an abundance of bizarre cameos (particularly Courtney Love)…

Corbie Hill

Theater review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Five days before director Tom Morris and Handspring Puppet whizzes Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones’s most celebrated collaboration rolled into Charlotte, the War Horse creators’ latest conspiracy, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, began previews at Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston. Call this collaboration “Peace Horse,” because the two design concepts could hardly be more radically…

Perry Tannenbaum

Full-course film theaters a feast for the senses

David Jones seriously loves movies. He recalls being spellbound by Star Wars as a kid. But in retrospect, the Studio Movie Grill chef feels there was something missing from the experience — food. “I loved Star Wars,” he says. “But if I could’ve ordered a cheeseburger, fries and a milkshake while I watched, it would’ve…

Page Leggett

Ultimate Gangsters Collection Blu-rays a gangster’s paradise

Back during Hollywood's golden age, MGM boasted that it had more stars than there were in heaven. Maybe so, but the studio whose lineup was truly celestial was Warner Bros. — its stable included Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson and Errol Flynn. While MGM focused on musicals, Universal produced horror movies…

Matt Brunson

Full court press: Legal thrillers at ImaginOn

The Main Library’s annual summer film series has won a hefty number of Creative Loafing Best of Charlotte awards over the years, including one for a lineup that focused exclusively on Alfred Hitchcock classics. The Master of Suspense clearly enjoyed crime flicks, so perhaps it was his guiding spirit that led to this year’s theme.…

Matt Brunson

Nonprofit SheCan gives immigrants tools to grow

April showers portend to pepper the month’s last Saturday morning, but the bobbing shock of silver hair leading me briskly through a wooded path shows no signs of slowing. When Pastor Nina Wynn asks you to walk and talk, you better follow. “I’m just going to be the annoying white woman today,” she says, “but…

Laura Camilo

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