Accomplished
It usually isn’t hard to tell a war movie from an anti-war movie. If the combat experience is presented as a rousing boys’ adventure in which the good guys stomp the bad guys, and clear-cut goals are met, then it’s a war movie (e.g., practically every WWII film ever made). But if the combat experience…
Foul Play
Tune N
Dr. Feelbad
Citizen Servatius
Breaking news
ANDY GRIFFITH RECEIVES PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM Must be for the time he finally caught Ernest T. Bass. YO, K.FED RAPS! Brit’s baby daddy Kevin Federline kickstarts his c(rap)tacular career with wack rhymes about being chased by “Pavarottis,” making us long for Vanilla Ice. BOBCATS PLAY TO FULL HOUSE WHILE both THEY AND PANTHERS LOOK…
Ferrari In A Junkyard
Look in virtually every neighborhood on Earth and you’ll discover restless youth playing pointless games and obsessing over sex. The erotic, culture-crossing film Lila Says finds unique pressures in the Arab quarter of Marseilles. Not only do young Chimo (Mohammed Khouas) and his scofflaw pals deal with boredom, joblessness and raging hormones, they routinely face…
Conservatives’ Problems
Boomer With Attitude
Movie Of A Different Feather
With its hand-drawn animation division boarded up and its profitable partnership with Pixar having crashed and burned, Walt Disney Pictures — with no small measure of fanfare — has taken the next step by creating its own fully computer-animated movie. The headache-inducing preview for Chicken Little promised a disaster, though surely no one at Disney…
The Carolina Renaissance Festival
The final weekend of the annual Carolina Renaissance Festival is here. This festival transports visitors to an European style county fair with a rabble of knights, rogues, royalty and craftsmen, all roaming a 20-acre village stocked with 100 quaint shops, 9 stages of non-stop entertainments, an arena for full-contact armored jousting, royal kitchens, pubs, and…
Sniff, Sniff
CORKSCREW It’s cold season once again, and it’s amazing how frustrating an arduous batch of germy bacteria can be — especially if you have to use your nose for a living. I recently fell prey to the evil, stick-to-your-lymph-nodes cold that’s permeating the Southeast, and for the first time in my life, tasting wine was…
See & Do
Wednesday, november 09 If you want to go beyond Strauss’s squealing clarinet and portentous trap drums to the real story of prankster Till Eulenspiegel, Crazyface promises to take the wraps off the saga at SouthEnd Performing Arts Center through November 19. The BareBones Theatre Group production, designed and directed by the ultra outre Peter Smeal,…
Showdown
After a large number of corporate restaurants were chosen by CL readers in the 2005 Best of Charlotte Food and Drink section, many of the notable chefs and restaurateurs in town reportedly spent the better part of August banging their torques against the wall. I asked readers what was the perceived difference between locally owned…
Letters
America the Delusional This is in response to Richard Spellman’s letter to the editor (“Dept. of Truth Hurts II, Oct. 26). Mr. Spellman believed John Grooms’ article “Gouged” (Oct. 12) to be fiction and implied that the European model of mass transit is a system forced upon Europeans by their dictatorial governments. For the record,…
Five Hotties
It started out innocently enough, with me and a large bottle of Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce. If you’ve hung out at any Southeastern Asian restaurants you’ve seen it: a clear plastic squeeze bottle with a rooster on the front. Sriracha, although made by a Vietnamese émigré, is 100 percent American, made in California. Shortly after…
Mr. Big Smile
Moodswing
The Wine List
Wine Classes Fall classes presented by the Carolina Wine Club. www.carolinawineclub.com. Nov. 15: Amarone — The Recent Phenomenon, 6:15-8pm. $35. Westye Group Southeast Showroom, 127 West Worthington Ave. # 104. 704-344-8027. Wine Tasting A different sampling of wines every week. Saturdays, 12-5pm. Free. Frugal MacDoogal’s, I-77 at Carowinds Blvd. 803-548-6634. Wine Tasting Festival Charlotte Sister…
Clean Heart, Dirty Mind
“Masturbation” is the first word I hear from the wholesome lady in the wholesome brown sweater as I walk into the chapel. I have stepped into a conference sponsored by Clean Heart Ministries, an organization of “hope and healing for the sexually and relationally broken,” so I’m not surprised to hear the “M” word bandied…
Critter Appreciation
Don’t you just love critters? They’re kinda like people, only different. In some ways, better. Look ’em in the eye: it’s freaky! Here are some hot linx to put you into a critter appreciation frame of mind. Oh, and remember, bugs are people too. Squish! Minoan Snake Goddess http://witcombe.sbc.edu/snakegoddess Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary www.elephants.com Krazy Kat…
Lit Smorgasbord
Book Reviews
Yo, Bum Rush the Minstrel Show
Alert Uncle Disney: Durham’s Little Brother is helping to compose the futurist “Song of the South.” They may hail from the Dirty Dirty, but the hip-hop trio’s fine new Atlantic Records CD, The Minstrel Show, challenges notions that Dixie brothas are stone country-ass and that all current MCs operate in blingface. The Minstrel Show’s attempt…
The Blotter
D’oh!: A woman stopped by her mother’s house for a routine check while her mother was out of town. The woman noticed someone had eaten six donuts that had been in the kitchen the day before. Upon inspecting the house, she found an unknown man, the presumed donut snatcher, under her mother’s bed. When she…
John Tosco
To justincase fans, John Tosco is The Daddy, Charlotte’s version of Jessica and Ashlee’s Daddy Joe Simpson. OK, maybe not Daddy Joe — that’s extreme. More like the anti-Daddy Joe. After all, most folks know the more organic Tosco as that tireless local music booster who holds all those neo-hootenannies at places like the Evening…
Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser: I am not sure which category this may fall under, because I guess it is a little bad and a little good. At a Halloween party, I found myself making out in the bathroom with someone else’s boyfriend. Bad, I know. But the girlfriend wasn’t there (not so bad) and she’s been…
A chip off the old pop
Since its star turn in “The Bait Shop” on FOX’s The O.C., Rooney has catapulted itself to undercard status on all sorts of Big Rock Tours, opening for hip acts such as Weezer and The Strokes. Rooney has played several small headlining tours, too, even though the group has only one self-titled album released two…
Stargazer
Scorpio The Scorpion (Oct. 23 — Nov. 20) Authority figures have the upper hand now and are not willing to haggle. Do your job, do it well, and don’t argue the small stuff. Set decisions aside for the time being. The chances are strong that between Nov. 26 and Dec. 11 new information will give…
Reg Strikes Back, Again and Again
Early in Elton John’s career — before the platforms, glitter and far-out frames — he was a singer/songwriter who recorded several rootsy pop albums with his lyricist partner Bernie Taupin. John and other proto-Americana acts — The Band, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, assorted LA/Laurel Canyon rockers of the early 1970s — were pursuing an…
Chicken Little! Chicken Little!
On November 1, the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners held an avian flu readiness meeting to discuss North Carolina’s plan to handle a pandemic. The list of prevention and protection activities includes a variety of monitoring and surveillance devices and states that no fewer than 12 epidemiologists are within state borders. Mecklenburg County is concerned.…
Out of the Closet and Into the Keg
A buff guy with Greek letters on his chest is sauntering about a laid-back south Charlotte club on a recent Saturday, administering spankings with a paddle the size of a small child. Meanwhile, several hundred fit, good-looking guys clutch their Bud Lights and Long Island iced teas, proudly displaying the logos emblazoned on their T-shirts.…
Film Clips
New Releases LOGGERHEADS The best regional filmmakers are able to capture the nuances of their home turf in ways that would be impossible for an East or West Coast film crew to manufacture. In the case of Carolina moviemakers, that translates to pictures that are slowly paced but not slow-witted, leisurely but not lethargic, pensive…
Generation Flex
The Generation Gap never went away — it’s just on the down-low. When everyone is hip — the albatross of generations XYZ with Boomer parentage — a potentially alienating sound alone distinguishes youth aesthetics. Some notable generational culture-war fodder of recent months includes: Jamiroquai’s latest, Dynamite (Epic/Sony BMG; HH 1/2), returns to the British group’s…
View From The Couch
THE BRAT PACK MOVIES & MUSIC COLLECTION (1984-1985). Two years ago, Universal released three of John Hughes’ Brat Pack flicks under the moniker “High School Reunion Collection”; the DVDs (available separately or as a box set) were disappointing in that extra features were limited to the films’ theatrical trailers. Now Universal has seen fit to…
Representing in Guantanamo Bay
New York City attorney Joshua Colangelo-Bryan met three weeks ago with Jumah al-Dossari, an inmate at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. When al-Dossari said he needed to visit the restroom, guards walked him to a cell equipped with a toilet. The prisoner was gone for a long time, so Colangelo-Bryan went to…
