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Friday, January 27, 2012
Arts / Today's Top Five Today's Top 5: Friday
Posted By Anita Overcash on Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 10:05 AM
Here are the five best events going down in Charlotte and the surrounding area today, Jan. 27, 2012 — as selected by the folks at Creative Loafing.
• Jack Goes Boating at Carolina Actors Studio Theatre
• Basschurch featuring Mindelixir at The Fillmore
• Converge exhibit at McColl Center for Visual Art
• Gaelic Storm at Neighborhood Theatre
• Mon Frere at Roux
Thursday, January 26, 2012
News Dems out, Dems in: N.C. Democrats go crazy in a day
Posted By Mike Cooper on Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 10:21 PM
The Charlotte Observer quoted a statement she released around noon:
"The thing I care about most right now is making sure that our schools and schoolchildren do not continue to be the victims of shortsighted legislative actions and severe budget cuts," Perdue said in a statement. "Therefore, I am announcing today that I have decided not to seek re-election. I hope this decision will open the door to an honest and bipartisan effort to help our schools."
For months, rumors had swirled around the state's political scene that North Carolina’s first female governor might step aside and not run again, but as she got closer to the filing deadline, that possibility seemed less likely. Rep. Bill Faison of Orange County even came out and predicted Perdue would retire, which he thought was a good idea. But his statement drew backlash from party activists who considered Faison to be all too eager to push the governor out for his own personal ambitions.
Arts / See & Do: The Weekender Weekender, Jan. 27-29
Posted By Anita Overcash on Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 4:51 PM
Check out these events going down in Charlotte and the surrounding area this weekend— as selected by the folks at Creative Loafing.
Friday, Jan. 27
Converge
McColl Center for Visual Arts
Lovers of art come together at McColl Center for Visual Art's new exhibition, aptly titled Converge. Featuring new works — created by Quisqueya Henriquez and Sonya Clark while serving as Knight Artists-in-Residence — the exhibit explores themes of identity and inclusion. Henriquez distorts computerized collages, while Clark uses fiber art (like the pictured construct, "Afro Abe II") to entwine common ... and hairy ... objects with aspects of history. Works by other artists-in-residence can be viewed on the 2nd and 3rd floor galleries.
• Theater Depending on how you look at it, clothes do more than just covering bodies. They actually help us to preserve memories about ourselves, which we may have otherwise forgotten. That’s the concept behind Love, Loss, and What I Wore. The intimate collection of stories by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron gives a new perspective to the stuff stored away in your closet. Cowboy boots are a reminder of a once toxic relationship, while a new bra conjures the harsh diagnosis of breast cancer. More...
• Comedy Mon Frere (French for "my brother"), the Greensboro-based comedy troupe who filled The Mill (now Roux at Boudreaux's) last year during its Harry Potter-inspired sketch shows Hufflepuffed is back — but this time without the brooms and snide comments about Dumbledore. Instead, the troupe has magically maneuvered new material into its act, which is also slated to feature Thunderstood, a one-man multimedia comedy by founding member AJ Schraeder. The show is raising money for travel expenses for Schraeder, who was chosen to attend the San Francisco Sketchfest. Sean Keenan's foul-mouther Talking Baby opens. More...
Saturday, Jan. 28
Melancholia
Carolina Cinemas Crownpoint
Winner of the Best Actress Prize at the Cannes Film Festival — and the movie that writer-director Lars von Trier was promoting when he got banned from the fest for his eyebrow-raising comments involving Adolph Hitler — the visually stimulating Melancholia is landing in Charlotte via a special four-day run presented by the Back Alley Film Series. Kirsten Dunst delivers a quietly powerful performance as Justine, a newly hitched bride whose depression finds a symbolic outlet in Melancholia, a planet that’s heading directly toward Earth. Charlotte Gainsbourg, herself a Cannes prize winner for a von Trier film (Antichrist), co-stars as Justine’s put-upon sister, while Kiefer Sutherland appears as Gainsbourg’s rational husband.
Film / Film News / Film Reviews Fact: Pulp Fiction to be screened next Monday
Posted By Matt Brunson on Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 2:00 PM
- Miramax
- John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson
One of the crowning achievements of 90s cinema was also one of its most influential, spawning a decade's worth of shameless rip-offs, resuscitating John Travolta's dormant career, heralding the arrival of Samuel L. Jackson as a consummate actor, handing Bruce Willis one of his best parts ever, and providing enough subtext to choke Internet chat rooms and message boards for years to come (most prevalent question: What exactly is in that glowing briefcase?). Writer-director Quentin Tarantino's 1994 cause célèbre immediately became a direct challenge to creative complacency: Intoxicated on the heady fumes of its own art form, it employs a nontraditional, nonlinear form of filmmaking to interweave several vignettes all involving various members of a seedy underworld.
Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival before enjoying a successful stateside run that culminated with seven Academy Award nominations (including nods for Best Picture, Travolta, Jackson and Uma Thurman); in the year of Forrest Gump, however, it managed to only win a solitary statue for Best Original Screenplay. ****
Pulp Fiction will be screened as part of The Light Factory's Cult Movie Monday series at 8 p.m. (doors open at 7 p.m.) Jan. 30 at Actor’s Theatre, 650 E. Stonewall St. Admission and popcorn are free; a cash bar is available. More details here.
Arts / Today's Top Five Today's Top 5: Thursday
Posted By Anita Overcash on Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 1:35 PM
Here are the five best events going down in Charlotte and the surrounding area today, Jan. 26, 2012 — as selected by the folks at Creative Loafing.
• Melancholia at Carolina Cinemas Crownpoint
• Nicolay and the Hot at Nights at The Evening Muse
• MMA Cage Fights at Coyote Joe's
• The Art of Cleonique Hilsaca & Alexandra Loesser at Genome
• On the Verge at Warehouse Performing Arts Center
News / Music 'Colorlines' offers "political" obit for R&B great Etta James
Posted By Mark Kemp on Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 12:28 PM
It’s a damn shame that many people were introduced to Etta James in the years before her death last week through Beyonce’s portrayal of her in the 2008 biopic “Cadillac Records.”
That's what writer and activist Kenyon Farrow had to say in his tribute to the great R&B pioneer on the political website Colorlines.com. When James and Johnny Otis died last week within days of each other, popular music lost two cornerstones of modern blues, R&B, soul, funk and rock & roll. Though James and Otis both were born and raised in California, their impact on Southern-derived music is immeasurable, as they not only drew from earlier Southern styles but helped spread the gospel, so to speak, of gritty Southern R&B well into the 1970s.
Coincidentally, the two not only were connected in death — Otis died on Tuesday, at 90, and James Friday, at 73 — but their earlier years were linked as well. It was Otis who discovered the teenaged James when she fronted a late-'50s all-girl doo-wop group, the Creolettes, later renamed the Peaches. Both also were unsung pioneers who never got the level of attention of their more famous contemporaries.
James, in particular, helped define the brash vocal sound of '60s and '70s soul, and had a massive impact on British Invasion rock bands like the Small Faces and the Rolling Stones. She may not have been Southern-born or raised, but it’s impossible to listen to performances like her scorching 1964 live set Etta James Rocks the House and not hear the debt she owes to performers like Otis Redding or the debt singers from Aretha Franklin to Janis Joplin owe to her. Johnny Otis, sometimes referred to as the father of R&B, was a Greek-American bandleader who not only discovered James but produced groundbreaking records such as "Hound Dog," by James' precursor Big Mama Thornton, and brought the R&B/pop singer Jackie Wilson, a big influence on Michael Jackson, to the world’s ears.
All of this is a roundabout way of introducing a different kind of music tribute. On Tuesday, Colorlines ran what it called a "political obituary" of James, written by Farrow, the former executive director of Queers for Economic Justice. After reading the glut of James obits from mainstream media outlets — with their emphasis on her overplayed ballad “At Last” and Beyoncé’s ill-cast portrayal of James in Cadillac Records — it was nice to see a piece that puts the singer into real-life context.
Film / Film News Opening Friday
Posted By Matt Brunson on Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 10:00 AM
- Sony Pictures Classics
- A Dangerous Method
Albert Nobbs - Glenn Close, Janet McTeer
A Dangerous Method - Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley
The Grey - Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney
Man on a Ledge - Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks
One for the Money - Katherine Heigl, Debbie Reynolds
The Wicker Tree - Brittania Nicol, Honeysuckle Weeks
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
News Stats show immigrants make positive impact on Charlotte and N.C.
Posted By Mark Kemp on Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 5:52 PM
- Photo by Thomas Hawk
Here are excerpts from a press sheet the organization released, taken from the website NCPolicyWatch.org:
The 2010 purchasing power of North Carolina’s Latino population totaled $14.2 billion — an increase of 1,601.2% since 1990. The state’s 21,301 Latino-owned businesses had sales and receipts of $4.2 billion and employed over 19,000 people.With 5.4% (or 250,000 workers) of North Carolina’s workforce comprised of unauthorized immigrants, the assumption of many residents, including State Representatives in Raleigh, is that unauthorized immigrants are a burden to the economy and resources of our state. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Unauthorized immigrants in North Carolina . . . paid $317.7 million in state and local taxes in 2010. These taxes, vital sources of revenue for the state of North Carolina, include state income taxes, property taxes (even if they rent), and sales taxes. North Carolina ranks 10th in the nation as a state that receives the most tax revenue from households headed by unauthorized immigrants . . . In spite of the fact that they lack legal status, these immigrants — and their family members — are adding significant value to the North Carolina economy; not only as taxpayers, but as workers, consumers, and entrepreneurs as well.
Read the entire press release here.
Arts LOL: Comedy in the Q.C.
Posted By Anita Overcash on Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 12:28 PM
Listed below is a roundup of CL’s top picks for comedy shows in Charlotte this week. Hopefully, they keep you entertained and, more importantly, laughing out loud.
• Aries Spears has a thing or two to say about discipline. A longtime cast member of MadTv (seasons 3-10), his sketches and parodies on pop culture has earned him gigs in both the comedy and film biz. His mama might have been tough on him, but he turned out to be pretty good. See a clip from one of his past performances below. $15-$20. Wed., Jan. 25, 8 p.m.; Thurs., Jan. 26, 8 p.m.; Fri., Jan. 27-Sat., Jan. 28, 8 p.m. & 10:15 p.m. 980-321-4702. www.cltcomedyzone.com.
• Mon Frere (pictured below), the Greensboro-based comedy troupe who filled The Mill (now Roux at Boudreaux’s) last year during its Harry Potter-inspired sketch shows Hufflepuffed is back — but this time without the brooms and snide comments about Dumbledore. Instead, the troupe has magically maneuvered new material into its act, which is also slated to feature Thunderstood, a one-man multimedia comedy by founding member AJ Schraeder. The show is raising money for travel expenses for Schraeder, who was chosen to attend the San Francisco Sketchfest. Sean Keenan’s foul-mouthed Talking Baby opens. $7. Fri., Jan. 27, 8:30 p.m. Roux, 3306 N. Davidson St., Suite A. 704-331-9898. For more information, click here.
• Local comedians Kayte Malik, Chris Layton, Will Spann, Eric McCrickard, Steve Price and AJ Ellis have teamed up for Black Tie Comedy. Proceeds raised from the show will be donated to support the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Cheers to laughing for a good cause! Sat., Jan. 28, 8 p.m. Loft 1523, 1523 Elizabeth Ave. 704-333-5898. www.loft1523.com.
Arts / Today's Top Five Today's Top 5: Wednesday
Posted By Anita Overcash on Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 9:31 AM
Here are the five best events going down in Charlotte and the surrounding area today, Jan. 25, 2012 — as selected by the folks at Creative Loafing.
• Zane Lamprey's Drinking Made Easy at VBGB Beer Hall & Garden
• Jaimoe's Jasssz Band at Double Door Inn
• Aries Spears at The Comedy Zone Charlotte
• Wine Dinner featuring Wine to Water Wines at Customshop
• Artist Mingle at The Saloon
