Reader feedback 12.15.04
Choosing a mayor, saving the ferry, questioning the war|Iraq war
Body count 12.15.04
To honor the war dead and fill an information gap in US mass media, City Newspaper will run weekly lists of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed during the occupation of Iraq. The totals: 1,281 American soldiers, 146 Coalition soldiers, and approximately 14,668 to 16,853 Iraqicivilians have been killed in Iraq (a recent survey published…
Your next big gamble
If you’re like most people — about 70 percent at the time of this writing — you’ve put off making a decision about your electricity supply until the last possible minute. Well, the last possible minute has arrived. After December 30, Rochester Gas & Electric will automatically make the decision for everybody who hasn’t made…
Hurt and anger in the neighborhoods
“Anger is a secondary emotion. The first emotion is hurt. Our kids are angry, but initially they are hurt. They’re in excruciating pain; they have nothing to look up to, nothing to look forward to.” Those words came from one of the many speakers at a December 7 community forum, attended by about 60, mostly…
Family valued 12.15.04
‘Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events’ If you loved a book, as Lila loved the Unfortunate Events volumes, you want a filmmaker to show love for his source. But film is its own medium, and has to be approached differently. It’s a tough balance. Here, director Brad Silberling and — especially — cinematographer Emmanuel…
Heritage found
Walter Evans says he doesn’t remember going to art museums when he was growing up. At first it was because in the 1940s in the South (first Savannah, Georgia, and then Beaufort, South Carolina), African Americans weren’t allowed in places like museums and galleries. Later, after moving to Connecticut, he was by then a typical…
The coffee barista’s experiment
1) In the 20th hour the spider plant waved at Shelly. It was in that instant that you glimpse the outside world before the bathroom door latches shut. As she eased down her zipper the image blazed…. 2) In the 27th hour Shelly imagined the city built of sugar cubes. As she mixed chocolate syrup…
From Joe Fan: I believe
After an inauspicious 0-4 start, it was looking like another one of those seasons for the Buffalo Bills. You know, the kind that begin with high expectations and end in disillusionment. Fans in Buffalo and beyond were frustrated and clamoring for answers. One of the most common questions was, “Why does this team look the…
With another caper, another crew
Hollywood’s familiar tendency to repeat itself, in the form of sequels and remakes, occasionally results in some entertaining and even artistically successful motion pictures — The Empire Strikes Back, the second chapter in the Star Wars series, for example, and that great American document, The Godfather, Part II. Remakes as different as, say, the second…
Also playing… love is a complicated thing
The thing about documentaries is they are what they are. It’s not fair to critique the narrative because that can turn into passing judgment on its subject. You could discuss the filmmaker’s technique, but there’s usually not much to say about filming a true story. And that’s why this review of Tarnation was so hard,…
The XX Files
I grew up in a list family. My mother wrote her numbered lists carefully on a journalist’s pad, a True smoldering in the ashtray. My father scribbled his lists everywhere — on napkins, torn legal paper, oversized graph pads. No task was too large or too small. He’d write: “Wake up. Meditate. Eat breakfast. Read…
Here comes the bus
Poor People United’s Charles Kellum calls Rochester’s winter cold “a natural disaster.” Last year, prompted by PPU, Monroe County came up with the idea for emergency shelter nights: when the weather is particularly cold, the homeless are allowed into shelters without admission restrictions and without curfews. But according to Kellum, those emergency nights aren’t effective…
