In defense of pro athletes
It’s Christmas blockbuster movie season. I’ll see The Polar Express with Tom Hanks, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events with Jim Carrey, and Spanglish with Adam Sandler. And I’m telling you, if those movies stink, I’ll be so angry that I’ll head to the Oscars in February and throw beers at each of those…
Coupling, uncoupling, recoupling
Given his track record, it seems entirely appropriate that Mike Nichols should direct the film adaptation of Patrick Marber’s play Closer. He began his career as an actor — and his films suggest that he works sensitively with actors — and maintains a close relationship with the theater both as director and producer. Although he…
Lessons in being passive and aggressive
It probably seemed like a simple proposition: Award-winning documentary filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky would be granted unlimited access to Metallica, underground speed-metal band turned platinum-selling behemoth, while they wrote and recorded their next album. Berlinger and Sinofsky already had a relationship with the group, having used its music for the intense Paradise Lost:…
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Every artistic endeavor begins with a concept. Any work of art that achieves the highest level of success does so because the final outcome realizes and even surpasses the original concept. For every masterpiece by Henri Cartier-Bresson, there are thousands of photographers who develop an idea with infinite potential, yet never produce that brilliance in…
‘Prepared to spend a lifetime’
Earlier this year, before the Republican and Democratic parties had selected their presidential candidates, folk singer-guitarist Ani DiFranco talked to City about the dilemma facing those who had voted for Nader in 2000. This time around, there was a growing sense among progressives that they would have to vote practically instead of support the candidate…
‘Follow this, bitches’
I dunno. Maybe rock ‘n’ roll lost its punch with the introduction of grammar. As soon as songwriters got clever, or cleaned up their English, or started straying outside the jungle, the primal urge was lost. So the next time you sit down to bang out the next rockin’ ode to whatever, here’s a good…
Our Albany scofflaws
Just picture it: state police swooping down on the capitol building in Albany, arresting Governor Pataki and members of the Senate and Assembly, and hauling them off to jail. It won’t happen, of course. If you or I refused to obey a judge, you knowwhat would happen. But not with this court order. Not…
Going Dutch
Sugar, spice, everything nice, and a tendency to break into cartwheels, song, and dance… that’s what the girls in the after-school double Dutch program at School 30 are made of. And maybe a little more spice than most. A group of about 15 first to fifth graders gather in the School 30 gym at 36…
Reader feedback 12.8.04
Bush’s environmental threats, Johnson’s ferry plan
Body count 12.8.04
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: 1,273 American soldiers, 146 Coalition soldiers, and approximately 14,619 to 16,804 Iraqicivilians have been killed in Iraq (a recent survey published…
Switch hitter: A lefty gets it right?
Bill Smith still remembers the moment he began to think that one of his Democratic colleagues in the county legislature might make a good Republican. Recalling a casual policy discussion he was having with Chris Wilmot, the Republican majority leader describes Wilmot’s dialogue as “very lucid and a very insightful analysis of what the core…
Family valued 12.8.04
“It might be credit, and it might be barter, but they’ll always find a way you make you pay.” — Ain’t No Free, by Terry Adams The phrase “family computing” has increasingly become an oxymoron, right up there with “Microsoft Works” and “quality television.” How do parents determine the appropriate level of Internet access for…
Dance a new dance
Returning to Nazareth Arts Center November 30 through December 5, Garth Fagan Dance introduced new dancers and an already acclaimed new work and demonstrated again why they are Rochester’s only performing arts group to receive annual plaudits worldwide. I’m not sure that departed company icon Natalie Rogers or the superb Chris Morrison can be replaced,…
Queasy queens and claptrap death
A leader in alternative theater, Shipping Dock chose an offbeat gay Christmas comedy for the holidays. But The Crumple Zone by Buddy Thomas is slight and uneven and needs all the theatrical help it can get. On opening night it didn’t get much. Under the pressure of a major case of amateur actors’ opening-night panic,…
Fascism in America?
The last place you might expect to find a progressive would be the executive offices at Allied Chemical, Mobil, or Xerox Corp. But, throughout a business career that spanned four decades, Laurence Britt never stopped challenging the status quo. And at the age of 64, he has become a leading voice on the left. Britt,…
