Don’t die, Anton
A good documentary transcends the topic’s niche appeal and makes it interesting to a wider audience. You might not see DIG! and run out and buy CDs from The Dandy Warhols or The Brian Jonestown Massacre, but you will be enthralled by their story. The two bands intersect and trade places constantly over the seven-year…
Raise your glass
For Alexander Payne, the wine that endlessly flows in his film Sideways is as celebrated and reviled as his characters. Each time a glass is raised — in celebration, in jest, in anger, or in sadness — this “character,” this bottle of wine, moves from the depths of the subplot to the forefront of the…
High Falls Film Festival Schedule
Wednesday, November 10 Sideways, Opening Night Presentation, 7 p.m., Dryden Theatre Still Doing It, 7 p.m., Little Theatre 1 Free Radicals, 7:15 p.m., Little Theatre 2-5 The Beauty Academy of Kabul, 8:45 p.m., Little Theatre 1 Shorts Program #1, 9:45 p.m., Little Theatre 2-5 The Graffiti Artist, 10:15 p.m., Dryden Theatre Thursday, November 11 A…
Tales of the mundane
Harvey Pekar creates extraordinary art out of ordinary life. His ongoing comic book stories use the mundane detail of everyday existence. But in the flat nowhere zone he’s inhabited all his years, he also finds joy and meaning and sometimes revelation. He started writing comicsin the ’70s, providing text for a series of illustrators (including…
East High rocks the house
It was two days before last Sunday’s Class AAA high-school football final between East and Penfield. East carried an 8-0 record into the game against the 4-4 Patriots of suburbia, but one Monroe County coach didn’t think much of the Orientals. “Who’d they play?” he asked, suggesting that the City-Catholic league’s competition is completely inferior…
Through the power of his music
Although biopics devoted to musicians are so numerous they practically constitute a genre all their own, surely none approaches the timeliness of Ray, the film biography of the great Ray Charles, who died only a few short months ago. According to the publicity, Charles himself approved the screenplay and the casting of Jamie Foxx in…
Also playing…
Even the most diehard fiscal conservative couldn’t deny that the corporate presence is more pervasive and all-encompassing today than in any other period in history. This is the basic point at which The Corporation begins. Filmmakers Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar (Manufacturing Consent) sidestep overt political partisanship. They immediately begin to build a case based…
Sinister strain
The neck on Colin Tyranny’s Gibson SG has been broken at least six times and apparently reaffixed each time with model airplane glue. The bridge was reinstalled crooked after he added a whammy bar. It looks like hell. Yet, plugged in and turned up it sounds incredible. Tyranny strikes the opening note on the opening…
Marching for the dead
More than 100 people gathered at the Federal Building in downtown Rochester late last Friday afternoon, October 29, to mourn the death toll in Iraq. The mock funeral procession came just one day after The Lancet, a British medical journal, released a study estimating 100,000 “excess” civilian deaths in Iraq since the beginning of the…
Reader feedback 11.3.04
Finding ‘Democracy,’ assessing Wegmans
Body count 11.3.04
The totals: 1,118 American soldiers, 142 Coalition soldiers, and approximately 14,219 to 16,352 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq (a recent survey published by Lancet medical journal estimates as many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed) from the beginning of the war and occupation to November 2. American soldiers killed from Oct 26-Nov 2: Sergeant…
Ailing in Upstate: part two
That’s the finding of Losing Ground: Income and Poverty in Upstate New York, 1980-2000, a Brookings Institution report released earlier this fall by Cornell University City and Regional Planning Professors Rolf Pendall and Susan Christopherson. The pair found that taxes and other basic costs are rising here, while wages fail to reach national averages. Poverty…
A feeling of (fore)closure
If you owe money to the City of Rochester in the form of back taxes, you’ve got five years to get caught up. But if you owe it to the County of Monroe, you’d better be prepared to cough up, and fast. For county property taxpayers who’ve fallen behind and hope to get into a…
Burying and resurrecting visual pleasure
Ever since the invention of photography, the “death” of painting (and by association, drawing) has been proclaimed. Every time new forms of representation are announced, the death of old technologies is reiterated. Painting should have been buried a long time ago. Of course, painting has survived, although not in the service of “objective” representation but…
Libraries lose
Accused of using one-time funds to support libraries in a partisan and unequal manner, Republicans in the state Assembly are striking back, saying it’s Democrats who are politicizing the issue. Both the Senate and Assembly originally restored cuts made by Governor George Pataki to libraries and library systems in the 2004 state budget. But when…
Reel women
Here’s a new definition of chick flick: edgy features; satirical shorts; political documentaries; movies about war, jail, sex, brothels, and wrestling. The film festival that celebrates “the accomplishments of women behind the camera” gets bigger and stronger each year. This year, there are more films (40), more famous guests (actors Joan Allen and Sally Kellerman,…
Family valued 11.3.04
All aboard! As children, my siblings and I often sat mesmerized as we listened to our grandfather spin tales from old Norse legends. Peer Gynt was my favorite character. My sister and I have vivid memories of acting out his journeys — racing around objects in the living room, our pace frantically increasing while Grieg’s…
High Falls Film Festival capsules
Wednesday, November 10 Still Doing It: The Intimate Lives of Women Over 65 Deirdre Fishel, US Little Theatre 1, 7 p.m., Q&A with Deirdre Fishel If there was ever a film perfectly suited to a festival highlighting the achievements of women, then Deirdre Fishel’s documentary is it. The aptly titled piece is by women, about…
