Spoonful of Cinema: No Escape
No Escape is fine, I guess. It’s surprisingly better than I would have suspected, but I’m not recommending it. The action is tense but the story is flat. Its story is wildly boring and its perspective is probably xenophobic. Giving the filmmaking Dowdle brothers the benefit of the doubt as far as the xenophobic possibilities…
Planned Parenthood Sues Ohio Over Abortion Access
Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio filed a federal lawsuit today against the state of Ohio, charging that "hostile policies" passed by the state in the last few years greatly restrict women's access to abortions. The suit comes after new restrictions were slipped into Ohio's budget earlier this year. Among those restrictions was a clause that…
Morning News and Stuff
Good morning all. Here’s the news today. First, a man died last night after he was Tased by police in Over-the-Rhine. Cincinnati police responded to the Shell station on Liberty Street after reports the man was trying to rob a woman in a car there. When officers arrived, they say the man would not respond…
Cincinnati at the VMAs
I tried to watch last night's Video Music Awards on MTV, but it was such an awkward and confusing clusterfuck, I couldn’t take much of it, flipping through for a few moments before moving on out of embarrassment for the people on the screen. I usually like when awards shows are a little chaotic (and the…
Morning News and Stuff
Good morning y’all. I’m still super-drowsy from the weekend, which means it was a good one, right? Hope yours was also great. Let’s talk about that news stuff, shall we? A new report released today from the Greater Cincinnati Urban League highlights what a lot of folks already know, even if they didn’t have the…
Morning News and Stuff
Good morning all! Hope your Friday is starting off well. It’s gorgeous outside, so maybe cut work a little early if you can, eh? In the meantime, here’s the news. A new study by the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center suggests that living in high-poverty areas might lead to more sickness among young children. Hospitalization…
Your Weekend To Do List (8/28-8/30)
FRIDAY MUSIC: MARK MOTHERSBAUGH Mothersbaugh Mania officially kicks off in Cincinnati on Friday when Mark Mothersbaugh — the co-founder of the great Post-Punk band DEVO, as well as an accomplished visual artist who studied his craft at Kent State University — appears at Woodward Theater for a concert sponsored by the Contemporary Arts Center. (The…
Stage Door
At this point in the summer you have to look a little harder for theater productions. Most of our local companies are rehearsing for shows to open their 2015-2016 seasons. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to see, especially if you’d like to enjoy theater in the great outdoors. Queen City Flash’s performances of The…
I Just Can’t Get Enough
Serena Williams and Drake made out at Sotto. What did you do this weekend? Serena was in town competing in the Western & Southern Open; Drake came to watch. The two celebrated Serena’s finals win with dinner at Sotto downtown and, apparently, a little mouth-on-mouth action. Drake also supported Serena at Wimbledon earlier this summer.…
Morning News and Stuff
Happy Thursday, Cincy! Better yet, tomorrow's Friday. So here's today's headlines to make the week pass a little quicker. • Mayor John Cranley vetoed a Nov. 3 ballot-bound charter yesterday that would allow city council to meet in secret about certain topics, including property sales, the city manager's performance and some economic development deals. The…
Z for Zachariah
Director Craig Zobel (Compliance) and screenwriter Nissar Modi (Breaking at the Edge) transform Robert C. O’Brien’s post-apocalyptic science-fiction tale into an intimate story of cautious rebirth with a highly charged ménage á trois that everyone knows cannot maintain and bear meaningful fruit for humanity. Ann Burden (Margot Robbie) manages alone on her family farm until…
We Are Your Friends
Last year during my festival survey, I caught Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden, an epic feature exploring the underground music scene in the early 1990s from the perspective of a DJ collective caught up in the swirling dynamics of sex, drugs and music. We Are Your Friends, from co-writer and director Max Joseph (of documentary feature 12…
Event: Raise the Heights
The Kennedy Heights Arts Center, one of the best and most ambitious in the region, takes a great leap forward this weekend when it opens its new 10,500-square-foot annex in a portion of an old Kroger grocery store. The overall site has been christened the Kennedy Heights Cultural Campus because the building also holds the…
Event: Taste of OTR
The third-annual Taste of OTR is a family-friendly day of food, craft beer and live entertainment in Washington Park to benefit Tender Mercies, a nonprofit in the heart of Over-the-Rhine that provides housing to homeless adults living with mental illness and a variety of supportive services. Things kick off at 11 a.m. with a performance…
Event: Mini Maker Faire
Grab the kids and head to the Cincinnati Museum Center for Mini Maker Faire, a celebration of creativity and invention spread across the rotunda, the center’s three museums and outside. This two-day show-and-tell features “makers” ranging from techies and crafters to homesteaders, scientists and garage tinkerers, all with the goal of entertaining, informing, connecting and…
Event: Red Bull Soapbox Race
Red Bull — known for hosting relatively creative and dangerous events like their Flugtag, where people build their own flying machines and participate in a competition involving flinging themselves off of tall things — has been bringing the joys of soapbox derby-ing to Mount Adams for several years. The competition consists of both design and…
Event: Starlit Picnic
Romance will be waiting at the Cincinnati Observatory’s first adults-only Starlit Picnic. Grab a blanket, packed picnic-dinner, drinks and a date and settle in for a special night. “This is kind of a little bit fancier, more adults-only, where people can bring their own drinks,” says Dean Regas, outreach astronomer at the observatory. “They can…
Music: Jane Decker
J ane Decker is just barely into official adulthood, but she’s lived a virtual lifetime of experiences, both personally and professionally. Her supportive mother and father encouraged her musical pursuits, and she was writing songs by age 10 — about the time both her parents received cancer diagnoses. Two years later, her father passed away…
Event: Black Comix Day
Comic book fans are a colorful lot, quite like the books themselves. This Saturday, the St. Bernard branch of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County is honoring a historically underrepresented group in comic book culture: black writers, illustrators and readers. It’s part of an event called Queen City Black Comix Day, which was…
Event: Germania Society Oktoberfest
Get your fill of cream puffs, dirndls and Warsteiner at the Germania Society’s 45th-annual Oktoberfest — Cincinnati’s “original and most authentic Oktoberfest,” full of the best parts of local German culture, crafts and cooking. Tents serving an array of dishes like strudel, sauerkraut, schnitzel and sauerbraten will line the streets (and your plate), with more…
Event: Art After Dark
Art After Dark celebrates the Cincinnati Art Museum’s new exhibit, Unknown Elements, which highlights anonymous photographs from the museum collection, paired with contemplative writings from local authors. The evening includes docent-led tours, a Hip Hop dance performance from Elementz, spoken-word and Short Order Poetry from Chase Public in the courtyard. 5-9 p.m. Friday. Free. Cincinnati…
Music: Mark Mothersbaugh
Mothersbaugh Mania officially kicks off in Cincinnati on Friday when Mark Mothersbaugh — the co-founder of the great Post-Punk band DEVO, as well as an accomplished visual artist who studied his craft at Kent State University — appears at Woodward Theater for a concert sponsored by the Contemporary Arts Center. (The CAC is opening a…
Event: Taste of Blue Ash
Ever wondered what Blue Ash tastes like? Find out this weekend. Celebrating its 30th anniversary, Taste of Blue Ash features food from more than a dozen area restaurants (Delicio’s Coal Fired Pizza, Alfio’s Buon Cibo, Café Mediterranean, Mama Mimi’s and more), a craft beer tent, festival rides, strolling entertainers and special headlining musical performances from…
Music: Scott Miller & The Commonwealth
When artists are said to have “returned to their roots,” it usually refers to them rediscovering their old acoustic guitar or returning to the music that was in their childhood record collections. For acclaimed Americana singer/songwriter/storyteller extraordinaire Scott Miller, his return was more literal. A couple years ago, Miller — a Tennessee music legend once…
Event: ArtWorks Big Pitch
Cincinnati is becoming a city of creative powerhouses, and ArtWorks, the nonprofit dedicated to empowering the creative community — you’ve most likely seen their city-wide murals — wants to help Cincinnati’s artistic entrepreneurs take their ideas to the next level. The public is invited to watch ArtWorks’ eight Big Pitch finalists, each of whom have…
Comedy: Tommy Johnagin
“I took 10 months off of touring, which is the longest break I’ve ever taken,” says comedian Tommy Johnagin, who will do a one-off show Wednesday at Go Bananas. Most of his time was taken up writing and shooting a pilot for CBS, which unfortunately wasn’t picked up. He doesn’t feel he got rusty at…
Onstage: The Complete Tom: 4. Detective
Some theater al fresco? Queen City Flash is a flash-mob theater company working its way through Mark Twain’s adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn with imaginative, pop-up performances in local parks. This month they conclude their spirited four-part adaptation with Detective. Huck and Tom’s adventure involves solving a murder to clear an innocent friend.…
‘Walking Dead’ Spinoff Explores New Territory
With the undeniable success of AMC’s The Walking Dead, it makes sense that the network would produce a spinoff. Fear the Walking Dead (9 p.m. Sundays, AMC) promises zombie-apocalypse action in the fictional universe fans have come to love, with a different setting, cast and timeline. So we move from years into the outbreak in…
Crack Open ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’ at Your Own Risk
I live in a house with a pair of teenage girls, so the idea of having access to their diaries or their unfiltered thoughts frightens me to no end, especially after watching The Diary of a Teenage Girl. It’s the debut feature of writer-director Marielle Heller, who in 2012 earned both a Screenwriting Fellow and…
Artists Anonymous
In art, as in life, context is key. An image that would otherwise be treated with contempt — or worse, blithe indifference — can be illuminated with only a few facts. Likewise, stripped of its context, a piece of art can become something else entirely as the viewer imagines a contextual framework for the art.…
Kennedy Heights Arts Center Expands
The Kennedy Heights Arts Center, one of the best and most ambitious in the region, takes a great leap forward this weekend when it opens its new 10,500-square-foot annex in a portion of an old Kroger grocery store. The overall site has been christened the Kennedy Heights Cultural Campus because the building also holds the…
‘You Can’t Be What You Can’t See’
C omic book fans are a colorful lot, quite like the books themselves. This Saturday, the St. Bernard branch of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County is honoring a historically underrepresented group in comic book culture: black writers, illustrators and readers. It’s part of an event called Queen City Black Comix Day, which…
CPS Ends First-Come, First-Served Magnet-School Enrollment
A long-held tradition for Cincinnati parents is over, at least for now, as Cincinnati Public Schools has suspended its policy of first-come, first-served enrollment for the district’s in-demand magnet schools. The Cincinnati Board of Education voted unanimously to suspend the practice. Residents looking to get their kids into high-performing magnet schools like the Fairview-Clifton German…
Council Battles over Charter Amendments
During a contentious city council meeting on Aug. 24, Cincinnati City Council moved along one proposal for amending the city’s governing charter, putting it on the November ballot for voters to approve. But questions remain about whether four other proposals will also find their way to the ballot. The Charter Review Committee, convened to modernize…
Making Connections
W hen app developer Mark Mussman started a course to teach Cincinnatians how to build Android applications, he also saw opportunity to help out LGBTQ youth experiencing or on the verge of experiencing homelessness. Mussman had recently launched the Creative App Project, or CAP513, a project dedicated to registering community members as app developers in…
Morning News and Stuff
Hey all. Here’s a brief rundown of the news this morning. So, do you want to see your name written really big on something attention-grabbing and controversial that will zoom around downtown most of the day and night? Do you have hundreds of thousands of dollars you’re not quite sure what to do with? Here’s…
That Which Divides Us
In the past year, intense tensions around race in America have re-emerged, sparking protests, civil unrest and reams of media coverage. The conversation has deep relevance in Cincinnati, which experienced racially charged unrest over the 2001 police shooting of unarmed 19-year-old Timothy Thomas, and, more recently, national attention over the shooting death of unarmed black…
On Serena
In the mid-1990s when Venus and Serena Williams were teenagers, when the jangle of beaded scalp-tight cornrows and silver braces on their teeth long preceded waist-length weaves and fake painted fingernails, and just about the same time a CablanAsian kid named Tiger turned professional, whacking his way across the whitest golf greens, neither blacks specifically…
Worst Week Ever! Aug. 26-Sept. 1
Local Teacher Uses Racially Charged Humor to Make Pupils Hate Math Early On Calculators were invented long ago because humans realized that math is stupid. Once our species figured out how to handle our numbers-related needs by pushing a few buttons rather than using brain power and discipline to do so on our own, we…
Music: Della Mae
The Grammy-nominated band Della Mae is a wonderful example of an all-female group that is not a novelty, but instead is made up of wonderful musicians who bring the thunder as far as instrumental prowess goes while still creating music that is progressive, beautiful and unique. The band is made up of guitar and banjo…
Sound Advice: Della Mae
If you go to a Rock or Blues festival and there happens to be music being played in the campgrounds, nine times out of 10 it will be a scene in which women stand around and watch a bunch of guys try and play some songs. Yes, there may be a female vocalist with a…
Music: Parker Millsap
Ever since Woody Guthrie ambled out of Okemah with a Fascist-killing machine and a fistful of ageless songs about the flaws and graces of America in particular and mankind in general, Oklahoma has produced a broad variety of musical truth-tellers. The latest native Okie to make his presence known in a fairly big way is…
Sound Advice: Parker Millsap with Cari Ray
Ever since Woody Guthrie ambled out of Okemah with a Fascist-killing machine and a fistful of ageless songs about the flaws and graces of America in particular and mankind in general, Oklahoma has produced a broad variety of musical truth-tellers. The latest native Okie to make his presence known in a fairly big way is…
Music: Lily & Madeleine
Lily & Madeleine might be considered Indianapolis’ answer to Over the Rhine. Though there is an obvious age and experience difference — Lily & Madeleine were just teenage sisters when their first records, the EP Weight of the Globe and a self-titled album, came out in 2013 — there is striking similarity in other ways.…
Music: 7 Seconds
Given the fact that 7 Seconds has been around for the past 35 years, the Hardcore/Pop/Punk quartet might not be on the radar of younger fans. It’s the safest bet that 7 Seconds — anchored from the start by the Marvelli brothers, aka vocalist Kevin Seconds and bassist Steve Youth — was a major influence…
Sound Advice: Lily & Madeleine with Shannon Hayden and The Mitchells
Lily & Madeleine might be considered Indianapolis’ answer to Over the Rhine. Though there is an obvious age and experience difference — Lily & Madeleine were just teenage sisters when their first records, the EP Weight of the Globe and a self-titled album, came out in 2013 — there is striking similarity in other ways.…
Sound Advice: 7 Seconds with Bishops Green and Knife the Symphony
Given the fact that 7 Seconds has been around for the past 35 years, the Hardcore/Pop/Punk quartet might not be on the radar of younger fans. It’s the safest bet that 7 Seconds — anchored from the start by the Marvelli brothers, aka vocalist Kevin Seconds and bassist Steve Youth — was a major influence…
Laibach Does North Korea
Laibach Does North Korea Industrial rockers Laibach recently played what might be one of the weirdest concerts in modern music history. The controversial Slovenian group, which is known for either mockingly or lovingly espousing and using fascist ideology and style as part of its stage persona, recently became one of a very few Western musical…
Get Folked Up at Whispering Beard
The Whispering Beard Folk Festival, which was founded in 2008 and continues to grow in popularity and draw based mostly on word of mouth, returns this week to the small town of Friendship, Ind. (at the intersection of First Street and Friendship Road, about 50 miles west of Cincinnati). The four-day-festival books top-shelf headliners each…
Upper Decker
J ane Decker is just barely into official adulthood, but she’s lived a virtual lifetime of experiences, both personally and professionally. Her supportive mother and father encouraged her musical pursuits, and she was writing songs by age 10 — about the time both her parents received cancer diagnoses. Two years later, her father passed away…
Art: The Goodwill Biennial 2015
Thunder-Sky, Inc. curators and co-founders Bill Ross and Keith Banner, assisted by Matt Distel from The Carnegie in Covington and Melanie Derrick of 1305 Gallery in Over-the-Rhine, have juried an exhibition of paintings, sculptures, drawings and other handmade art donated to the Ohio Valley Goodwill over the course of the past year. “The whole purpose…
Onstage: 9 to 5
Cincinnati Landmark Productions (CLP) has hit a home run with the debut of the Warsaw Federal Incline Theater this summer. As Artistic Director Tim Perrino announces from the stage most evenings, the three-show season will record 45 straight sold-out performances. Perrino and his crew have built a functional, attractive venue and programmed it mostly with…
Art: Unkown Elements
In art, as in life, context is key. An image that would otherwise be treated with contempt — or worse, blithe indifference — can be illuminated with only a few facts. Likewise, stripped of its context, a piece of art can become something else entirely as the viewer imagines a contextual framework for the art.…
