Lunafest Film Screenings Rescheduled
The Lunafest screenings for today and Wednesday at the Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center in Covington have been rescheduled due to bad weather.—- The new dates and times are this Sunday at 4:30 p.m. (social hour and cash bar at 3:30 p.m.) and Feb. 17 at 7:30 p.m. (social hour and cash bar at…
Events: Mardi Gras at Findlay Market
Findlay Market gets in on the carnival action with a family-friendly Mardi Gras party 11 a.m.-4 p.m. on Sunday. The market will be full of decorations, costumes, food and drinks. Grab free beads from the Friends of Findlay Market and watch a Jazz parade at noon featuring Lagniappe, Robin Lacy & DeZydeco, Ricky Nye Inc.…
Percy Jackson & the Olympians (Review)
Aside from some non-PG-rated emphasis on an abusive home life and a lot of underwhelming CGI, Percy Jackson is a well-paced kids’ action picture that flirts with Greek mythology to create its otherworldly spectacle. Rising child star Logan Lerman plays Percy, a Manhattan teenager living with his mom, Sally (Catherine Keener), and her less-than-desirable boyfriend,…
Tano Bistro (Review)
Critic's Pick Ghostly snow devils swirl around the darkness of Loveland Avenue West, but a steamy window with “Tano” scrawled across it glows with a homey, diffuse light, beckoning us out of the cold. Inside, we find a warm space filled with convivial guests for whom the holiday season is still in full swing. But…
Onstage: Adding Machine
Smart calculation: In the wintry depths of the Great Recession, Know Theatre brings a bleak chamber opera based on an anti-capitalist play from the 1920s, in which an outsourced drone gets revenge on the boss. Now director Michael Burnham and a committed Know company make it clear that with national unemployment stuck near 10 percent,…
Comedy: Josh Sneed
Though he still has a hard time coming to grips with it, Cincinnati comedian Josh Sneed is growing up. “I’m getting married in April,” he reports. “That’s exciting. Local gal. I’m really looking forward to the material.” It’s all part of his ongoing adjustment to adulthood, a struggle he talks about at length with audiences.…
Fucked Up and Kurt Vile
When Saturday Night Live was new, Chevy Chase took to wearing a T-shirt that said, “Yes, that’s my real name.” That’s because everyone thought it was a goof on the Maryland city of the same name. Kurt Vile hasn’t yet resorted to that, but the moody, Post Punk/Neo Garage Rock retro-modernist sure has answered a…
Valentine’s Day (Review)
Longtime Hollywood director Garry Marshall’s latest is yet another date movie that's less than the sum of its parts. The sheer number of A-list actors involved spells trouble. Jessica Biel, Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx and Anne Hathaway provide cast padding for the likes of B-listers Taylor Swift, George Lopez and Emma Roberts. Intertwining romantic threads…
Two Man Gentlemen Band
In 2005, Andy Bean and Fuller Condon abandoned their college Rock band grind, shifting gears toward old-time Bluegrass, Country and hot Jazz music. The duo whipped up some authentically twisted tunes embracing bygone traditions and tested them in New York’s Central Park. “People threw money at us, and we got hooked pretty fast,” Bean says.…
Dance: Cincinnati Ballet’s Cinderella
More than just a classic fairy tale about dreams coming true, Cinderella also makes for a delightful time at the ballet: plenty of pantomime, ugly stepsisters (roles traditionally danced by men in drag) and fun fantasies abound, not to mention a race against the clock! Fittingly, Cincinnati Ballet’s dream of maintaining live music to accompany…
Music: Robert Earl Keen
A little Country, a little Pop and a lot of Texas-spun, story-laced Americana, singer/songwriter Robert Earl Keen’s latest release, The Rose Hotel, has been hailed as one of the best of his storied career. While laden with an eclectic, pulsating groove and dynamic, rootsy instrumentation, it’s Keen’s, er, keen, trademark sense of storytelling that is…
Valentine’s Day: La Skyline Chili
Irony. We think it’s funny … almost as funny as sarcasm. That’s why we like it when fast food restaurants get “classy” for Valentine’s Day. Got someone you want to impress? Take your 3-Way to the next level when you visit “La Skyline Chili,” Skyline’s Blue Ash location, for a romantic dinner from 4-8 p.m.…
Film: Flick My Clip Short Film Festival
The second edition of the Flick My Clip Film Festival at Go Bananas — organized by Cincinnati/Dayton-area comics Ryan Singer, Alex Stone and Mike Cody — features short films made by not only area comics, but ones from around the country. “We’ve got one from Cleveland,” says Singer. “There’s a woman who is sending stuff…
Art: Dutch Utopia at the Taft Museum of Art
Windmills, wooden clogs and tulip mania — that which we consider quintessentially Dutch might have a little something to do with American nostalgia. The Taft Museum of Art explores America’s fascination with the Netherlands in Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880-1914. Artists found their way from America to Holland during the latter half of…
Events: Fat Tuesday
Arnold’s celebrates Fat Tuesday with what they claim is the “most authentic” Mardi Gras celebration in town. They’ll have free beads, three different kinds of Hurricanes (from scratch), a full menu of Cajun specialties and local Cajun band Lagniappe will be roving the aisles all night playing traditional New Orleans music. 9 p.m.-2:30 a.m. Tuesday.…
Starburst (Review)
Critic's Pick It’s hard for our generation to imagine controversy over color photography. In a day and age when many art schools have shut down their traditional black-and-white darkrooms in favor of going digital, color is simply taken for granted. Audiences had been accustomed to color in film since the 1930s and television since the…
Events: MainStrasse Mardi Gras
So our football team didn’t make it to the Super Bowl. That’s OK. “Who Dat” sounded kind of like “Who Dey.” And we can still act like New Orleans, or better, with multiple Mardi Gras events. That’s right, we have more than one. Apparently Cincinnatians love outdoor parties where they can take their shirts off…
Hip Hop (Un)scene: Online Etiquette
Rappers killed MySpace. So did producers. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think MySpace was the digital manifestation of the dude every gangsta rapper in the ’90s talked about killing. That’s how bad we killed MySpace. We killed MySpace like it was a club full of fine women and we just had to run…
Art: Love Is a Drag at CS13
The questions of what “gender” means and what it implies beg to be continually discussed and redefined. Muddled understandings of gender lace our day-to-day life with inequities and problems that are taken for granted. What better way to open up the dialogue further than to present a conceptual performance-art show that looks to glamorous alternative-goddesses…
Valentine’s Day Affliction
In 2008 there was Definitely, Maybe. Last year, there were Confessions of a Shopoholic. And now, with only six days left before Valentine’s Day is actually upon us, a movie baring the same name is set to hit theaters. Valentine’s Day, this year’s most blatant bid for romantically charged girls to drag their boyfriends down…
Palin Is So (Mentally Disabled)
Just when I thought Sarah Palin had made a valid point, she goes and shows just how spineless and hypocritical she is. The former Alaska governor and one-time Republican vice presidential nominee made a big deal last week about the use of the slur “fucking retarded” by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Palin,…
Film: Cincy World Cinema’s LunaFest
Cincinnati World Cinema is back with LunaFest, a collection of 10 short films “by women filmmakers, for women and the men who care about them.” The fest presents multi-genre offerings from across the globe in styles and subject matter that range from amusing (Sandy Widyanata’s Plastic, about a woman whose face becomes like Silly Putty)…
Robert Earl Keen
A little Country, a little Pop and a lot of Texas-spun, story-laced Americana, singer/songwriter Robert Earl Keen’s latest release, The Rose Hotel, has been hailed as one of the best of his storied career. While laden with an eclectic, pulsating groove and dynamic, rootsy instrumentation, it’s Keen’s, er, keen trademark sense of storytelling that's most…
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This week on the square
Home Stripped Home
Two years ago, regional Folk phenoms Daniel Martin Moore and Ben Sollee met at a Lexington show and began making small talk about music and their commonalities when the subject of Appalachian strip mining was broached. It was a subject that both Kentuckians are passionate about — Moore is a member of Kentuckians for the…
CityBeat Podcast All-Star: Dan Quixote
We're on hiatus and taking a look back at some of the engaging stories from 2009. Episode 3: Dan Quixote is one of our favorites. —- Suscribe to our podcast in iTunes or use our RSS feed.
Keeping Animals Safe in Winter
With Greater Cincinnati’s worst storm of the season fast approaching and much of the nation already covered in snow, PETA is offering tips about how to keep animals safe in cold weather — along with a little help from Country singer Loretta Lynn. Although they are naturally equipped with fur coats, dogs and other animals…
Dear John (Review)
Labels have a powerful attraction in terms of human nature. Through labeling, we create stereotypes, which then allow us to discriminate, to assess people, situations and ideas in order to make summary judgments that are sometimes difficult to overcome without an open-minded approach. That’s a long-winded introduction for this Lasse Hallstrom adaptation of the Nicholas…
Tea Party Speaker: Revive ‘Jim Crow’
For the past year, we’ve written occasionally about how many in the Tea Party movement are inspired by racism, fear and hate. When we have, we’ve gotten angry e-mails and blog comments telling us that just isn’t so. Like clockwork, Teabaggers then go and say something to prove our point. Well, they have again. And…
Friday Movie Roundup: Oscar Nominations
Oscar nominations for the yearly industry wankfest known as Academy Awards were announced on Feb. 2. As expected, James Cameron’s Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker did well: Each yielded nine nominations, including nods for Best Picture and Best Director. (Curious side-note: Bigelow and Cameron were once married; for the record, she made the…
Stage Door: Good v. Evil at the Playhouse
If you've read this week's issue of CityBeat, you can probably predict my recommendation for theater-going this weekend: It's Walter Mosley's The Fall of Heaven, getting its world premiere at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. —-(Check out my review here.) Mosley is a well-known novelist, but this is his first endeavor as a playwright,…
Don’t Ask When. Tell Them Now!
On Jan. 27, President Obama gave his State of the Union Address and reminded the nation of what his administration was fighting for. Among his many promises to strengthen the economy and tighten security measures against terrorism, was an effort to work with Congress and the military over the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,”…
GOP Poll Is Revealing
If its findings are accurate, a poll released this week should embarrass and shame Republican politicians and party leaders. It probably won’t, though, because if we’ve learned anything about the GOP in the past 20 years is that it can be pretty shameless. The poll of 2,003 self-identified Republicans found that a large portion believe…
More Rants at WAIF
Some people believe a person’s writing style says a lot about him or her. If you dot i’s with a heart, for example, people might consider you dreamy or perhaps immature. If you regularly misuse punctuation or choose words that aren’t appropriate for the intended meaning, it might indicate a lack of education.—- We’ll let…
Finally, Alone
“I drove home calmly and safely, keeping the RPMs low as I navigated the steep hills. I stepped into enormous silence, so brilliantly alone, with the snow moving, but seeming so still all around me. I opened my mouth to taste and to let out a deep laugh. A perfect moment: I am grateful for…
Case Closed on Expungements
Jasen Burwinkel is having a tough time. The Northside resident works a part-time job and says he’s submitting resumes and applications everywhere. “I don’t care really where I work,” he says. “I just want to work. It might not be as bad if the economy wasn’t so shaky, but now….” His voice trails off. “I…
Campbell’s Barn (Review)
I was raised in the country and, consequently, have seen my share of barns. My family worked in barns; my sisters, brother and I played in them; and through the years, we’ve even had a few friends married in barns. Eat in a barn? Yes, I’ve done that, too. And so it was with expectations…
Untitled (Review)
Adam Goldberg embodies Adrian Jacobs, a pretentious avant-garde composer and leader of an experimental musical trio called New Sound Ensemble, in Jonathan Parker's send up of Manhattan's art world. Adrian is a kind of ultimate artsy poseur — he has an especially selfish passive-aggressive personality — whose cacophonous compositions include John Zorn-inspired touches like popping…
My Cheesy Valentine
Face it, Valentine’s Day is a pretty cheesy holiday. Ever since you first glued a doily to a red paper heart and topped it off with glitter, you were hooked into a lifetime of sentimentality. Sentiments like “My Doll” on a conversation heart — that’s edible Fredericks of Hollywood right there. So instead of the…
Personal Vistas (Review)
Critic's Pick For more than 20 years Cincinnati has subsidized its local artists through funding for large and small organizations as well as competitive individual artist grants. That is, until this past December, when City Council approved a budget for 2010 that eliminated all funding for the arts. Little has been said of this, but…
Situation: Critical
Last weekend I saw a play about a very scary character: a theater critic. Charles Marowitz’s Stage Fright was presented by one of Cincinnati’s fine community theaters, Mariemont Players. I didn’t go to see it as a critic but as an acquaintance of the director. I had met the three actors onstage previously, and they…
Workers Laid Off After ‘Living Wage’ Battle
Little more than six months after helping a group of temporary workers claim better wages and put an end to bizarre fees that ate into their already meager incomes, local activists are suddenly less sublime about the battles they won last year. That’s because of the 50 workers they represented in legal tussles with their…
Slash Trouble, Hip Hop Oil and S. Tyler
[HOT] On the Plus Side, Steven Adler T-Shirts A-OK Fans wanting to pay fashion tribute to Guns ’N Roses cofounder Slash while checking out whatever passes for GNR in concert these days are out of luck (unless they’re sneaky and wear a sweatshirt or something). Reports say fans attempting to sport any Slash-related shirts to…
Greg Harris and ‘Taking the Stage’
[WINNER] GREG HARRIS: He was a standout on Cincinnati City Council last year for bravely challenging wasteful spending in the city’s police and fire departments. Unfortunately, the powerful police and firefighter unions then waged a highly misleading disinformation campaign against him, leading to Harris’ defeat at the polls in November. We’re glad to see that…
Jan. 27-Feb. 2: Worst Week Ever!
WEDNESDAY JAN. 27Those of us who honed our journalism skills on the mean streets of Eugene, Ore., know all too well how liberal that state is (they still have real hippies). So we weren’t surprised to learn today that facing critical public service cuts Oregon on Tuesday voted to raise taxes, with most of the…
For All the Wrong Reasons
Many people nowadays are cynical about politics, and elected officials and party leaders certainly give them enough cause to feel that way. One of the reasons is when someone develops a sense of entitlement and believes that he or she is “due” a position or appointment because of that person’s favored status or past efforts.…
