Jul 6-13, 2016
Going with God: Young-Earth Creationists are set to open a Noah’s Ark theme park amid celebration and controversy
Morning News: Council members doubt city manager’s honesty; Trump spurns NAACP invite; Sanders backs Clinton
Hey hey Cincy. Here’s what’s going down today around town and beyond. A special meeting of Cincinnati City Council’s Rules and Audit Committee yesterday got very, very real, with two council members challenging the honesty of City Manager Harry Black and others asking tough questions about a $55,000 payment city administration ordered for a Columbus…
Morning News: Cincy faith leaders discuss race, violence today; Ohio’s largest online charter school could close; PokemonGo and income inequality
Good morning all. Here’s your news today. Faith leaders in Cincinnati today are convening a discussion on race and violence in the wake of high-profile police shootings across the country. Representatives from the city’s Catholic, Muslim, Protestant and Jewish communities will gather at Tryed Stone New Beginnings Church in Bond Hill at 11 a.m. to…
Paul McCartney Shows Once Again That He’s the Ultimate Living Rock Legend
For most of my life, I shied away from going to concerts by legendary but allegedly “past-their-prime” musicians who have been extremely important to me since a young age — bands and performers who’ve shaped my musical tastes and have played a huge role in many other facets of my life, alternately offering joy and…
Thousands turn out to protest police shootings as DuBose anniversary nears
A crowd of thousands gathered Sunday afternoon outside Cincinnati Police Department headquarters in the West End for a rally and march organized by Cincinnati Black Lives Matter. The peaceful gathering was perhaps the largest in the city in the two years since the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. put issues around race…
Review: ‘De Palma’ Is Catnip for the Director’s Fans
Brian De Palma has made some of the best genre pictures of the last 40 years. Check this list of titles, which spans from 1973 to 2002: Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise, Carrie, Obsession, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Scarface, The Untouchables, Casualties of War, Carlito’s Way and Femme Fatale. Even his less successful efforts…
Your Weekend To Do List (July 8-10)
FRIDAY 08 ATTRACTION: DRESSING DOWNTON AT THE TAFT MUSEUM OF ART From figure-altering corsets to shorter skirts and relaxed dinner jackets, British fashion between 1912 and the early ’20s reflected the evolution of social and economic classes — a fact meticulously depicted on PBS’s drama Downton Abbey. The series, which spanned from 2010 to 2015,…
Stage Door: Laughs and Songs — and One-Minute Plays
Summertime theater in Cincinnati offers more in the way of pure entertainment with July’s offerings. Don’t rule out the possibility of entertainment by teenagers. The Commonwealth Artists Summer Theatre (C.A.S.T.) brings together high school kids from all over Greater Cincinnati. They put on shows that are wholly produced by the students. I’ve seen one of…
These Children Are Real People
EDITOR’S NOTE: CityBeat has invited three local activists to write monthly columns on pressing issues facing Cincinnati. Mike Moroski is the executive director of UpSpring, a nonprofit working to keep children experiencing homelessness connected to their education. His column will appear in CityBeat the first week of each month. “It is easier to build strong…
Morning News: Trump’s big event; P&G investigated for tax misconduct; yet another disturbing video of police shooting a black man
Good morning all. Here’s the news today. As we’ve been mentioning, GOP presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump rolled into town yesterday with his buddy, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Instead of prattling on about what Trump’s Sharonville appearance was like, I’ll just leave you with the lede from this New York Times story and let…
A Series of Unfortunate Events
The night was not going Naz’s way. After finally getting invited to a party by the college basketball team he tutors, his plans fall through, and he begrudgingly decides to borrow his cab-driver dad’s taxi and sets off from his family’s home in Queens to Manhattan’s Lower East Side. After failing at navigating the city…
The 21st Century’s Best Films So Far
Recently, the BBC polled film critics, soliciting choices for the 10 best films of the 21st century. Since it seems the email inquiry to me somehow got lost en route, I figured I would just go ahead and make my selections public for CityBeat readers, who are already quite used to the annual navel-gazing I…
New Releases from Two Visionary Directors
By 1992, Robert Altman was persona non grata, a once-heralded director whose career was so far off the Hollywood map that he hadn’t had a proper theatrical release since 1980’s admittedly odd live-action version of Popeye (which, for the record, was a modest hit despite its reputation as a bomb). Altman had always been an…
Caring for Plants Is an Art Form
At last! An art exhibit you can bring your favorite plant to. In fact, Wave Pool’s People Via Plants installation project, which gets underway Sunday and continues through July 23, is for your houseplants as much as it’s for you. Those whose plants are ailing — or are lonely for companionship — are encouraged to…
Checking in with Michael Haney and Amy Warner
This summer I’m checking in with theater artists who spent time in Cincinnati. This week it’s a twofer, husband-and-wife director Michael Haney and actress Amy Warner. They became Cincinnati theater mainstays in 2002, when Haney became the Playhouse’s associate artistic director. “My husband’s job at the Cincinnati Playhouse took me, somewhat reluctantly, from Venice Beach…
A former toy designer wants to connect families and community through her Play Library
Julia Fischer is very much a Big kid — a female, pogo-jumping version of Tom Hanks’ character from the film about a child who wakes up as an adult and gets a job with a toy company. Fischer, who spent a decade working in the toy industry, moved to Covington, Ky. from Los Angeles two…
OTR’s newest restaurant, Pleasantry, offers delicious breakfast, lunch and dinner
My favorite restaurants are the ones that do what they set out to do simply and well. No bells and whistles, just delicious food, nicely served. And that means that Pleasantry, the newest restaurant in OTR, is my new favorite place to dine. Pleasantry is named after a street — the building sits at the…
What a Week! June 29 – July 5
WEDNESDAY JUNE 29 The Covington Frisch’s opened to the public today fresh from a millennial makeover. The location serves as a prototype for the chain, which yearns to feel like a neighborhood diner instead of the place you go to bury yourself in French toast sticks after church. Thus, all restaurants will soon feature the…
As a new Soundgarden album looms, Chris Cornell hits the road for another solo acoustic tour
Many people associate Chris Cornell with big-riffed, fully plugged-in, wall-shaking Hard Rock thanks to his role as a singer in Soundgarden and Audioslave. But as a solo act, Cornell has put himself in an almost polar-opposite musical setting, performing tours acoustically. Cornell documented his acoustic performances on the 2011 live album Songbook. “The Songbook tours,…
Sound Advice: Guns N’ Roses (July 6)
Though it didn’t have the paradigm-shifting power of Nirvana’s breakthrough a few years later, when Guns N’ Roses exploded internationally in the late ’80s, it was the kind of breathtaking moment that doesn’t seem to happen anymore. In a relative instant, the band emerged with a blast of freshness that showed a side of Rock…
A local college professor says he was fired for speaking up about improper treatment of a female colleague
After taking a stand over what he says was gender discrimination against a fellow employee, a former professor at one of Kentucky’s largest community college systems claims he was shown the door. A lawsuit filed last month in U.S. District Court’s Eastern Kentucky District, located in Covington, says Joseph Shearer, a former assistant professor of…
Sound Advice: SWMRS (July 6)
Despite the fact that some of SWMRS’s members still aren’t old enough to legally hang around in many places they play, the Oakland, Calif. quartet has a relatively long and fascinating history. The idea to form a band occurred to guitarist/vocalist Cole Becker and drummer Joey Armstrong while they were watching School of Rock when…
Sound Advice: Griffin House with Green Light Morning (July 9)
Instead of accepting a golf scholarship from Ohio State, Springfield, Ohio native Griffin House bought a $100 guitar, enrolled at Miami University and learned to play and write music. While still a student at Miami, House dumpster-dove some jewel cases to use for his self-released 2001 debut album, No More Crazy Love Songs, which he…
Sound Advice: Sonny & the Sunsets (July 8)
Sonny Smith is one of those rare artists whose creativity cannot be restricted by a single medium. Smith is a musician first and foremost, but he has applied his musical talents to a varied series of collaborative projects and expanded the potential intersections of art and music. At 19, Smith earned his keep playing Blues…
Morning News: Local pols weigh in on Clinton emails; gender bias lawsuit at UC; state gives non-union workers big raises
Hey hey all. Here’s what’s going on in the news today. The Federal Bureau of Investigation yesterday released its findings in the investigation into the private email servers presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton used during her time as secretary of state. And of course, local politicians had things to say about that, because who…
Cincinnati Opera’s ‘Fellow Travelers’ Is a Triumph
Cincinnati Opera presented the world premiere of Fellow Travelers last Friday (June 17), and I’m here to tell you that not only does the opera have legs, it has balls. I first heard Fellow Travelers in a 2013 workshop production as part of Opera Fusion: New Works, and I was not impressed. What a difference…
Mason James EP to Benefit a Near, Dear Cause
Country music artist Mason James, who scored the Cincinnati Entertainment Award for top area Country artist in 2012, is gearing up for a special new release that will benefit a cause especially close to the singer/songwriter’s heart. Hailing from nearby West Harrison, Ind. and a regular on the local club circuit, James (whose real name…
Young-Earth creationists are set to open a Noah’s Ark theme park amid celebration and controversy
Atheists scoff. Evangelicals sing on high. Many in the middle of these two polar opposites are a bit bemused and a little confused. A replica of biblical Noah’s massive wooden boat, along with a 1,500-seat restaurant, has been built — far, far away from any significant body of water. Across Ohio, radio commercials for months…
Minimum Gauge: Prince Website Museum Launches
HOT: Prince’s Website Museum There have been reports that Prince’s Paisley Park facilities might be turned into a tourist attraction (à la Graceland), which clould be a gaudy mess. A very different “museum” honoring the musician launched on July 4. The Prince Online Museum compiles working versions of the artist’s many different sites launched since…
