Playwrights Forum’s Voodoo Nickel , an original work about a possibly innocent death-row inmate, tonight through Saturday at TheatreWorks. The Black Business Association’s Benny Awards honoring minority-owned businesses, 7 p.m. at the Memphis Marriott East.
Posted inWe Recommend, We Recommend
Sturm und Drang (Shang-a-Lang)
/H2> In 1986, four years after its modest off-Broadway opening, Little Shop of Horrors — a campy, ’60s pop-inspired creepshow of a musical based on schlock filmmaker Roger Corman’s ultracheap film of the same name — was again transformed into a popular, expensive, and extraordinarily well-made bit of musical cinema starring such known commodities as […]
Posted inCover Feature, News
Hotties
What makes a person hot? Is it a Barbie-thin waistline, perky D-cups, and a J.Lo booty? Or perhaps a successful career, a well-fitted Armani suit, and a Texas-sized I.Q.? It’s subjective, really. But there’s no doubt that brains, style, and looks are all hotness factors. Since Valentine’s Day is upon us again, we’ve been thinking […]
Posted inFilm Features, Film/TV
Crimes of Passion
As I try to describe Bad Education, the latest import from Spanish writer/director Pedro Almodóvar, the only other film I can think of that approximates its twists and turns is the 2001 version of Ocean’s Eleven — a film no canny reviewer would cite as comparison. And yet the masterful Ocean’s Eleven tells a very […]
Posted inBook Features, Books
The Awkward Age
Alternative Atlanta By Marshall Boswell Delacorte Press, 324 pp., $22 The first we see of Gerald Brinkman, age 30, he’s standing outside a church in Atlanta, he’s pulling out a cigarette, and he’s searching a clear-blue sky. Inside the church, his grad school sweetheart is about to marry a computer whiz, somewhere up above a […]
Posted inFilm Features, Film/TV
Going with the Flow
After garnering the biggest buy in festival history, Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow led all the stories coming out of Park City, Utah, for most of the Sundance Film Festival. But a funny thing happened on the way to Brewer’s film-fest coronation: Though Brewer’s crunked-out allegory took home the festival’s Audience Award for best feature, […]
Posted inNews, The Fly-By
the Cheat Sheet
1. New England defeats Philadelphia in Super Bowl XXXIX. We estimate that 94% of Memphians have the same thought at some point during the game: “Damn. We were this close to having our own team.” 2. Former medical examiner O.C. Smith goes on trial. He is accused of staging a bizarre incident that left him […]
Posted inMusic, Record Reviews
Short Cuts
Naturally Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings (Daptone) Pairing a journeyman singer with a band full of young soul fans, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings is the kind of band easily overrated, their intentionally vintage sound and record-collector album art suggesting the kind of soul band aiming for indie-rock record stores and college radio. But where […]
Posted inBook Features, Books
Mr. Bill
One Matchless Time By Jay Parini HarperCollins, 433 pp., $29.95 ith One Matchless Time, Jay Parini becomes the sixth biographer to chronicle and analyze the life and work of William Faulkner. Faulkner’s original biographer, Joseph Blotner, benefited from a personal knowledge of the author and his family. He also interviewed scores of individuals who have […]
Posted inPolitics, Politics Beat Blog
Harper v. Herenton
Last week the good folks at WPTY-TV chose to air some comments of mine concerning the recent run-in between Mayor Herenton and ABC-24 anchor Cameron Harper. I have to say, as I did in a portion of my remarks which didn’t make the cut, that Herenton is my favorite interview subject. In several longish conversations […]
Posted inFilm Features, Film/TV
Human Nature
There aren’t any woodsmen anymore, so laments a character in The Woodsman. “Woodsmen,” you ask? You know, like in “Little Red Riding Hood.” Ms. Red was saved by a woodsman who sliced open the wolf that had consumed both her and her granny, thereby setting them free. Seems like these days there are more wolves […]
Posted inOpinion, Viewpoint
A Bitter Pill
From its inception, TennCare was a flawed program. Too many people outside of health care were involved in its design and had a financial stake in it. Still, TennCare became the health insurance program for 1.3 million citizens of Tennessee. And, predictably, it was not long before we realized that TennCare desperately needed to be […]