BY MATT BLANCHARD With all the hoopla over casinos, you might have missed everything else that’s planned for the riverfront. Developers have drawn up designs for a veritable condominium kingdom on the Delaware, pushing proposals for more than 20 new towers containing 5,000 condo units. “It’s massive. It’s absolutely massive,” says architect Scott Page of Interface Studios. Page got a shock while putting together Interface’s recent plan for Northern Liberties. By his calculations, projects proposed for the river end of the neighborhood (east of I-95) would more than double the number of housing units in the neighborhood, from 2,300 to […]
CINEMA: Rescue Dawn
(RESCUE DAWN, Directed By Werner Herzog, 126 Min., 2006) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC First it was the series of dreamlike fictional films, then a steady stream of surreal documentaries and now, with his first large-budget, English-language film, the force of nature known as Werner Herzog is ready for the third act of his career. With Rescue Dawn, starring Batman himself Christian Bale, Herzog appears to be capitalizing on the fluke success of his documentary Grizzly Man by swinging for the fences for a last shot at a Hollywood homer. A triumphant story of a downed pilot’s survival in the […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Actor and writer Ricky Gervais is best known as creator and star of the British TV comedy The Office, which was adapted into a U.S. hit starring Steve Carrell. He also stars in Extras, which airs in the U.S. on HBO; it’s about an out-of-work actor scrambling for bit parts ? until he lands a leading role in a crass but popular sitcom. Gervais also writes the Flanimals children’s books. PLUS, editorial cartoonist and Kudzu comic-strip creator Doug Marlette died July 10 in a Mississippi car accident. He was 57. His skewering of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker […]
KILLADELPHIA: 2 More Dead Since U Went To Bed
BY PETER MUCHA OF THE INQUIRER Two men and a 15-year-old boy are dead and two other men were in critical condition after three double shootings in Philadelphia, police said. The slayings, along with yesterday’s death of 19-year-old shot June 17, raise the murder total for the year to 217. Timothy Clark, 15, was pronounced dead at 2:25 a.m., just minutes after being found shot in the head in the 6900 block of Vandike Street in the Tacony section of the Northeast, according to Homicide Sgt. Charles Coan. Clark lived down the street, in the 6800 block. A second victim […]
MAN DOWN: Philly Sales Exec Gored In Pamplona
MADRID, Spain — Two American brothers were recovering on Friday from their serious injuries after they were gored during the bloodiest day yet at the San Fermin festival in the northeastern city of Pamplona.Lawrence Lenahan, 26, of Hermosa Beach, Calif. and his brother, Michael Lenahan, 23, of Philadelphia, Pa. were gored Thursday by a bull who strayed from the pack, turned around half way and charged the wrong way during the daily morning bull run. Thirteen people in total were injured and seven were gored, including the Lenahan brothers and other two men very seriously. Michael Lenahan, a sales executive […]
WAR IS OVER: House Votes To Withdraw Troops
WASHINGTON — The Iraqi government is achieving only spotty military and political progress, the Bush administration conceded Thursday in an assessment that war critics quickly seized on as confirmation of their dire warnings. Within hours, the House voted to withdraw U.S. troops by spring. As many as 80 suicide bombers per month cross into the country from Syria, said the interim assessment, which is to be followed by a fuller accounting in September from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in the region. “I believe we can succeed in Iraq, and I know we must,” Bush said at […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs
Miss NJ Keeps Crown, Vows No More Fuzzy Navels With Touchy-Feely Fat Guys According to KYW, “Members of the board of the Miss New Jersey Pageant decided Thursday afternoon in Ocean City, NJ, that Amy Polumbo will be allowed to keep her crown amid a controversy over some anonymously mailed photos. ‘Why these pictures came out I have no idea,’ said Terry McLean, Polumbo’s grandmother. ‘I’m sure there are pictures of these people, too — only worse. And her pictures are nothing.’” Radar Magazine begs to differ: “Miss New Jersey Amy Polumbo‘s blackmail photos reveal a moderately tame pageant queen […]
PAPERBOY: Now With Less Extra, Read All About It!
BY AMY Z. QUINN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right — these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. Hey, we know how it is — so many words to read, so little time to surf for free porn. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you, freeing up […]
TODAY I SAW…
BY JEFF DEENEY “Today I saw…” is a series of nonfiction shorts based on my experiences as a caseworker serving formerly homeless families now living in North and West Philadelphia. I decided not long after starting the job that I was seeing so many fascinating and disturbing things in the city’s poorest neighborhoods that I needed to start cataloging them. I hope this bi-weekly column serves as a record of a side of the city that many Philadelphians don’t come in contact with on a daily basis. I want to capture moments not frequently covered by the local media, which […]
CINEMA: Death Kisses At The Drive-In
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The filmmakers turn their cameras both inward and outward in yet another improbable triple-feature mounted by Andrew’s Video Vault. In Richard Rush’s The Stunt Man and the surprisingly plush Poverty Row programmer The Death Kiss treachery descends during a film’s shooting while the mid-seventies goofball comedy Drive-In gently satirizes the Texas townsfolk who meet up one night while watching movies in their cars under the stars. And you can call this a double triple-feature, each film has its own movie-within-the-movie. First up is the best remembered of the bunch; Richard Rush’s euphoric meditation on the […]
EARLY WORD: Play That Funky Music White Boys
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WAPO: CIA Chief Told Study Group Iraq ‘Irreversible’
Early on the morning of Nov. 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered around a dark wooden conference table in the windowless Roosevelt Room of the White House. For more than an hour, they listened to President Bush give what one panel member called a “Churchillian” vision of “victory” in Iraq and defend the country’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. “A constitutional order is emerging,” he said. Later that morning, around the same conference table, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden painted a starkly different picture for members of the study group. Hayden said “the inability of the government […]