BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It struck me during the first five minutes of the recent Tarentino/Rodriguez collaboration that the Weinsteins spent 50 million dollars to conjure the magic that Exhumed Films brings to Philly every month. The insane trailers, worn film prints, seventies-era lava lamp-like Coming Attractions announcements and of course the perverse genre films that Grindhouse professed to celebrate, have all been the stock-in-trade of the Exhumed Films collective which has exhibiting genre film favorites and oddities for nearly ten years now. Tarentino and Rodriguez can labor mightily to capture the off-handed weirdness of independently-shot films from the […]
BE HERE NOW…
FIRST THING U LEARN IS THAT U ALWAYS GOT TO WAIT: Modest Mouseketeers, Electric Factory, Last Night SIMONE SECCI FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: Never saw Modest Mouse live before and I regret that ’cause probably if I’d done that right after their masterpiece, The Lonesome Crowded West, that would have probably gotten stuck in my head as one of the best live acts of the last decade. Having the legendary Johnny Marr from The Smiths (!!!!) on the guitar and a tag team percussive duo of the two Jeremiah Green and former Black Heart Procession drummer, Joe Plummer, like saying probably the […]
City Paper Gets Its Chocolate In Our Michael Nutter
BRAND WARS: This is a little embarrassing, it’s like showing up at the party looking hot and some bitch shows up in the exact same outfit!
LIVE & DIRECT: Dwight Evans For The Deaf
JONATHAN VALANIA REPORTS: The subtext of just about everything Dwight Evans has said so far: John Street is f**king up royally. As representative from Pennsylvania’s 203rd Legislative District, Evans pushed the city’s school district into the arms of the state like an unfit mother who loves her kids too much not to put them up for adoption — he says the city does not have the economic capacity to run the school system. Evans will bring back John Timoney — seemingly every other candidates idea of the Superman that can stop crime. Evans voted FOR casinos — BOO! — because […]
Q: When Will The Inquirer Pull Out Of Its Circulation Decline? A: When Pigs Fly Over 400 North Broad
CITIZEN MOM REPORTS: No you are not high — well, maybe you are but that doesn’t explain why pigs were flying over the Inquirer last night. You see, Inky Big Mahoff Brian P. Tierney commissioned the airborne pork ‘toon as part of a full frontal nyah-nyah-nyah over the paper’s recently posted circulation gain. The haters are still standing on tiptoe trying to get a peek at the End of Journalism As We Know It, but the Inky’s daily circulation was up 0.6 percent, or about 2,136 copies, over the last year. Think of it as the first bloom of spring […]
THE HORROR: What If You And Your Mom Killed Yourselves — And Nobody Noticed For A Year?
There wasn’t much of a mystery yesterday about how a retired police officer and his mother [NOT pictured] died. The question was why nobody missed them for more than a year.Water Department workers, responding to a report of a leak, broke into the ivy-covered brick home on Bustleton Avenue at Larkspur Street, Somerton, after their knocks went unanswered, police said. Inside, they found a ghastly scene of an apparent murder-suicide. The stench of dirty water that had soaked through the floor had mixed with the odor of death in the house. A rotted body reportedly sat in a bedroom chair, […]
T&A: Alycia Lane Bikini Incident Thinning The Herd Of Suburban Bloggers, Turns PhillyBurbs Comments’ Section Into Cauldron Of Racism And Horniness
FROM PHILLYBURBS: “Where are the Alycia Lane bikini pictures? It’s the question every man in Philly wants answered. Where can I see the Alycia Lane bikini pictures? There are several men here at phillyBurbs.com about to go on a hunger strike if these sexy bikini pics don’t turn up asap.” PHILLYBURBS: Still Sucking In The Suburbs
Stinktastic Scrapyard Fire Engulfs City In Eerie Toxic-Smelling Fog, Platt Bridge Shutdown
PHILADELPHIA — Firefighters battled a massive junkyard fire Thursday night at the base of the Platt Bridge in South Philadelphia, officials said. Stacks of scrapped cars were ablaze on the lot of Camden Iron & Metal Inc., located at South 26th Street and Penrose Avenue, NBC 10 reported. The Platt Bridge was closed in both directions. Fire officials reported the fire went to two alarms before being placed under control at 10:36 p.m. A crane on the site appeared to be trying to remove cars from the path of the fire, which NBC 10’s Mike Strug reported may have begun […]
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 […]
AUTHOR AUTHOR: Q&A W/ Nathan Englander
BY MAVIS LINNEMANN BOOK CRITIC Eight years after the critically-acclaimed short story collection The Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander’s first novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, finally hit bookstores on May 1. This harrowing novel takes place during Argentina’s Dirty War (1976-1983), during which the junta government “disappeared” somewhere between 9,000 and 30,000 suspected dissidents and subversives, mostly students and liberals. Kaddish Poznan, hijo de puta (son of a whore) and outcast in the Jewish community, makes his living by erasing the names of wanton Jewish ancestors (pimps, whores and gangsters) from their gravestones on requests from more respectable […]
Fishtown Group Says ‘Sodom & Gomorrah? Bring It On!’
BY RONNIE POLANECZKY FISHTOWN ACTION isn’t waiting until May 15 to say whether a casino would be a good thing for the community. The newly minted pro-casino group wants to go on record, right here at Holy Name of Jesus Parish Hall, as being thrilled that SugarHouse Casino wants to build in the neighborhood. In fact, they say, the sooner SugarHouse can bring its 1,100 new jobs to the city, the better. These are jobs offering good salaries, benefits and pensions — and, in many cases, don’t require a college degree. Something not every Fishtowner has, or even wants to […]
LIVE AND DIRECT: Tom Knox For The Deaf
JONATHAN VALANIA REPORTS: Being a rich man trying to buy back City Hall for the common man in a city where the common man holds a profound mistrust of rich men is a fairly thankless job. You can almost see the weight of that burden dragging down the raw-boned, hang-dog face of Tom Knox. Which again brings us back to why anyone would want to be mayor. When your explanation for why you want to be mayor makes people want to ask you again ‘why the hell you want to be mayor?’ — well, you better have deep pockets. Marty […]