[illustration by ALEX FINE] EDITOR’S NOTE: The bad news is that Ray Davies has canceled a four-date East Coast U.S. tour, which was scheduled to stop at the Kimmel Center on Saturday, citing health reasons. “Ray personally did not want to cancel this tour but was ordered by his doctors not to fly or travel until his medical condition has stabilized to their satisfaction,” says his publicist. The good news is they are planning to re-schedule, so that sounds encouraging. Not sure what this is all about, but we wish Ray all the best. Do yourself a favor: Cue up […]
CINEMA: Daniel Day-Lewis To Play Abraham Lincoln
NEW YORK TIMES: The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and the Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis, above, met on Friday in Springfield, Ill., to tour several historical sites, including the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, the Lincoln home, the Old State Capitol and the Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices, The State Journal-Register reported. Mr. Day-Lewis was preparing for the title role in “Lincoln,” a DreamWorks film to be directed by Steven Spielberg that is scheduled to begin production next fall, according to Kathleen Kennedy, who is producing the film with Mr. Spielberg. The screenplay, by Tony Kushner, who won a Pulitzer […]
SIDEWALKING: Bush Kills
Bushkill General Store, Route 209, 1:20 PM by JEFF FUSCO RELATED: Leroy Lewis stood in the doorway of his tiny mobile home in Bushkill on Monday evening and wept as a Pennsylvania Game Commission officer told him his beloved bear, Bozo, had been shot by a hunter. Seventeen years of memories filled Lewis’ mind as he digested the news that Bozo was dead. In those years, Lewis watched this wild animal-turned-pet grow as he hand-fed it table scraps and store-bought pies and other sweets. When Bozo was shot by a hunter Monday, he weighed nearly 900 pounds. That made Bozo […]
THIS WE ACTUALLY LIKE: The U.S.S. Foxwoods
INQUIRER: Drawn by repeated distress signals from the Foxwoods Casino project, the preservation group at the helm of a historic ghost ship, the SS United States, is offering to sail upriver with a novel alternative. The proposal: Move the derelict cruise liner about three-quarters of a mile north from its resting place at Pier 82 in South Philadelphia and place it next to a new 10-story garage with two floors of gaming. Cut a dock into the 16-acre site and slip the bow in, facing Columbus Avenue. Renovate and refit the 58-year-old vessel – an estimated $150 million to $200 […]
MUST SEE TV: The Entire History Of 20th Century Presidential Election Patterns In One Minute Or Less
DAVID B. SPARKS: A few weeks ago, I shared a series of choropleth maps of U.S. presidential election returns, illustrating the relative support for Democratic, Republican, and third Party candidates since 1920. The granularity of these county level results led me to wonder whether it would be possible to develop an isarithmic map of presidential voting using the same data. Isarithmic maps are essentially topographic or contour maps, wherein a third variable is represented in two dimensions by color, or by contour lines, indicating gradations. I had never seen such a map depicting political data — certainly not election returns, and […]
DOA: Cops Kill Armed Car Jacker In University City
INQUIRER: According to officials, a gray Cadillac [NOT pictured, above] was carjacked at 50th and Arch Streets, west of the campus, about 3 a.m. Philadelphia police spotted the carjackers and tried to stop the stolen car, which sped away. After a short chase, the driver crashed the car into a concrete barrier at 40th and Locust, adjacent to Locust Walk, where several Penn dormitories are located. The two assailants [NOT pictured, above] who were both armed, fled the scene of the crash, which during the day is typically a busy spot on campus. When he got to the area behind […]
ALBUM REVIEW: Bachelorette Isolation Loops
BY MATTHEW HENGEVELD No, Bachelorette is not the name of a new ABC show spinoff, it’s the alter ego of Annabel Alpers, budding talent from New Zealand. The Bachelorette moniker is currently three albums deep. Her newest album, My Electric Family (2009), was pretty good, though it showed a clear departure from the “dabbling” stage of her first two albums. It still feels like a messy room covered in photographs, underwear and moldy teacups— but this time it bears the weight of expectation and a brooding fan base. It’s hardly a bad album, but I’d ask fans to give her […]
FOODIE: Will New Food Safety Legislation Before Congress Kill The Slow Food Movement?
BY ELIZABETH FLYNN There’s quite a bit of debate in food activist communities about the S. B. 510, aka The Food Safety Modernization Act. Local food activists, small farmers, and organic food producers are all concerned with the language of the bill, which extends regulatory power over farms, both large and small, to the FDA. As of today, the Senate decided to include both the Manager’s amendment and the Tester Amendment as parts of the larger bill, and it must be voted on in the house within 60 days. These amendments add provisions for local regulation of small farms that […]
CINEMA: Between A Rock And A Hard Place
127 HOURS (2010, directed by Danny Boyle, 94 minutes, U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Danny Boyle, director of Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting, started directing back in the mid eighties, when all that restless, visual razzle-dazzle was bleeding over from the world of music videos. It has remained the defining element of Boyle’s style, keeping his ideas concise while the camera work is dependably witty and creative. Hitchcock, another British director known for his genius with kinetic movement, gave himself self-imposed limitations to challenge his roving camera in both Rope and Lifeboat, where his story remained bound to a single […]
CONCERT REVIEW: John Brown’s Body At The TLA
BY PELLE GUNTHER Surprisingly there’s a place in this world for white kids to make beautiful reggae music, and apparently that place is New England. Joining The Expendables at the TLA was the fantastically progressive 8-piece reggae band from Massachusetts, John Brown’s Body. To say they stole the spotlight is understatement. Quite simply, they were the only reason that the night wasn’t entirely…expendable. They played a measly 45 minutes, chock full of the most trippy and beautiful electro-reggae music all accompanied by their brilliant brass section. The singer was the only questionably-legitimate reggae addition to the band, if only due […]
ARTSY: ‘American Kills’
DESIGN BOOM: ‘when I first found the overall statistics summed the 304 suicides by US soldiers during 2009, I was shocked. I tried to find a number to compare that statistic. to my surprise the suicide statistic doubled the total of 149 US soldiers that had died in the iraq war during 2009 and equaled the number of soldiers killed in afghanistan.’ errazuriz’s first instinct was to post the statistic on facebook, dumbfounded by the lack of response and interest, he bought can of black paint and decided to ‘post’ the news in the real world on his own wall […]
EARLY WORD: Jack In The Box
Photo by Justin Bernhaut BY DAVE ALLEN Forget what you know about madness in music. Forget Syd Barrett and the recent struggle of Courtney Love; forget Robert Schumann and other composers who contracted syphilis and experienced hallucinations. Thanks to an unlikely collaboration between composer Gregory Spears and Dr. Morris Schimmel, director of the Buttonwood Hospital, a short-term psychiatric health facility in Mount Holly, New Jersey, there’s a new way of understanding music’s connection to the unsettled human mind. “For six weeks earlier this year, Spears was an artist-in-residence at Buttonwood, which involved performing both for the patients and alongside […]
TONITE: Walkin’ After Midnight
“Shambling country-folk goodness culled reverently from the oldest of schools.” — Doug Wallen