With your life coach, A.P. Ticker
CINEMA: I Walked With A Zombie
THE CRAZIES (2010, directed by Breck Eisner, 101 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSIKIRK FILM CRITIC This latest cycle of films about the End Times has no end in sight. Was it the 2002 film from Danny Boyle, 28 Days Later that got this zombie apocalypse ball rolling? I can’t remember, its been a blur of flesh-eating zombies and doomy-gloomy conclusions for years now, and hopefully there will come a day when we’ll look back at the genre and it will look as quaint and reassuring as a 1950’s Western. Taking it on the chin this week is the All-American town […]
HEROES: Sean Penn Pulls Haitian Orphan From Rubble; Britney Donates Dress To Haiti
TMZ: Penn — who runs the Jenkins-Penn Haitian Relief Organization — drove an hour- and-a-half with his daughter Dylan to rescue a woman and child who were trapped in rubble outside Port-au-Prince, possibly from an aftershock. An eyewitness tells TMZ Penn helped extricate the woman, who suffered leg injuries, and the child, who suffered head injuries. Penn drove them in his truck to the University of Miami hospital camp in Port-au-Prince. MORE RELATED: She’s no George Clooney, but Britney Spears is doing her part for the Haitian relief effort — she’s donating a dress she wore at the 2008 MTV […]
GAMBLOR: Steve Wynn To Takeover Foxwoods Fail
INQUIRER: Wynn Resorts confirmed Tuesday that it had signed a letter of intent to take control of developing and running the struggling Foxwoods Casino project. But the deal is contingent on approval from Pennsylvania gaming regulators. The Foxwoods project is at risk of losing its license for repeated delays since winning one of the city’s two slots licenses in 2006. He only offered a general idea of what he had in mind, saying it would be a one-story casino with two or three levels of parking on either side. Asked how much Wynn Resorts would spend on the waterfront site, […]
ARTSY: There Are More Things In Heaven And Earth Than Is Dreamt Of In Your Bollywood Fantasies
[Photo by ARUSHI TERWAY] BY KISHWER VIKAAS When I first met Urmika Devi, she was a senior at Central High School who was known for both her acting skills in the drama society and her commitment to studying Indian classical dance. Almost ten years later, now a third-year law student at Temple, the 26-year old Devi has veered very little from her original interest in the arts. This Friday and Saturday she brings her dance company, Urmika Devi Dance Collective to Chinatown to present MOVING BEYOND FORM: Explorations in Rhythm & Storytelling in Classical & Contemporary Indian Dance, a show […]
TONITE: St. Vincent’s Holy Soul Jellyroll
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Saint Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419), was a missionary and logician. Annie Clark (1982- ), the American singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist who goes by the name St. Vincent, brings a missionary zeal to her current status as indie’s ambassador of goodwill from The Other Side. Likewise, despite all its head-spinning detours and U-turns, her music follows the pristine logic of a flowchart. Such was the case Thursday night when St. Vincent stunned a near-capacity crowd in the sweaty basement of the First Unitarian Church with a flawless recreation of selections from Actor, her just-released and deservedly hyped sophomore collection […]
McCain Uses Local Birther To Trash Senate Opponent
PHILLY CLOUT: U.S. Sen. John McCain has a new campaign video up on the web that uses a local attorney to attack J.D. Hayworth, the Congressman turned radio talk show host who is challenging McCain in the Arizona Republican primary election. McCain’s ad compares Hayworth to Philip Berg, a Montgomery County attorney who unsuccessfully sued in federal court to challenge President Obama’s election, based on the debunked theory that he was not born a United States citizen. MORE Meet Phil Berg, Alpha Birther Of The Bizarro Nation BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY In the soft twilight of the first Saturday […]
OH GOD: Jesus Appears In Pennsyltucky Pizza Sauce
TIMES-TRIBUNE: When Mary Louise Salerno saw Jesus Christ in a bucket of pizza sauce, her instinct was not to alert the media or even to tell many friends. She did not want people descending on her family’s West Scranton pizzeria, and she did not want to invite critics or doubters of what she felt was a clear sign. “To us, it was something special,” Ms. Salerno, 65, of Old Forge said. “God smiled on us that day.” The image of Jesus has a history of unexpected appearances, from rocks and windows to medical X-rays and a tortilla. Add to that […]
BOOKS: Michele Bachmann Vs. The Gays!
TALKING POINTS MEMO: The new issue of the Michele Bachmann comic, False Witness! The Michele Bachmann Story, is now out on sale. The producers of the comic appear to be taking a thematic approach in the series, dedicating an issue to a particular area of Bachmann’s right-wing obsessions — and they’ve done a great job of it in this issue. This episode: The gays. As for the treatment of the subject matter, the creators set out to make a serious point: That Bachmann has advanced her career on a platform of singling out a group within society for hatred and […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR William Hurt plays an ex-con who takes a road trip across post-Katrina Louisiana in an attempt to get his life back on track in the new film, The Yellow Handkerchief. To prepare for the role, Hurt spent a night in Louisiana State Penitentiary — better known as Angola. Entering the maximum security facility, he tells Terry Gross, was an “amazing experience.” “I spoke with every member on the row … those who would speak to me,” Hurt says. “I had a three-hour conversation with the man in the next cell. I never saw his face,” he said. From […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN 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. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
THE HURT LOCKER: Fetus-Hoarding Doctor Tied To Controversial Botched Abortion Experiments
INQUIRER: Harvey Karman, a California psychologist who ran an underground abortion service in the 1950s, wanted to make abortion simpler, cheaper, and less painful. He succeeded by inventing a soft, flexible tube, the Karman cannula, that is still used in early-stage abortions. Then he “set out to revolutionize second-trimester abortion” with a plastic spiral, “the super coil,” that could be inserted into the uterus to trigger an abortion, according to Tunc. At the invitation of the Bangladeshi government, Karman tested the device on hundreds of women there who had been raped by Pakistani soldiers. He claimed there were no complications. […]