TONITE: Do The Hustle!

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Tonight Andrew’s Video Vault unearths to very different New York stories for tonight’s double feature at The Rotunda. The 1975 made for TV feature Hustling gives us a view of the city in its mid-1970s seedy glory courtesy of Joseph Sargent, the director of the classic New York thriller The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (which can be seen during the film on a theater marquee). The screenplay, written by Fay Kanin and adapted from a book by Gail Sheehy, is surprisingly uninterested in the titillation factor of the profession but instead focuses on the in […]

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EARLY WORD: Turn Around Bright Eyes

Friday June 10th with M. Ward. Tickets go on sale Friday at noon. PREVIOUSLY: The biggest cliche about Bright Eyes — aka 24-year-old 31-year-old indie-pop pinup boy Conor Oberst — is that he’s emerged as the latest “new Dylan,” a Mr. Tambourine Man for the O.C. Nation. Like all cliches, this one’s been worn meaningless by overuse. And yet, like any good cliche it’s essentially true. Heck, Oberst already got props from the last “new Dylan” who amounted to anything: Bruce Springsteen. Like Dylan in his prime, Oberst writes long, elliptical narratives–weaving word-clotted threads of angst and regret, anger and […]

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M. WARD: Let’s Dance

M. Ward plays the Mann Friday with Bright Eyes and The Dawes. MORE M. Ward is the nom de soft rock of one Matt Ward, a shadowy horse whisperer from Portland, Ore., who has released seven albums of Jiminy Cricket porch folk and enigmatic lo-fi attic blues, each invested with a moonlit vibe that suggests there’s a kind of hush all over the world tonight. Ward is deeply self-schooled in all things past, and smart enough to know those who ignore history are doomed to remix it. A sad-eyed troubadour in the hang-dawg tradition of Nick Drake and Tim Buckley, […]

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SIDEWALKING: Portlandia II

Japanese American Historical Plaza Bill Of Rights Memorial, Portland, Oregon, 9:34 AM by JONATHAN VALANIA RELATED: Using thirteen engraved stones of basalt and granite, the Japanese American Historical Plaza in Portland tells an important story of the Japanese in Oregon. Landscape architect Robert Murase created the theme and design of the plaza to tell the story of the hardships suffered by Japanese immigrants and the indignities imposed by the incarceration of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II. The plaza shows how the rights of Japanese Americans on the West Coast were denied, and honors the bravery of those […]

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BOOKS: A One Man Fringe Festival

STEVE VOLK:  It was late at night, and Elisabeth Kubler-Ross had swapped her hot cups of tea for whiskey sours. The room was filled with cigarette smoke. Kubler-Ross and her research partner, the Reverend Mwalimu Imara, were putting the finishing touches to On Death and Dying–the book that would make Kubler-Ross a star, introduce the once ubiquitous Five Stages of Grief and galvanize the international hospice movement. But there was one chapter still under discussion, a chapter in which Kubler-Ross addressed all the strange stories resuscitated patients told: about floating out of their bodies and meeting with deceased loved ones, […]

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THE NEW AUSTERITY: Governor Corbett Gets Fancy New Ride, Drives Chevy Over The Levy Of Hypocrisy

INQUIRER: Gov. Corbett has a new ride. So does his first lady. And his lieutenant governor. And the lieutenant governor’s wife. The taxpayer tab: $186,000. Even as his administration is proposing dramatic cuts in the state’s next budget, Corbett, his wife, Susan, and Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley and his wife, Suzanne, will all get to ride around in brand-new sport utility vehicles. The men got 2011 Chevrolet Suburbans, each at a cost of $53,000, according to state records. The women received 2011 Chevy Traverses, at a cost of about $40,000 each. MORE SAMUEL JOHNSON: Nothing is more unjust, however common, […]

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