…But Nobody Wants To Die Cerulean Arts is pleased to present Heaven’s Gate featuring oil paintings by Yuri Makoveychuk, an artist, animator and filmmaker based in the Ukraine and New York. Comprising large-scale, oil on canvas paintings, Heaven’s Gate represents a contemporary take on traditional themes of human folly, reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel. Makoveychuk’s traditional technique, combined with a thoroughly contemporary artistic sensibility, gives the work its arresting power. At first glance, the works seem to be digital photographs, the illusion is so complete. The figures depicted are culled from different eras – some in 1930s fedoras, […]
CONCERT REVIEW: I Like American Music
BY DAVE ALLEN The Annenberg Center at Penn is giving this city something it’ll have a hard time getting at Kimmel Center this season: modern American music. After several years of strong contemporary programming, the Philadelphia Orchestra is doing a grand total of zero works by living American composers, so the American Composers Orchestra, a New York-based group with a dual season in Philly, fills the void. The ACO’s concert Sunday night at International House featured several pieces strong enough for repertoire status, but most remarkable was that all five composers on the program were in attendance – something you’ll […]
STRAIGHT OUTTA BIRDLAND: Q&A with Ben Ratliff
BY DAVE ALLEN Ben Ratliff has been the jazz critic for the New York Times since 1996. His reviews of live performances – produced at a rate of nearly one per night, always with a keen ear and a sharp word – always aim for the heart of the sound, and his newest book, The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music, strikes out for the same territory by a different path: through the words of the players themselves. He’ll be in Philadelphia tonight for a “conversation over music” with pianist Orrin Evans, an adoptive Philadelphian who’s made an impact on Ratliff’s […]
30 YEARS AGO: The Jonestown Massacre
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Peoples Temple sprang from the heartland in the 1950s. Rev. Jim Jones built an interracial congregation in Indianapolis through passionate Pentecostal preaching and courageous calls for racial equality. Moving his flock to California, the minister transformed his church into a leftist social movement with programs for the poor. Political work by his followers elevated Jones to prominence in liberal Democratic circles by the late 1970s. He was head of San Francisco’s public housing commission when media scrutiny and legal problems spurred his retreat to Jonestown for what would be his last stand. Jones had gathered his people in […]
FUNNY: Justin Timberlake In A Leotard
INCREDIBLE: Beyonce’s legs. LUCKY: Jay-Z
CINEMA: Concentration Camping
Hitler had concentration camps: we had American-Japanese internment camps. Roosevelt OK’d it. Nixon, albeit 35 years later, apologized for it. Come and gone? I think not. Family Gathering is Lise Yasui’s opus which depicts her family’s experience in an American-Japanese internment camp. Yasui’s family left their internment shrouded in mystery for years as she was growing up. And so, Yasui’s curiosity to penetrate the taboo precipitated the production of this film. “I intended to make a straight-forward historical film that explored the political and social pressures that led to the internment,” Yasui said. Historical accounts in general, however, can be […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
MEXICALI: Calexico, TLA, Last Night [photo by JONATHAN VALANIA]
All This Happened While You Were Sleeping
MAD DECENT: Diplo & Friends, Starlight Ballroom, Last Night [photos by TIFFANY YOON]
MAYOR NUTTER: Buddy, Can You Spare A Billion?
RAY CHARLES: Busted [Dir. by SCOTT COLAN] WALL STREET JOURNAL: Requests for federal emergency funding are piling up, with the latest requests coming from cash-strapped cities seeking help to shore up budgets strained by sinking revenue, pension-plan losses and difficulty getting financing amid the credit crisis. On Friday, the mayors of Philadelphia, Phoenix and Atlanta asked the Treasury Department to set aside $50 billion of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to spur infrastructure investment to create jobs and lift local economies. The mayors also asked for loans to cover short-term borrowing needs and to meet payroll. In a […]
Q&A: Conversation With An Okie Noodler
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Brad Beesley has been the Flaming Lips in-house documentarian and videographer since the mid-’90s. Just about any Flaming Lips video you have seen was made by Brad Beesley. He is also the director of Fearless Freaks, the excellent Lips documentary released a few years back, culled from literally hundreds of hours of interviews and performance footage that Beesley shot over the course of the last 10-plus years. Concurrent with his work on Fearless Freaks, Beesley also served as cinematographer for Christmas On Mars, the just-released low-rent sci-fi thriller the Lips made in Wayne Coyne’s garage. Back in […]
GAYDAR EXTRA: Taking It To The Streets
On November 4th, 2008, we made history with the election of the first black president in the history of the United States. But the motion to ban gay marriage in California cast a dark cloud over Californian gays for what was for most a joyous day. Proposition 8 is a California state ballot proposition that denies homosexual couples the right to marry. Gay activists and gay couples naturally saw this as a threat, and rigorously campaigned against the proposition prior to the presidential election, which included raucous demonstrations out front of churches of many denominations and the boycotting of business that supported the “Yes to 8” cause. But despite “No to […]