PHILADELPHIA BUSINESS JOURNAL: Philadelphians who spot fraud or waste will now be able to report it directly to the city controller’s fraud unit, using a new free smart phone app unveiled Tuesday. Called “Philly WatchDog” the app is available for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and can be downloaded from the App store or through iTunes, said City Controller Alan Butkovitz, who called it the first app of its kind in the nation. MORE NEWSWORKS: Brian Dries of the Controller’s office gave examples of abuse people could capture with the app. “You might have a city worker that a […]
CINEMA: Blow-Up Turns 45
VANITY FAIR: Forty-five years ago, English model Jill Kennington agreed to appear in an art-house film—one that would memorably capture the energy of London’s 1960s fashion and art scenes. Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 classic, Blow-Up—his first English-language film—was a sensation, and earned the Italian modernist Oscar nominations for directing and writing. Today, Kennington discusses her participation in Blow-Up and the real-world London atmosphere it depicted with Philippe Garner, international head of 20th-century decorative art and design at Christie’s. With David Alan Mellor, Garner has co-written a book that analyzes and contextualizes the film: Antonioni’s Blow-Up. (Steidl). MORE ROGER EBERT: Antonioni uses […]
TRUMP: Nobody Ever Went Broke Lost An Election Underestimating The American Public
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Sounding increasingly like a candidate, Donald Trump repeatedly told a raucous tea party crowd Saturday he has the qualities needed in the White House and the conservative ideals necessary to seal the Republican nomination should he decide to run. […] He derided President Barack Obama, calling him the worst to occupy the White House in history. He again questioned whether the president was born in the U.S., even though the fact has been affirmed by officials in Hawaii, where Obama was born. And he maligned China, saying the U.S. should take control of Iraqi oil and described American […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
*** THE WORLD CAFE Sam Beam, better known by his stage name Iron and Wine, released his first album, The Creek Drank The Cradle, on the Sub Pop label back in 2002. He wrote, performed, recorded and produced every track by himself at a studio in his home. Featuring acoustic guitars, banjo and slide guitar, the album’s music has been favorably compared to that of Nick Drake, Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Young and Ralph Stanley due to its alt-country and progressive folk arrangements. Earlier this year, Beam released his most adventurous album and most successful record with Kiss Each Other […]
AMERICA, WHAT WENT WRONG: The Not-A-Moment-Too-Soon Return Of Bartlett & Steele To The Inky
BARTLETT & STEELE: Eric Cantor, who has represented a section of Richmond, Va., in Congress since 2001 and now is the House majority leader, appears to want to craft a permanent U.S. tax system that caters exclusively to those at the top. So does Michele Bachmann, the Republican representative from Minnesota, a onetime tax lawyer who hopes to make a run for the White House. Likewise, Tim Pawlenty, the former two-term Republican governor of Minnesota, who also sees himself sitting in the Oval Office. Needless to say, none state their proposals like that. But that’s the way their numbers and […]
SIDEWALKING: Paris Is Burning
Keren Ann, The Philly-Paris Lockdown, PIFA, Kimmel Center, 8:12 PM last night by JEFF FUSCO PREVIOUSLY: Back in 2010, ?uestlove was commissioned by PIFA to assemble a collaborative performance piece with the French musicians of his choice that honored the festival’s somewhat amorphous and esoteric premise, i.e. channeling the modernist cultural vibe of Paris circa 1910 to 1920 and connecting it somehow to the modern day cultural fabric of Philadelphia, the Roots drummer said during a hastily called press conference/sneak preview on Thursday. He said he then went down the wish list of present day French musos, including Air and […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Those Who Forget The Lesson Of Vietnam Are Doomed To Repeat It In Afghanistan
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY This just in, folks: America is now spending $2,000,000,000 a f _ _ _ _ _ g* WEEK in Afghanistan! Wouldn’t you think that that might finally be enough to make even the bloodthirstiest of Washington’s fiscal phonies cry out for SOME sense of sanity, reason, or rationality, or, at the VERY least, a tiny smidgen of f _ _ _ _ _ g HUMANITY on the subject. Of course not. There’s not so much as a single SYLLABLE in ANYONE’S budget proposal devoted to reducing, or even ACKNOWLEDGING, the pissed away BILLIONS (345 SO FAR!) and […]
THE WRITING ON THE WALL: Robot Journalist Defeats Human Sports Writer In A Writing Contest
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED: A while back, All Things Considered brought you the story of a breakthrough technology: the robot journalist. Okay, so it’s not really a robot. It’s actually a software program. You feed it data, it processes that data, and it spits out a news story putting those numbers you gave it into context — just like you’d see in your local newspaper. In the beginning, it was used exclusively for sports stories and a lot of people were skeptical — namely, real-life sports journalists. “I always imagine kind of the robot you imagined in the third grade with […]
DEAD ZONE: The Nuclear Ghost Towns Of Japan
WALL STREET JOURNAL: Futaba, once home to 7,000 residents, is one of eight towns forced to evacuate the day after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami damaged the nuclear plant. In the following days, tens of thousands of residents living within 12 miles of the damaged reactors fled. Last Monday, the Japanese government expanded the mandatory evacuation zone to encompass more towns. Futaba Mayor Katsutaka Idogawa, meanwhile, said it will be “years” before the residents of his town can return. The utility on Friday said it would begin initial compensation payments of up to ¥1 million, or about $12,000, to […]
EARLY WORD: The Philly-Paris Lockdown At PIFA
?uestlove explaining The Paris Lockdown at Thursday’s press conference. [photo by JEFF FUSCO] BY JONATHAN VALANIA Back in 2010, ?uestlove was commissioned by PIFA to assemble a collaborative performance piece with the French musicians of his choice that honored the festival’s somewhat amorphous and esoteric premise, i.e. channeling the modernist cultural vibe of Paris circa 1910 to 1920 and connecting it somehow to the modern day cultural fabric of Philadelphia, the Roots drummer said during a hastily called press conference/sneak preview on Thursday. He said he then went down the wish list of present day French musos, including Air and […]
For All The F*cked Up Children Of This World, We Give You A Q&A With Sonic Boom/Peter Kember
BY JONATHAN VALANIA In the beginning, before there was Spiritualized or Spectrum, there was Spacemen 3. If you came of age in 80s, in the dreary grey flannel age of Reagan/Thatcher, when drug war hysteria was reaching a feverish pitch, Spacemen 3 was hands down the most persuasive and rewarding argument for the ingestion of mind-expanding substances since Pink met Floyd. In August of 1984, Jason Pierce (a.k.a. Jason Spaceman) received a government grant to attend Rugby Art College — which he promptly misused to purchase an electric guitar and amplifier. It was at Rugby Art College that Pierce […]
CINEMA: But How Was The Play, Mrs. Lincoln?
THE CONSPIRATOR (2010, directed by Robert Redford, 123 minutes, U.S.) IN A BETTER WORLD (2010, directed by Susanne Bier, 113 minutes, Denmark) POTICHE (2010, directed by Francois Ozon, 103 minutes, France) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Even though he never appears on-screen, it’s hard not to think about The Conspirator‘s director, Robert Redford, while his new film unspools. Besides playing nothing but earnest, handsome heroes in his career, he is admired by many for his Liberal activism and founding of the Sundance Film Festival, a festival lauded for its support of independent film. Yes, the man’s philanthropy and good intentions […]
THE DECEMBERISTS: Why We Fight
PREVIOUSLY: Amongst people who like that sort of thing, Colin Meloy — ringleader of the Portland-based folk-pop collective The Decemberists – is the most satisfyingly literary songwriter to emerge from the most recent crop of indie-rock luminaries. Others find his tune-smithing to be cloying and contrived, like an English class apple-shiner who always makes sure his essay question answers always incorporate alliteration and onomatopoeia, and at least three examples of simile and metaphor, just because he can. A bookish, blocky man with an owlish countenance and the physique of chatroom habitue, Meloy writes songs that could best be described as […]