The Hour of 13
The black-and-white mystery from 1952 is the kind of late-Victorian period piece where you’ll hear lots of lines like, “Where to, guv’nor?” (I’m not certain, but “You look as shocked as if I caught you in a Turkish bath!” might be anachronistic.) As “Hour” unfolds, an eighth policeman has been slain on London’s streets under…
Bachelor in Paradise
When Hank Mancini seemingly provided every score. When “salad olives” could be featured on an endcap in a grocery store scene, and they wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb. When a 58-year-old Bob Hope could romantically pursue a 40-year-old Lana Turner, and the age difference didn’t come off creepy. We’re talking “Bachelor in Paradise,”…
Gone with the wind
At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, the University of Central Oklahoma’s Wind Symphony puts its lips to a concert of 20thcentury classics at the campus’ Mitchell Hall Theater. On the program are compositions by Sergei Prokofiev, Roger Nixon, H. Owen Reed and Ingolf Dahl. “Besides the lush scoring and soaring pictorial themes, the pieces are well-crafted, with…
Blasting off
ACM@UCO is not quite 2 years old, but it’s already paying dividends for its students. See The Rockettops, an indie-rock quartet taking what its players have learned and packaging it into a model for other students to follow. Singer Jordan Smith, bassist Michael Bewley and guitarist Earl Moreno met at the school and formed the…
Meet the Robisons
For the way Bruce and Charlie Robison’s careers have gone, you’d think they must have been plotted since birth. Wrong. “We never planned for anything like this,” Bruce Robison said. “We were off to college and had no thoughts of playing music. When we both dropped out of college and decided to move to Austin,…
Wonder woman
Many people might regard television-based talent competitions as a fast and convenient route to fame and fortune, but Austin, Texas-based blues singer/ guitarist Carolyn Wonderland has doubts about the value of such career shortcuts. “I have an aversion to music as a competitive sport,” she said. “So I’m definitely one of those anti-‘American Idol’ kind…
‘Gossip’ grrl
Who would have expected this from Cindy Lou Who? Child star and current “Gossip Girl” actress Taylor Momsen has come a long way from the 2000 film “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Although no one else saw her rock transformation coming, she always did. “Rock ’n’ roll is what I grew up with. It’s what…
Fiddling around
Singer/songwriter and fiddle player Carrie Rodriguez never had to approach her parents reluctantly with her decision to pursue music for a living; she was just joining the family business. “My mom was a painter, my grandma was a writer and my dad was a songwriter, and so I just thought everyone’s parents were artists,” said…
Geronimo’s bones
Geronimo’s name became forever etched in Western lore in the mid-1880s when he eluded 5,000 U.S. Army regulars in the rugged mountains of Arizona and Mexico with a handful of tribal holdouts. A series of close encounters with the rebel leader left soldiers to wonder if they were chasing a ghost. Finally, on Sept. 4,…
Hop, skip and a jump
Garage punk’s rabbit-masked Nobunny hops into The Conservatory on Saturday night for a return gig that he had no intention of making. Local Nobunny fan Clint McEwen noticed something wasn’t right when the Oakland, Calif.-based act’s winter tour dates were posted on Twitter recently: no Oklahoma City stop. This irked him, because he had seen…
Truth in advertising
The resulting exhibit, “New Work,” features paintings of landscapes he saw while on a cross-country journey to 16 art shows. It remains on display through Feb. 28 at Adelante! Gallery, 3003 Paseo, where an artist’s reception will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday. “It had always been a dream of mine to…
Sticky situation
With the 2000s came a new trend: blog bands. These were acts that came out of nowhere, riding a wave of buzz built solely by music blogs. But with the quick rise came the inevitable backlash, and the poster child for that unenviable situation is Tapes ’n Tapes, the indie-rock fourpiece that performs Tuesday at…
Juice is loose
The University of Central Oklahoma’s Department of Theatre Arts recently was invited to present its production of the dark comedy “Mr. Marmalade” from its 2010 season at the regional Kennedy Center for American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) later this month in Amarillo, Texas. The KCACTF is a nationwide program that promotes college theater production. Last…
Young Greeks
The sessions, for ages 9 to 11, will be highly interactive, with crafts and activities centered on the myths of various cultures. Participants also will explore the museum’s current exhibition, “Mediterranean Treasures: Selections from the Classics Collection,” to better understand how the cultures are expressed through art. “I think that kids these days aren’t exposed…
Cornett should improve air supply
Modernization is more than new sports teams and convention centers. It’s the creation of an open-minded attitude, a stance that promotes a high quality of life where opportunities are available for all citizens to contribute what they can to the city and be respected, accepted, with equal opportunities to air their thoughts, without being marginalized.…
Dogtooth
A family of five lives in isolation behind the walls of their well-groomed estate. Father drives into town every day to work, but he’s the only one who ever leaves. Mother has access to a telephone, kept hidden. The Eldest and Youngest, both daughters, and the Son stay home doing chores, swimming in the pool,…
Burger bliss
Legend has it that the onion burger was concocted — people argue whether it originated in Ardmore or El Reno — to help stretch out beef during the Great Depression by mashing onions (shredded, sliced or diced) into the patty before grilling it on the flattop. It’s accompanied by little else, but that’s because extra…
Barney’s Version
Opening Friday at AMC Quail Springs Mall 24, it’s a Canadian film based on Mordecai Richler’s 1997 novel, detailing the entire adulthood of Barney Panofsky (Giamatti, TV’s “John Adams”), who, despite being wildly successful as a soap-opera producer, fails spectacularly in his personal life. It takes him three marriages to get it right, and even…
PR BS
—“Manure Accident Readiness – Prepare for the Worst” —“City trout season continues through February 28”—“Oklahoma City University Professor Selected to Edit French Philosophy Journals” —“KEVIN DURANT SET TO PARTICIPATE IN THE 2011 FOOT LOCKER THREE-POINT CONTEST” —“BLOOD FROM SLAUGHTERHOUSE RECYCLED AS ART” —“TGC Industries Announces Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2010 Earnings Release and Conference Call…
Massive monstercicles of doom!
Last week, when the weather outside was just a wee bit frosty, a broken pipe created more than a dozen massive icicles that formed precariously on a bridge that spans Interstate 235, according to KOCO-TV. How was it hanging? Try some more than a foot in diameter. A foot! Those aren’t icicles, those are massive…
Cork and canvas
At some point, we forget how much we enjoyed art, even the nascent scribbles of would-be artists who exchange their creativity for organized sports, homework, video games and television. We put down the crayons, brushes and pens, and pick up other “more important” things. Marie Ensign and Aaron Hasley intend to help Oklahomans reconnect with…
Here’s your Chance
He’ll play two charity concerts for Children’s Miracle Network of Oklahoma, 1 and 7 p.m. Saturday at Edmond Santa Fe High School, 1901 W. 15th in Edmond. OKG: How is your daily life different now? Chance: Life is a lot different! But I am loving every minute of it. My friends nor family treat me…
Musical ‘Dream’
In a season titled “Shakes, Drugs & Rock ’n’ Roll,” Reduxion Theatre puts the sexy back into Shakespeare with its effectively titillating and appropriately titter-inducing take on the fun and fanciful tale of hot and bothered lovers under the influence of powerful potions in a late-night romp through an enchanted wood. Directed by Erin Woods,…
Be their guest
The year 1991 was good for yellow dresses. That was when Disney released the film “Beauty and the Beast,” and little girls everywhere began asking not to be a princess, but to be Belle — this once-little girl included. The Academy Award-winning movie spawned the Tony Award-winning Broadway production, one that played for more than…
smag 7
Seize the cheese Cheese lover and writer Clifton Fadiman once said, “Cheese is milk’s leap to immortality.” In the metro area, satisfying cheese seems to pop up on every menu. Say “hello” to these seven spots with tantalizing treats to test your taste buds. —Carol Smaglinski, photos by Mark Hancock and Shannon Cornman $$: Up…
Land of Oz
above Waitress Linda Hendrix delivers all-you-can-eat breakfasts to Tony Sampson right and T. Valencia at Ozzie’s Diner at Norman’s Max Westheimer Airport terminal. Going to the airport is always a hectic experience, from check-in to takeoff. It’s a rush of security checks, flight delays and claiming baggage all while carting around carry-ons, IDs and boarding…
CFN Quote of the Week
It’s just a texture more than anything else and it celebrates being intangible. Maybe the trick to editing an alt weekly is to treat it like the slow-food locavore dish: well made, homegrown, hand crafted. “Look at what people will do for vinyl records. Look at all those indie bands that have discovered the washboard…
CFN QOTW, Part Deux
Luigi ‘Baby Shacks’ Manocchio will eventually be returned to Rhode Island to face charges that he extorted protection payments from Providence strip clubs. But federal Bureau of Prison records show that Manocchio is currently in a transfer facility in Oklahoma.” —Feb. 10 story from The Boston Globe’s online edition at boston.com
Councilman misfires with gun comment
This is the exact same thought process (or lack thereof) and attitude that go along with prejudice against people simply based on looks, which could not be more wrong. All, and I do mean all, firearms are the same. All of them consist of a barrel and machinery that sends a metal projectile out at…
En route
The route is not set in stone, and is not the complete streetcar route under the MAPS 3 project, subcommittee members said. MAPS 3 is a $777 million capital improvement program, paid for by a 1-cent sales tax approved by voters in December 2009. Approximately $125 million of those funds will be set aside for…
Made of money
This is just barely above the next highest level of $50,000 to $70,000, at 20 percent, and then $25,000 to $35,000 at 17.9 percent. The lowest income level of the metro’s 737,414 homeowners are the 3.5 percent who earn less than $15,000 annually. —Gazette staff
That new car smell
Audi reported sales of 7,812 cars and SUVs in January, up 20 percent from the previous January. It also surpassed that month’s sales record, set in 2010 with 6,510 vehicles sold. This month’s results continue Audi’s strongest sales year in the U.S., grabbing 8.6 percent of the market at the close of 2010. Chrysler’s January…
What’s up? Docs
“Strangers No More” looks at a K-12 public school in Tel Aviv, where students from 48 countries unite as one. “Children is children. In education, there’s no strangers,” says the principal. “And everyone has a special story. A real complicated story.” She’s not joking. Many of the kids have never set foot in a classroom…
Wide-open ward
Wards 2, 5, 6 and 8 are all up grabs in the primary election scheduled for March 1, with a general election scheduled for April 5. Since Oklahoma City’s elections are nonpartisan, in the races in which no candidate gets a simple majority during the March 1 elections, the two highest vote-getters will face each…
Misrepresenting government spending
According to the Census Bureau, the national average for combined per capita state and local spending (2007) was $9,338, versus $7,519 for Oklahoma. We would have to spend an extra $6.82 billion to reach the national average, $890 million to equal Texas and $3.8 billion to match Colorado (that’s before the 15 percent cut of…
Munn ho!: Fifth in a series
“I would personally find it really romantic to grab a big pizza, a couple bottles of wine, and hang out in a hotel room with a big fireplace and just talk and laugh.” Got it, guys? Alcohol and cheese might lead to that other thing. And speaking of that other thing, we think we found…
On the move
So, friends, here are four shops that have moved in the last couple of months, or are moving. Some have even expanded, changed names, and maybe even broken up with boyfriends and dyed their hair. Try to keep up. In late 2010, Dulaney’s (7660 N. Western; 607-8880) moved out of Nichols Hills Plaza. The new…
Means business
Incumbent David Castillo was defeated by challenger Jay Means in a three-way race for the District 6 seat, which represents southwest Oklahoma City. Castillo came in third with 15 percent of the vote, while Means garnered 68 percent of the vote. The third candidate Charles Campbell, got around 16 percent of the vote. Means, a…
Fascism arrives in OKC
After reading Pastor Tom Vineyard’s comments in “Citty under siege,” I believe fascism has arrived in Oklahoma. Vineyard has wrapped himself in the flag and is carrying a cross, but he has not fooled me. Don’t let him fool you, either. Using his church’s marquee on N.W. 23rd Street, he is more interested in supporting…
‘I’ want you
Any graduate- or undergraduate-level college student in the state is eligible to apply for the slots, which pay $6,000 to work for an advanced technology startup company in Oklahoma City, beginning June 1 and ending Aug. 10. Winning fellows will be matched to the companies that best meet applicants’ skill sets. “There is a high…
Streetcar for the car-free
It is hard to believe, but that feeling of confinement and limited freedom so many of us experienced for a few days after the storm hit, is the everyday experience for tens of thousands of people living right here in our community. You’ll find clues that point to this fact throughout the city, particularly in…
Bite Size
Birthplace: “Tulsa.” What do you wish you knew five years ago? “That taxes get worse as you get older. I wish I had taken a course years ago.” Finest feature: “My ability to talk to people.” In your kitchen, you would never be without: “Tongs.” Biggest vice? “Procrastination, which is not conducive to a being…
The Walkmen, Peelander-Z to headline Norman Music Festival 4
According to Holly Jones, NMF publicity chair, the approximately 150 local bands playing the festival will be announced in the next week. In all, some 200 musicians will perform on 12 stages. The festival coordinators are playing coy with the rest of the main stage, as well as the headliner of the second stage. “We’ll…
Wellfleet — The District
A recently popularized trend in folk is to go to a location with no songs but the intent of writing an album, and The District has taken that approach in crafting its debut. The results of that approach are deeply ingrained in the feel of the album, as the whole things hangs together like a…
The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu
While this loving tribute to the works of fantasy/horror author H.P. Lovecraft boasts excellent production values, it offers little in the way of actual humor. The premise assumes that Lovecraft’s tales of the tentacled alien Cthulhu are real and on our earth, all explained via a nifty animated sequence. For years, the Lovecraft lineage has…
Shopping
That’s why the guiding hand of the “Resident Evil” franchise is regarded among fanboys as one of the most-hated directors working today, although I generally, unapologetically like his brand of motion-picture wares. It’s a style in which visuals are everything, in which music cues are given more forethought than plot points, but at least it’s…
Mesrine: Killer Instinct
But in the films he makes back home in his native France, he can be such a bad-ass, perhaps never more so than in the title role of “Mesrine: Killer Instinct,” the first in a pair of biopics on French gangster Jacques Mesrine, who died in 1979. (The sequel, “Mesrine: Public Enemy #1,” follows in…
Diary of a Madman
Tame then and tame now, they nonetheless primed me for the cathartic thrills of the genre. Up until its recent DVD debut, 1963’s “Diary Of A Madman” eluded me. Like the excellent series of Edgar Allan Poe films Price churned out under producer Roger Corman, this chiller, too, takes its inspiration from another classic author…
Due Date
Practically anything Phillips did would be seen as disappointing. Here’s the thing, however: Don’t expect another “Hangover,” and “Due Date” is just fine. It may not be as funny as that film, despite sharing Zach Galifianakis, but it’s plenty funny enough. It still has more laughs than most of what passes for studio comedies —…
Freakonomics: The Movie
But I remembered nearly everything I’d read five years ago in “Freakonomics” when I watched its lively documentary adaptation, now on DVD. The invented word concerns the study of human behavior, primarily via incentives, and if it were offered as a real degree program in the hallowed halls of higher ed, I might even go…
Swordplay
If you are looking for a metal mentor, you could do a lot worse than J.D. Cronise, vocalist, guitarist and lead songwriter of heavy metal three-piece The Sword, and he’s got your very first lesson right here. “When you start a band, you say, ‘I want a band that sounds like,’ then you fill in…
Capitol Hill Library utilizing dogs to improve kids’ reading skills
Research found that reading aloud to a canine listener for 10 weeks can improve a child’s reading skills by as much as 12 percent. “One of the biggest stumbling blocks to a child’s success in reading out loud is the fear that someone will laugh when the reader makes a mistake,” said Jennifer Jones, a…
The 7th Dawn
This vehicle for William Holden takes place in Malaysia — shot on location, even — as World War II comes to an end. He’s Maj. Ferris, while the character played by Susannah York (read: Superman’s Kryptonian mom) is named Trumpey, which will make any “MST3K” fan snicker in delight each time it’s spoken. Together, they…
Being aware of Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease that causes a severe loss of memory, difficulty completing tasks and changes in behavior. As a loved one declines they may forget childhood memories or names of family members, and may lash out in anger and confusion. For more than 126,000 caregivers in Oklahoma, these changes can feel like losing…
The Low Anthem — Smart Flesh
You know a real folk song when you hear it; it could have been written 100 years ago or in 100 years, and it would sound the same. The Low Anthem wrote 11 timeless folk tunes and called it “Smart Flesh.” It is an early candidate for album of the year, as it is gorgeous…
Ruby Coast — Whatever This Is
Does the first band get considered merely an innovator and put behind the new band? Does the new band get considered copycats, even though they’re doing it as well or better? This is the problem in reviewing Ruby Coast’s “Whatever This Is”: It sounds exactly like a Tokyo Police Club album. I mean, down to…
Inspector Bellamy
Welcome to un film de Claude Chabrol, the French New Wave director who famously idolized Alfred Hitchcock. You can see that influence even in this picture, his final bow before passing away last year. It is this case of the automobile “accident” that Inspector Bellamy of Paris (Gérard Depardieu) informally investigates, despite being on vacation…
