The majority of the action was going on upstairs, though. When you walk onto the wooden rooftop, you have two options: turn left for the bar (always a solid maneuver) or right for the music. The downtown setting provided an elegant backdrop, with the iconic Frost Bank Tower literally right across the street. A total […]
set
Posted inNews
BREAKING: Moby to headline ACM@UCO Rocks Bricktown festival
Grammy-nominated Richard Melville Hall, aka American songwriter, musician and world-class DJ Moby, will perform a DJ set 10 p.m. April 11 at the Chevy Bricktown Events Center. His performance caps off the free, fifth annual event that features performances of more than 70 students from the Academy of Contemporary Music at University of Central Oklahoma […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Ultimate Gangsters Collection: Classics
Two vehicles for James Cagney anchor the box: 1931’s The Public Enemy and 1949’s White Heat. Today, he remains indelibly associated with tough-guy roles, and it’s easy to see why. In the former, he demonstrates his might and power with a grapefruit; in the latter, he makes an electrifying exit with the immortal cry of […]
Posted inMusic
Ready or not
The Ready Set Photo: Jared Thomas A 20-something singer-songwriter from the Midwest readies to play a few tunes Thursday night from his ever-growing repertoire of chart-topping singles, acoustic endeavors and previews from his upcoming third full-length album. As The Ready Set, Indiana native Jordan Witzigreuter has charmed national audiences — particularly the teen, female demographic […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mad Max Trilogy
The first film introduces future cop Mad Max Rockatansky and director George Miller’s violent, pedal-to-the-metal world of carmageddon. Its chase sequences are as exciting as anything the action genre had seen, and they still hold up because their influence is ever-present. While Max’s family life slows the middle, it fuels a bang-up final act of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Aquabats! Super Show! Season One! 2012
A surf-rock band I recall running across in the mid-1990s, The Aquabats have been reborn as superheroes in these utterly insane adventures, drawing more influence from ’70s-era Asian monster matinees à la Infra-Man than anything else. In each half-hour, our costumed quintet fights some rubber-suited creature (Manant and the Floating Eye of Death among them), […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Childrens Hospital: The Complete Fourth Season
The good news is that it’s as hilarious as it’s ever been. The bad news is that its title still lacks the necessary apostrophe. (Perhaps that’s only bad news if you’re a writer/editor.) How does it stay fresh and funny? By not adhering to any pesky distractions like “story arcs” and “character development.” Each episode […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Bowery Boys: Volume Two
For this four-disc follow-up to 2012’s set, Warner Archive again mined its vaults for 12 of the Boys’ Poverty Row features. The best way to describe their style is that it comes from the “why I oughta!” school of comedy. I’m unsure if it ever graduated, given exchanges like “How can you read in the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Terminator Anthology
Cameron’s The Terminator of 1984 was and is a well-made piece of sci-fi trash that bears the ingenuity-on-a-budget scars of most Roger Corman graduates. If it proved a breakthrough for Cameron (who then earned the Aliens gig as a follow-up), it was arguably double that for its monosyllabic center, Arnold Schwarzenegger, then considered near-inconceivable as […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXVI
Besides, fans of MST3K only need know that another collection exists, and they’re sold. The latest, Volume XXVI (aka 26, if you don’t like maths), may not have any classics among its four-ep offering, but any episode is worth owning. Among this batch, my favorite is the most recent: 1988’s Alien from L.A., a sci-fi […]