This year, each of the city’s eight council members will receive a $1 million allocation to spend on projects that were not previously funded. The discretionary spending program comes from the city’s reserve fund, typically 8-15 percent of the total municipal budget. In six of the last 11 years, excess money from the reserve fund […]
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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 […]
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Olympus Has Fallen
I’m talking about Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, just to be clear. In Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen, Aaron Eckhart grows angry and Morgan Freeman pulls strings from the sidelines, while a possibly crazy but altogether decent man dishes out some superheroic justice to save the city, yet the result is a terrible movie, arguably […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rodeo clown
Unlike the other exhibitions currently housed at Oklahoma City Museum of Art — the Chihuly glass, the Herb Ritts photos — one can touch the works of Halo Amok without fear of being thrown out. That’s what they’re for, according to their creator. “This is art you can literally walk into,” said nationally renowned artist […]
Posted inNews
The cannabis justice system
Credit: Brad Gregg Black-and-white because some believe its medicinal benefits outweigh the stigma. Others want to nip that conversation in the bud. Green all over because Oklahomans both black and white use the drug at comparable rates. But — and here’s the punch line — black citizens in the state are arrested nearly three times […]
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Thrills! Chills! Spills!
Shoot the Silver Bullet at Frontier City11501 N. Interstate 35 Service Roadfrontiercity.com 478-2140 Race along nearly 2,000 feet of steel track at speeds reaching 48 mph on the Silver Bullet. Oklahoma’s highest roller coaster takes you 83 feet up, only to send you into a heart-pounding, 80-foot drop down. Your hair will stand on end […]
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Blancanieves
Once upon a time, the idea of a film being silent, foreign and — steee-rike three! — black and white equated to box-office poison. Then 2011’s The Artist won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture; earned $133 million worldwide; and lived happily ever after. Hoping for the same storybook ending is Spain’s Blancanieves. While every […]
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The Sorcerer and the White Snake
Luckily, it’s the kind of family film that parents won’t equate to a chore. Li is a monk who specializes as a demon hunter, but the film’s focus is on Xu Xian (Raymond Lam), a young herbalist saved from drowning by the kiss of a thousand-year-old snake demon (Eva Huang, Kung Fu Hustle). She’s able […]
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Enlightened: The Complete First Season
This is not to denigrate her Oscar-nominated turn as 1991’s Rambling Rose or her work as muse to David Lynch, most notably in Blue Velvet or Wild at Heart — all solid and accomplished. It’s just that her role here as Amy Jellicoe is the most complex and multilayered character she’s been given. Amy represents […]
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Banned in the USA
O. Louis Guglielmi’s Subway Exit (1946) When the topic of artistic censorship is raised, odds are that works cited include Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ or just about anything by Robert Mapplethorpe. The United States government, however, in that golden era of anti-Commie paranoia, arguably did the best job of it by the disbanding and dismantling […]