Cover Story
2009 Film Issue
Flyover? You’re yawning. I can see it. Geographically speaking, Kentucky boasts far more attractive views than, say, Kansas. Or how about Amarillo, Texas? Or North Dakota. Rolling valleys and river-borne industry are flat-out compelling things to look at. The Flyover Film Festival exists for the first time this weekend in Louisville. Flyover is also movie…
Piece be with you
After a light squeeze of the cast polymer grip-frame, the Walther P22 semi-automatic pistol pops. The chamber ejects a fiery spark and the first shell casing flicks up against my protective eye goggles. The weapon kicks back, quickly unloading a rapid 10-round cartridge that dots the featureless silhouette’s upper body. A firm tap on my…
Mug Shots: Summertime beer fests
During the halcyon days of my youth, which were far less carefree in practice than when viewed decades later through beer-drenched memory, summertime always meant a profusion of outdoor beer festivals. So did winter, spring and fall. When you’re 17 years old, look more like 13, live at home with your parents, and require divine…
The dudes on the bus
Wearing pajama pants and sandals, the two men don’t look like anarchist revolutionaries as they exit the bright green school bus that has been their home for the past few months. But in fact, the pair is on a mission to promote The Zeitgeist Movement, and on this day they are stopping in Louisville to…
Inbox — June 10, 2009
Unhealthy LEO Yo, hipster dudes at LEO — what’s the deal? For the second year in a row, LEO gave no ink to another rally (in front of Humana headquarters) for healthcare justice. On May 28, about 150 folks marched in support of HR 676, the National Health Insurance Act that is currently in the…
FILM: Sewn Up
“I knew the face and the figure weren’t going to last forever,” Louise Cecil says as she leads the way through her byzantine Floyd Street costume warehouse, stacked to its I-beams with 10,000 costumes. “So when I started modeling, I started collecting.” Cecil, a former Alix Adams/Cosmo model and Playgirl employee, shows off her enclave…
Heads on a platter
Rick O’Neil and Erin Day need to get out more. Two of a handful of projectionists in charge of operating the IMAX projector at the Louisville Science Center, they keep their eyes fixated on a platter of spinning blackness inside a dimly lit booth. “We’re the most well-read people,” jokes Day, who has worked at…
Wathen’s Kentucky Bistro bounces back
Everybody loves a parade? Maybe. Let’s say that most people love most parades. But the procession of broken dreams that has recently passed through the St. Matthews space that once was home to Rick’s? That’s a parade not so easy to enjoy. For the historical record, let’s retrace the genealogy of this spot that once…
Art: The kids aren’t all right
Andréa Keys’s kids make me uncomfortable. Enormous and fat, towering on platforms, being absorbed into walls, pointing vacantly into the horizon beyond the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, they are super-sized bruisers with heavy hands, necks and ankles. Absent is the cliché of cuteness that plagues art about children. They are like pensive, distracted…
FILM: Griffith’s controversial legacy mixed thanks to ‘Birth of a Nation’
Jeers, protests and rotten eggs — how could any film survive that? “The opposition was there in full force at the premiere,” director D.W. Griffith wrote in his unfinished autobiography “The Man Who Invented Hollywood.” “A riot was brewing. Over the boos, catcalls and hisses were the whistles and applause. It became a contest. The…
Weather report
Alison Mosshart has played both vixen and victim as the singing half of The Kills. Now she’s stepping out on her duo, in a vital role for Jack White’s newest band. Unlike The White Stripes and The Raconteurs, new foursome The Dead Weather, which play City Block on Thursday, places White in the background. Well,…
FILM: Beckett’s Ghost
The spirit of Samuel Beckett is not dead. Want proof? “Alphonso Bow” is your best bet. In the spirit of plays like Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” Louisville poet and screenwriter Mike Sarki takes the simple premise of a lunch conversation between two men — abrasive, opinionated Alphonso Bow (Jeffrey Pierce) and his older, more passive…
FILM: In The Cannes
Boston University film school grad Zach Treitz didn’t lie in wait to make a name for himself on the film circuit. He and a few close friends reunited in New York to form Red Bucket Films. This might be the year Red Bucket breaks out: Their film, “Go Get Some Rosemary,” was screened at the…
FILM: Call outs
Alcohol and movies. It’s a combination simple and appealing but surprisingly rare; try mixing some drinks at Showcase Cinemas Stonybrook and see how it goes over. But Andy Schanie, the founder of the Last Call Film Festival, has been filling that void in Louisville for four years. Held at the beloved Old Louisville watering hole…
Video TapeWorm
THIS WEEK’S TWIN PEEKS: MORNING LIGHT 2007; $29.95, PG This Disney true-life outing is pretty cool, if a little shallow. Fifteen rookie sailors — young, rich, good-looking and athletic — endure six months of intense physical training in hopes of winning a spot on the crew of the sloop Morning Light as she competes in…
Book: Knowing ‘The German Woman’
Paul Griner’s students at U of L, where he has taught for 13 years, regard him as highly as his readers do in the wider world. In the same way that his style never gets in the way of his subject, his personality does not get in the way of his teaching. Just as the…
FILM: Shoot The Messenger? Gladly
Aron Conaway and Hallie Jones are known to many in the Louisville arts community as two of the people behind LAVA House, the unique Germantown arts space that burned down last year, taking the life of resident Bill Christie. However, the tragic event hasn’t slowed them down. The married couple is surely among the most…
Gay Pride: It’s not just for dinner
I’m not sure if it was coincidence or gravity, but the summer I came out I found this quote by Anais Nin: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” I wrote this on a piece of paper and kept…
B-Sides: Music & Other Ephemera
Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom has announced its summer concert lineup. Check it: Colbie Caillat — June 11 tobyMac — June 20 Raven Symoné — July 7 Jesse McCartney — July 14 Miranda Cosgrove — TBD Jangle & Roar A new label called Jangle & Roar is putting out the forthcoming record by Louisville band The…
A banking empire is born
Banking, like everything else, is losing its bricks and mortar. Thanks to online banking and ATMs, the glory days — when a sweet-but-officious bank teller named Cricket or Chip could make us feel deliciously wicked for withdrawing our own money — are gone. Fortunately, when technology closes a door, she leaves open a window (in…
FILM: The kid goes in the picture
It’s a classic Hollywood story: The son of a filmmaker goes to film school and becomes one himself. His fiancée is an agent for contemporary artists. The family goes on a shoot for a high-profile film, traveling all across the most exotic parts of Europe. The daughter gets her first screen time, on a film…
FILM: Widening the lens on ‘Immigration’
“You can take a sort of hardline national security perspective or a bleeding heart approach — I think it’s important to go with both,” Roy Germano says of how the U.S. should address concerns over immigration. “You’ll arrive at the same conclusion.” Germano’s new documentary, “The Other Side Of Immigration,” screens at the Flyover Film…
Art: Hamilton’s Abe
We know how Abraham Lincoln began (born in a log cabin) and how he ended. Sculptor Ed Hamilton has given us the middle. Not an image of the mythical Lincoln, but of the man. This is Lincoln long before the presidency, Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation. It’s our piece of the nationwide Lincoln Bicentennial…
