Philadelphia Weekly back issues from April 2003:
SIDE DISH; Pilgrims' Progress
Apr 09, 2003; ... Until this past weekend, when my four closest childhood friends from Georgia came to visit, I never realized the depth of my affinity for the city I've called home for the past four years. I found myself aching for their approval of Philadelphia. If my friends weren't sold, would they doubt my ...
A Man Apart; Directed by F. Gary Gray
Apr 09, 2003; ... D+ AMC Deptford and Orleans; The Bridge; Loews Cherry Hill; Regal Plymouth Meeting; UA Cheltenham Square, Grant Plaza, King of Prussia, Pennsauken, Riverview and 69th St. See Movie Times, p. 53. There's a fatal flaw in Vin Diesel's much-publicized 10-step plan to become a major ...
DysFunKtional Family; Directed by George Gallo
Apr 09, 2003; ... C- UA Chentenham Square, Pennsauken, Riverview and 69th St. See Movie Times, p. 53. Eddie Griffin sure knows how to amp up a crowd, doesn't he? In his first concert movie, he walks out onstage to a packed house, wrapped in a leather suit that makes the short and skinny ...
Footlights
Apr 09, 2003; ... Rosemary's Maybe They are America's most triumphant--and tragic--family. Success and death have followed the Kennedys like a dark cloud hovering over a field of gold. But while the stories of JFK, RFK and John Jr. are well-known, the family's initial misfortune has remained just a ...
Itching to Succeed; A TURNTABLE COLLECTIVE IS HELPING RESTORE THE CITY'S DJ REP.
Apr 09, 2003; ... Since the birth of scratch two decades ago, Philadelphia has gone from creating to claiming and finally destroying its rep as the center of the DJ world. Now on the upswing again, the city is being helped back to the top by the work of a local DJ collective called the Skratch ...
Sketches
Apr 09, 2003; ... Joan of Art Possessed of an eye for the forlorn, Joan Wadleigh Curran paints portraits of plants and trees in the urban jungle. Curran, whose eight oils on canvas and three charcoal drawings lie somewhere between realism and a kind of metaphorical portraiture, is best when she sets up a ...
The Revolution Will Be Colorized; A BLACK AND A WHITE MUSIC CRITIC TALK ABOUT THE ROOTS, HIP-HOP AND THE LOCAL SCENE.
Apr 09, 2003; ... Tom Moon, pop music critic, Philadelphia Inquirer: "I'm here, but I don't know why because according to Joey Sweeney, the august music critic at the Philadelphia Weekly, a white person in Philadelphia can't write about hip-hop. If that's true, I'm the wrong guy." Since you brought it up, ...
PHILADELPHIA FILM FESTIVAL; Now for Something Completely Different; The Film Fest's second week proves the revolution will be projected.
Apr 09, 2003 ... As if last week's offerings weren't enough, the good people of the Philadelphia Film Festival bring us a scintillating second week, complete with paraplegic martial arts experts, dwarves with cattle prods, falcon thieves and Ed Begley Jr. The fest proves there's an entire world of cinema ...
Costantini: Bloodied but Unbowed; A South Philly native's fight for justice continues.
Apr 09, 2003; ... March was both good and bad for Peter Costantini, the South Philadelphia native who's fighting to change the state's personal-care home industry. The bad news came at the Criminal Justice Center on March 28. Happy to finally have his day in court after months of delays, ...
Little Wonder
Apr 09, 2003; ... If hip-hop's a religion, then the Philly ministry has been mightily blessed--as those who managed to squeeze into last December's mega-VIP party at World Fusion in Old City witnessed. The bash was held to celebrate the merger of two local entertainment managers who concluded that while ...
Dr. ?uestlove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Hip-Hop
Apr 09, 2003; ... The way I see it, the rise of hip-hop is like the rise of the computer: Either you embraced this new invention and made the evolutionary leap to the next level or you got left behind with all the other, invariably older folks who "hate computers" and can't set the clocks on their VCRs. I ...
Run out of Town on a Rail; SEPTA's threatened cuts could devastate the city.
Apr 09, 2003; ... For Brenda Fraser, riding the R8 is like therapy. Ignoring the briefcase on her lap stuffed with paperwork, Fraser sips her tea and slowly plans her day. "I can sit on the train and zone out," she says, adding with a laugh, "It's good for my mental health." But any psychological ...
Garden Variety; When you're at this new Center City chain, your family must be in Michigan.
Apr 16, 2003; ... My problem with corporations doesn't involve unfair labor practices or the homogenous pall that retail chains cast over once-diverse neighborhood enclaves. My problem is more emotional than that. It has to do with corporate advertising--specifically the way they try to sell our own ...
Anger Management; Directed by Peter Segal
Apr 16, 2003; ... D+ We should have seen it coming. Jack Nicholson's delicately nuanced, throwback-to-the-'70s performances in both The Pledge and About Schmidt should have indicated something this dreadful lurked on the horizon. After all, how many artsy-fartsy movies can Nicholson make in a row ...
Chasing Papi; Directed by Linda Mendoza
Apr 16, 2003; ... C+ With Chasing Papi, sitcom director Linda Mendoza sets out to do two things: show that Latinos can make screwball comedies just as silly and hackneyed as the ones white folks make, and give Latina-crazy men a 90-minute excuse to indulge their fetishes. The three principal ...
Russian Ark; Directed by Alexander Sokurov
Apr 16, 2003; ... C+ Gather 'round, children. I have a story for you. What's it about, you ask? It's the amazing tale of a film with one single continuous shot. Yeah, Rope and Timecode supposedly did that already. But look: The first was on film while the second was divvied up into four simultaneous ...
Ghosts of the Abyss; Directed by James Cameron
Apr 16, 2003; ... B- It's a bit disappointing that James Cameron, perhaps our most gifted master of the modern blockbuster, shows no distinctive flair for the documentary form. Nevertheless he sure has recovered some startling images from the ocean floor for Ghosts of the Abyss, his new IMAX 3-D ...
Sketches
Apr 16, 2003; ... "Cremaster" of His Domain The art world likes its bad boys, and Matthew Barney is the latest, wowing them at the Guggenheim Museum with his sculpture, photographs, drawings and films. The Yale-educated 35-year-old, raised in Boise, Idaho, where he was quarterback for his high school ...
Exiles on Main Street; Local Iraqi-Americans watch the war with a PW reporter.
Apr 16, 2003; ... The question was never if--always when. When would he return home? Every day of his life, since the day in 1981 when he slipped out of his country to avoid arrest, through the early, uncertain days of the recent invasion, Jawad Alamiri, a 39-year-old Iraqi living in exile in ...
Trial by Fire; Former Philadelphia police chief John Timoney has passed his first Miami challenge.
Apr 16, 2003; ... Eleven cops were on trial, facing charges that they wrongfully shot four people--killing three--and tried to cover up their actions with both lies and guns planted on unarmed suspects. Considered Miami's most politically charged police corruption case in decades, the federal trial raised ...
E-mergency! An old email hoax keeps public broadcasters crying wolf.
Apr 16, 2003; ... So the federal government will soon stop funding National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System and the National Endowment for the Arts? The announcement came by email, so it must be true. Our own Terry Gross and the much-loved Car Talk guys may soon go the way of Enron. And ...
Bulletproof Monk; Directed by Paul Hunter
Apr 16, 2003; ... D As far as I'm concerned, he's still the coolest man in the universe. But there's just no getting around the fact that if Chow Yun-Fat is speaking English, the movie probably stinks. Let's break it down: Yun-Fat spoke Cantonese in The Killer and Hard-Boiled. He tried out his ...
Stealing Beauty; Nick Nolte gives great face as The Good Thief.
Apr 16, 2003; ... Neil Jordan's The Good Thief is a delicious little film of even littler consequence--an almost diaphanous diversion, meticulously crafted by folks hell-bent on reminding you how tiny, inconsequential larks like this one can still feel downright magical, just as long as they get the proper ...
Iraq 101
Apr 16, 2003; ... Considered the cradle of civilization, Iraq is a tenuous coalition of religions and ethnicity: the Shia or Shiite Muslims, largely clustered in the south of the country, comprise 60 to 65 percent of the population; the Sunni Muslims, who reside mostly in the central part of the country, comprise ...
CITY HALL: WHERE THE SISTERS (AND THE MINORITIES AND THE DISABLED) MAY SOMEDAY BE IN CHARGE.
Apr 09, 2003; ... Protest took on a new hue this week in Council, where minority contractors hoisted picket signs demanding their piece of the pie. Their black-and-white signs-bearing such slogans as "EVERYBODY EATS OR NOBODY EATS. SHUT THE JOB DOWN" and "BLACK CONTRACTORS DESERVE WORK TOO"-sure seemed familiar ....
BITCHIN'; LIVE TO RIDE, RIDE TO LIVE
Apr 09, 2003; ... Last week SEPTA announced a proposal to reduce its $55 million budget deficit by cutting or limiting service to an estimated 50,000 riders daily. In addition to significantly reducing service within Philadelphia, the plan would limit transportation in and out of the city, making commuting more ...
Blacklisted? The Gallery may soon shut the door on Philly's best-known African-American bookstore.
Apr 09, 2003; ... When Philly author Karen E. Quinones Miller self-published her debut novel, she had a hard time getting bookstores to notice. That is until Basic Black Books ushered her in. Located in the Gallery Mall, the store was one of the first to host Miller and carry her book, Satin Doll, which went from ...
Editor's Column; 215
Apr 09, 2003; ... Some cities have music pulsating through their main arteries. You can feel it just walking down the street. You think of Memphis and Nashville. New Orleans and Chicago. New York and Detroit. But few cities, it could be argued, are as impassioned about their music as this one ....
(Middle) East of Eden; The Bitars go BYOB in University City.
Apr 09, 2003; ... Goodbye gyros, hello cassoulet. A few months back Amin Bitar, Philly's king of falafel with five restaurants citywide, remade his family's 40th Street eatery into Simsum, which may sound vaguely Asian but actually translates to "sesame" in Arabic. Bitar's basic layout and Middle Eastern ...
Yodel in the Canyon; This is one American flick that isn't afraid of sex.
Apr 09, 2003; ... Are you ready for "Marge Gunderson: sex goddess"? The fantastic Frances McDormand doffs her top, smokes a bong, and nosily boffs a boy-toy half her age in Lisa Cholodenko's ticklish, sun-kissed Laurel Canyon. The Philadelphia Film Festival's closing-night attraction is a ...
On the Verge; Byron "Wookie" Landham; Jazz drummer.
Apr 09, 2003; ... On a recent rainy weeknight inside the smoky dark of Ortlieb's Jazzhaus, the old brewery tavern at 847 N. Third St., drummer Byron "Wookie" Landham rolled out a series of riffs that dropped jaws through the packed bar. Landham, who started playing drums at age 7 and was working in local ...
Rainbow Connection; THE MAN BEHIND PHILLYHIPHOP.COM DISHES ON THE LOCAL SCENE.
Apr 09, 2003; ... Dave Scarpello (aka "Snow") was working at CDNOW, the online music retailer, in 1999 when he started his website, www.phillyhiphop.com. Like everyone else at CDNOW at the time, Scarpello thought he was going to be a millionaire. Then the bottom dropped out. "My stocks went from $50 a ...
White Riot; WILL PHILLY'S NEXT EMINEM PLEASE STAND UP?
Apr 09, 2003; ... Less than a year ago Ma-Q, a cabbie/aspiring music producer, took his latest protege up the Jersey Turnpike and across the Hudson to Justin's restaurant, the New York City eatery owned by one P. Diddy. Inside the restaurant, NYC rap bigwigs were doing whatever it is they do at radio ...
The Color of Money; A group boycotting the Daily News draws on lessons learned from Leon Sullivan.
Apr 09, 2003; ... When Rev. Leon Sullivan moved to Philadelphia, he was stunned by the lack of jobs for African-Americans. As pastor of Zion Baptist Church in the early '60s, Sullivan rallied the ministers of 400 black churches and organized a boycott against local companies that refused to hire ...
Bad Medicine; Dr. Weber, who's doling out free antibiotics, is a podiatrist named Dr. Mangano. No joking.
Apr 09, 2003; ... According to an advertisement that appeared in both the Inquirer and the Daily News late last month, if you don't have an emergency stockpile of antibiotics, you might not be as ready for biological war as you'd thought. The ad, which ran daily from March 21 through March 24, urged ...
The Trouble With Spikol; Many Unhappy Returns; Taxes are a dark, muddy chasm from which I'll never escape
Apr 09, 2003; ... "In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." So wrote Benjamin Franklin, who in his own sly way was the Oscar Wilde of Colonial America. (Another timely Franklin quotation: "There never was a good war or a bad peace.") At the moment, I guess the war in Iraq is taking care of the death ...
Rashanim
Apr 23, 2003; ... There was a time when guitarist Jon Madof was a staple of the Philly jazz scene. The Taylor/Madof Group made eclectic, improvisational music that could have been skronky free jazz but was actually accessible. People liked them even when they were mining difficult avant-garde music, and you could ...
Confidence; Directed by James Foley
Apr 23, 2003; ... C- As welcome as a party guest who arrives at dawn the next day, James Foley's Confidence reaches theaters a few years after I surmised we had come to the blessed end of that spate of indie crime films slavishly reverent to the works of Mamet and Tarantino. Ed Burns heads a cast ...
SIDE DISH; Keep on Truckin'
Apr 23, 2003; ... Food trucks have long bothered me. My better judgment has commanded me to eat from somewhere stationary, perhaps even with an address. But I realized recently that I have avoided this food genre for too long due to an unfounded fear of questionable sanitation. So when I finally decided to chance ...
Stone Reader; Directed by Mark Moskowitz
Apr 23, 2003; ... A- In the spirit of good cheer, the bad news first: Stone Reader, Mark Moskowitz's documentary about his obsessive quest to find an elusive writer of an equally elusive novel, has plenty of suspicious footage. In one of many examples, a scene shows someone mailing a package, followed by ...
Oh, the Humanity! Stevie brilliantly reveals a world we'd probably rather not see.
Apr 23, 2003; ... Over the past couple weeks I've become acutely aware of how spectacularly useless it is trying to recommend an unflinching, two-and-a-half-hour documentary about the struggles of an abused child in the poverty-stricken underbelly of rural America. I might as well add some harsh ...
Sketches
Apr 23, 2003; ... Sirens Song Nadia Hironaka's video Sirens is set on a beach, shows a boat sinking and has a soundtrack with plenty of singing. But this metaphorical work about the seductive power of the media is best when it leaves the trappings of Homer's story and blasts its way into the 21st century ...
ALASDAIR ROBERTS; Farewell Sorrow
Apr 23, 2003; ... Previously the core of Appendix Out, which gradually emerged from Will Oldham's shadow over the course of four albums, Scottish folkie Alasdair Roberts is going by his own name now. Backing players still show up to flesh out his fragile acoustic strum, but it's much sparser than the droning ...
Radio Head; The host of This American Life reinvents radio with imagination.
Apr 23, 2003; ... For nearly half a century television has had to bear the "barren wasteland" rap. But even a cursory, static-smeared twist of the radio dial reveals a largely fallow garden. Corporate consolidation and play-it-safe programmers have conspired to increase the emphasis on the obvious, the ordinary ...
Hurts So Good; Hip-hop for the cerebral set.
Apr 23, 2003; ... The Majesticons Beauty Party BIG DADA The Majesticons' Beauty Party can lay claim to cutting a Grand Canyon amid the blinding valleys of bling. The brainchild of production fiend Mike Ladd, Beauty Party is the next chapter in the fictitious saga that pits the ...
On the Verge; Rev. Donna Lawrence Jones; Pastor, Cookman United Methodist Church, North Philadelphia.
Apr 23, 2003; ... Almost 11 years ago, while still a seminary student, Donna Lawrence Jones was unexpectedly named pastor of a small, failing corner church in one of the poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Rev. Jones was not only the first African-American to serve as pastor, but she ...
Frank Rizzo Jr.: the Teddy Bear; The fourth in a series profiling City Councilpeople running for reelection in November.
Apr 23, 2003; ... The unlikely heir to his father's tough-love legacy, this gentle two-term at-large councilman (Mom and Dad called him "Franny") faces competition this year from fellow Republicans Jamie McDermott, David Hardy, David Oh and Jack Kelly, a man whose name bears positive local associations in equal ...
Dirty Politics; While the Middle East dominates headlines, local pols look to the sky.
Apr 23, 2003; ... Last summer the terms "ozone alert" and "heat wave" were interchange-able in Philly. It'll likely be the same way this summer and the next. But last Wednesday City Council pledged to separate oppressive heat from omnipresent ozone in Philadelphia. On that hot and sticky day--fitting for ...
STOPPING A BULLET
Apr 23, 2003; ... Dr. Schwab and his trauma team want to "cure" gun violence before its victims wind up in their ER. By treating such crime like a disease, prevention might be possible. C. William Schwab breezes into a conference room at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP), unclips his ...
Trunk Show; PETA doesn't find the circus fashionable.
Apr 23, 2003; ... The circus is in town, and so is PETA. The animal rights organization that told us milk sucks and leather is just dead skin wants us to know the greatest show on earth is really just "three rings of abuse." Last Wednesday, as Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus performed at the ...
Truth or Consequences; A Philly police trial worries cops who make lots of drug arrests.
Apr 23, 2003; ... One by one, the character witnesses marched to the stand. The first two were pastors who proudly declared one of the two defendants on trial an ordained minister they'd known for years. Then came a father, a childhood friend and a wife. Following them were a mother, an aunt and a ...
Roll Play; A progressive welfare program is threatened by the Bush administration.
Apr 16, 2003; ... Rainy mornings are the hardest for Dedra Roberts. "The dark moods always seem to come on days like this," she says, nervously rubbing her hands and staring out the window of her West Philadelphia apartment. Roberts, 42, suffers from severe depression and recurring anxiety ...
Would Sam Katz End Safe Streets? Part II; Sylvester Johnson's retirement date may hinge on the GOP mayoral hopeful's position on the antidrug initiative.
Apr 16, 2003; ... The ever-increasing role of Operation Safe Streets in the life of the city was underscored last week when the controversial program became a flashpoint for the first major battle of Street vs. Katz 2003. After Republican mayoral challenger Sam Katz dismissively dubbed the antidrug ...
The Trouble With Spikol; Behind the Times; The Inky just isn't interested in competing with the nation's paper of record.
Apr 16, 2003; ... Last week I called my mother with three pieces of gossip I assumed she hadn't heard yet: 1) Thach died, 2) my cousin is going to England on a scholarship and eating dinner with the queen at some point, and 3) the Inquirer is discontinuing its Sunday magazine. In response my mother was: ...
BITCHIN'; WHAT A DRAG
Apr 16, 2003; ... Thanks largely to (ex-smoker) Mayor Michael Bloomberg, smoking in workplaces in New York City--including bars and restaurants--is now illegal. Business owners who permit smoking in their establishments will be fined $200. Public spaces, such as parks, may be the next target. Keep in ...
Bunny Time; The first in an occasional series on lost Philadelphia icons.
Apr 16, 2003; ... Walter "Bunny" Sigler got his nickname because he was born the day after Easter in 1941. Or it may have been because he was born with a fully grown front tooth, which made his mother summon her husband and cry, "Honey, it's a bunny!" Take your pick. Either story will ...
Side Dish; To Do: Eat and Drink
Apr 16, 2003; ... I guide my social life by two lists. One is of restaurants and the other is of bars I have yet to try. I won't rest till I've checked off every locale on these lists. Problem is that both lists seem to be constantly growing, presenting an ever greater challenge to my schedule and wallet. But ...
Malibu's Most Wanted; Directed by John Whitesell
Apr 16, 2003; ... B Is whitesploitation the new blaxploitation? Fo shizzle! It certainly seems that movies like Bringing Down the House and Head of State, which purport to stick it to racism while reinforcing racist stereotypes, have the trappings of genre. And now there's Malibu's Most ...
Chaos; Directed by Coline Serreau
Apr 16, 2003; ... C Taking an early lead for Most Accurate Movie Title of the Year, the new French comedy Chaos opens up with a lot of furious running about, tries its best to not let up for well over an hour and, when finally exhausted, whips us with an extended lesson in dated Algerian tradition ....
A Mighty Wind; Directed by Christopher Guest
Apr 16, 2003; ... B- Only a hardcore ingrate would whine about a movie with as many mild giggles as Christopher Guest's scattershot folkie parody, but I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway. Guest's improvisational repertory company previously masterminded what was, for my money, the funniest ...
Jim Kenney: the Instigator; The third in a series profiling City Councilpeople running for reelection in November.
Apr 16, 2003; ... Sticks and stones may break his bones, but names will never hurt Jim Kenney. An unrepentant rebel with a cause, the three-term at-large councilman isn't the most politic of speakers. In fact you'll never hear him say something just because it sounds good. Which might help explain why he so ...
Footlights
Apr 16, 2003; ... Out Damn Scot According to some scholars, the origin of the curse of the Scottish play had nothing to do with actors falling off the stage or dropping dead in the dressing room. It was about jobs. Given that Macbeth was seen as a surefire cash cow, the announcement that a troupe would be ...
John Street's Pitch; The mayor throws himself at the media's mercy.
Apr 16, 2003; ... Mayor Street hosted the first in a series of bi-weekly powwows with the media at his 16th and Cherry headquarters last Thursday with the promise that he would field any and all "pertinent" questions about city government or his reelection campaign. Though these events typically attract lots of ...
Sonic Youth; A Philly filmmaker enlists local kids to paint a portrait of the city's soul.
Apr 16, 2003; ... Sitting in the Biz Arts center in Callowhill, seventh-grader Kyle Morris has a vision of R&B music that includes a radio, Jill Scott and the Philly skyline. This is Morris' first year in the after-school program, which combines the arts and business. Morris joined as an outlet for ...
Keeping up With the Jones; America the Bootyful; Sure, our way of life is triflin', but is there any place better?
Apr 16, 2003; ... Lately I've been hearing the phrase, "We've got to protect the American way of life." Which seems strange, because neither I nor the people uttering that phrase really know what that way of life is. How could we? We live in a society where kids are on Ritalin, parents are on Prozac and ...