The Village Voice back issues from May 2008:
Political Surrealism
May 07, 2008; ... EARMARKS An assemblyman gets singed for his attempt at pork For a politician, sponsoring a pork-barrel item to fund seniors' classes should be a simple, feel-good, voter-friendly action, as easy as shaking a hand or kissing a baby. What could go wrong? Brooklyn ...
Missing in Action
May 07, 2008; ... Police blew off the story of a missing black woman She was tortured and murdered. Now, a historic court ruling has reopened the case on racial-bias grounds. Shortly before 7 p.m. on a spring evening in 2003, 21-year-old Romona Moore told her mother that she was going to the Burger King ...
Deep South of Houston
May 07, 2008; ... SOCIAL REGISTER Is a soul-food restaurant too black for fancy Soho? Lola, a soul-food restaurant that featured live rhythm-and-blues acts, attracts a largely black clientele, and also went by the name Lola Is Soul, decided in 2004, for business reasons, to move from Chelsea to ...
Blunt Justice
May 07, 2008; ... THE NYPD'S HIDDEN CRUSADE AGAINST MARIJUANA FURTHERS A RACIST AGENDA I have been intermittently reporting on the NYPD for half a century-sometimes admiringly, as when I spent several weeks with a homicide squad on the Lower East Side, learning how (in contrast to the CIA's current ...
Time Is the Mercy of Eternity
May 07, 2008; ... Sightlines Time Is the Mercy of Eternity By Deb Margolin The West End Theatre 263 West 86th Street 212-868-4444 The worst thing one can say about Time Is the Mercy of Eternity, a new sampler of one-acts by Deb Margolin, is that there's not enough ...
The Whitney's Ailing Hip
May 07, 2008; ... A BIENNIAL SALUTE, OF SORTS What do you do if you're a compulsive shopper and sale time is still months away? While I mark the calendar, counting the weeks between now and the Fourth of July, when the overpriced clothes I covet will finally approach second-markdown status, I'm left with ...
Hamm I Am
May 07, 2008; ... Hamm I Am JohnTurturro anchors a BAM revival of Endgame Endgame By Samuel Beckett BAM Harvey Theater 651 Fulton Street 718-636-4100 BY ALEXIS SOLOSKI In the midst of Samuel Beckett's Endgame at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Hamm ...
Gifford Miller: Slush-Fund Refugee
May 07, 2008; ... WHILE THE COUNCIL ROILS IN SCANDAL, THE FORMER SPEAKER STAYS MUM, HANGS WITH DEVELOPER CHUM Good luck trying to get Gifford Miller, the former City Council Speaker, to talk about the budget scandal now ravaging the organization he headed for four years. This hide-the-money ...
Yellow Moon
May 07, 2008; ... Yellow Moon By David Greig 59E59 Theaters 59 East 59th Street 212-279-4200 At its best, "theater for young audiences" can rivet grown-ups as well. But Yellow Moon, from Glasgow's TAG Citizens Theatre, gives the impression of being tailored to a crowd of ...
Vengeance Can Wait
May 07, 2008; ... Vengeance Can Wait By Yuldko Motoya Translated by Kyoko Yoshida and Andy Bragen P.S. 122 150 First Avenue Closed 'Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, but Hidenori Yamane (Paul H. Juhn) would like to have a crack at it, too. In Yukiko Motoya's ...
Ask the Anatomist
May 07, 2008; ... Counter Culture Festac Grill 263 Hendrix Street, East New York, Brooklyn 718-627-5151 Ask the Anatomist New Nigerian rocks on Hendrix in East New York While the Senegalese have boldly opened semi-upscale restaurants in Harlem and Clinton Hill, ...
The Lab Rat
May 07, 2008; ... The Lab Rat Olafur Eliasson brings his anti-sublime enchantment to MOMA and PS. 1 Olafur Eliasson: 'Take Your Time' The Museum of Modem Art 11 West 53rd Street P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center 22-25 Jackson Avenue Long Island ...
Color Lines
May 07, 2008; ... Race and history trouble The Country Girl and Sound and the Fury, Thurgood gets them right. The Country Girl By Clifford Odets Jacobs Theatre 242 West 45th Street 212-239-6200 The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928) By Elevator Repair ...
Best in Show
May 07, 2008; ... Leigh Ledare: 'Pretend You're Actually Alive' Andrew Roth 160A East 70th Street Through June 14 My Mom's Crotch Imagine that in 1966, long before you were born, your mom, a 16-year-old beauty named Tina, posed for Seventeen magazine, her slightly large ...
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead
May 07, 2008; ... Tracking Shots Directed by Lloyd Kaufman Troma Entertainment Opens May 9, Village East Ablendofll herbs and spices accounts for the secret recipe for Colonel Sanders's Kentucky Fried Chicken. Less furtive and more bounteous are the ingredients necessary for the ...
Ed Lachman, Chameleon, at BAM
May 07, 2008; ... The Cine Phile Plus: Peter Hutton at MOMA Ed Lachman, who turns 60 this year, is a cameraman with brand-name chops but no fixed style-he invents one according to the needs of each project or, maybe, the Zeitgeist. The Harvard-educated son of a movie-theater owner, Lachman ...
The Babysitters
May 07, 2008; ... Directed by David Ross Peace Arch Entertainment Opens May 9 Used to be that babysitters only sol ved my steries or got caught in the middle of Mafia deals. Now they're charging $200 to eat a cock-meat sandwich. How did we get here? So wonders a comatose Shirley (Katherine ...
Brother, Can You Spare a Euro?
May 07, 2008; ... Fork in the Road Brother, Can You Spare a Euro? With the dollar tanking, chefs are forced to get creative Recently, I realized that I could no longer afford my favorite stinky French cheese (not that I ever really could, technically). The prices of staples like wheat and ...
Hearts and Minds
May 07, 2008; ... Battle for Haditha Directed by Nick Broom field Opens May 7, Film Forum Hearts and Minds Nick Broomfield and his actors use both in this sympathetic re-creation of the Haditha massacre Nick Broomfield, known for his unseemly documentary portraits of Aileen ...
Fast Track to Nowhere
May 07, 2008; ... Fast Track to Nowhere It's anime on overdrive in the Wachowski's souped-up, tricked-out, Speed Racer Speed Racer Written and directed by Lorry and Andy Wachowski Warner Bros. Opens May 9 Converting a fondly remembered cartoon series-one of the ...
Refusenik
May 07, 2008; ... Tracking Shots Directed by Laura Bialis Abramorama and the Foundation for Documentary Projects Opens May 9, Quad Cinema The brave Soviet Jews in Laura Bialis's absorbing portrait of the refusenik movement of the 1960s and '70s had to contend not only with official ...
Unsettled
May 07, 2008; ... Directed by Adam Hootnick Resonance Pictures OpensMay9, Two Boots Pioneer Punctuating-in more ways than one-his legacy with a major question mark, Ariel Sharon presided over the forced evacuation of Israeli settlers from Gaza and the West Bank in 2005. Unsettled, Adam ...
Paradise Lost
May 07, 2008; ... Paradise Lost Parenting off the grid-and eventually off the reservation-in the alt-family portrait, Surfwise Surfwise Directed by Doug Pray HDNet Films and Magnolia Pictures Opens May 9, IFC Center Halfway through Surfwise, a mesmerizingly ...
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
May 07, 2008; ... Tracking Shots Directed by Michel Hazanavicius Music Box Films Opens May 9, Sunshine Cinema Closer in spirit to the deadpan stylings of early Zucker brothers than the more obvious slapshtick of the Austin Powerslranchise, director and co-writer Michel ...
Bloodline
May 07, 2008; ... Directed by Bruce Burgess Cinema Libre Studio Opens May 9, Village East Faintly ridiculous but strangely watchable, director Brace Burgess's documentary explores the controversial theory that powered Dan Brown's pulp juggernaut The Da Vinci Code: that the Catholic Church ...
Noise
May 07, 2008; ... Directed by Henry Bean ThinkFilm Opens May 9 Tim Robbins should get out and stretch those funny bones more often, if the result is a performance as luggishly nutty as the one he gives In this likable (if intellectually overstuffed) urban comedy from writer-director Henry ...
The Memory Thief
May 07, 2008; ... Directed by Gil Kofman Seventh Art Releasing Opens May 9, Quad Cinema Lukas (Mark Webber) is the worst tollbooth worker in all of California, chain-smoking and holding up traffic by rescuing stray dogs. One day, a passing driver inexplicably tosses a copy of Mein Kampfat ...
The Fall
May 07, 2008; ... Directed by Tarsem Roadside Attractions Opens May 9 Something like a pain-fueled, grated Princess Bride, The Fall straddles the intertwined worlds of storytelling and story. One half of the film is a child's-eye view of the convalescent wing of a Los Angeles hospital, set ...
Turn the River
May 07, 2008; ... Directed by Chris Eigeman Screen Media Films Opens May 9 Kalley (Famke Janssen) is getting on 40, living in an upstate limbo, and driving to NYC for clandestine meetings with the 12-year-old son that her ex-stepmom tries to keep from her. She's undesirable because she ...
The Tracey Fragments
May 07, 2008; ... Directed by Bruce McDonald ThinkFilm Opens May 9 'My name isTracey Berkowitz. Fifteen. Just a normal girl who hates herself.' Again starring as the deadpan, snarky, eponymous naïf dealing with issues way beyond her maturity level, Juno's Ellen Page energizes this angry, ...
Otis Redding/Marie Queenie Lyons
May 07, 2008; ... Otis Redding Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul Rhino/Atlantic Marie Queenie Lyons Soul Fever Vampisoul Soul classics from two greats, one a bit less familiar than the other Whither soul? Nowadays, any poseur with a whiskey-voiced rasp gets ...
Swing Like Summertime, Feel Like Death
May 07, 2008; ... Box Elders Love Forever Changes Collector's Edition Elektra/Rhino Swing Like Summertime, Feel Like Death Celebrating the dour celebration of Love's Forever Changes 'Hey, listen, money is time," Arthur Lee says after Love make a sweet, ...
Billy Bragg
May 07, 2008; ... Billy Bragg Mr. Love and Justice ANTI Billy and his Blokes indulge their sweet romanticism After a six-year break, Billy Bragg is back with his second go-round with backing band the Blokes, and his second release to steal its title from a Colin Maclnnes ...
Ultimate Alternative Wavers
May 07, 2008; ... Ultimate Alternative Wavers No Age revive the sadly neglected spirit of shattered pop and lo-fi amateurism No Age Nouns Sub Pop Everybody has a different definition of "indie rock. " For this American dude who smoked mad weed and aimlessly wandered some ...
Madonna
May 07, 2008; ... Madonna Hard Candy Warner Bros. A half-centenarian provides morepornypop excellence On the cover of her 11th studio album (and point finale for her longtime label). Madonna's got her legs spread again. Remember Cher in herfishnet body-stocking/G-string swimsuit ...
The Gospel According to Dolly Parton
May 07, 2008; ... Down in Front On the defiantly trashy and tremendously appealing queen of country-pop cheesecake You want to know, so I'll tell you: Yes, Dolly Parton told jokes about her breasts. Several. The one explaining why Thursday night's triumphant Radio City Music Hall hootenanny had ...
Bill Cosby
May 07, 2008; ... Bill Cosby Presents Badfoot Brown and the Bunions Bradford Funeral & Marching Band Dusty Groove Woozy '70s kozmik grooves, brought to you by that guy who hates hip-hop Forty years ago. Bill Cosby was the closest America came to a black president, garbed as he ...
Free Will Astrology
May 07, 2008; ... ARIES [March 21-flpril 19] For many Aries, independence isa virtue that flows in abundance-so much so that ifs sometimes on the verge of becoming excessive and turning into a vice. That's why I'm thrilled to inform you that the mysteries of dependence could be especially intriguing and useful to ...
Animal Collective
May 07, 2008; ... Animal Collective Water Curses Domino Inkwells overflow/or the triumphant/irksome psych-folksters Now that another lauded Animal Collective album is in the bag, the four-song stopgap emerges as usual. However, because even their side projects enjoyed unprecedented ...
The Latest Issue
May 07, 2008; ... Dirty Blonde A nomadic experimental-music spot gets a lovely (and hopefully permanent) new home My first words upon meeting Suzanne Fiol, the spirited founder and artistic director of the experimental-culture hub Issue Project Room, were an apology. I was late for our meeting ...
Vanishing Acts
May 28, 2008; ... Where did everything go? They're messin' with my frockin' town. I AM HOPELESSLY LATE TO THE WEDDING OF CHRIS P. CARROT AND PENELO PEA POD. IT IS THE ALLEGED HIGH POINT OF THE FIRST VEGGIE PRIDE PARADE IN AMERICA, A COUPLE OF SUNDAYS AGO, BUT I SPEND THE MORNING, AS I DO EVERY SUNDAY, AT ...
A Slice of Mafia With Your Sparkling Water?
May 28, 2008; ... The city's king distributor of bottled beverages likes the wiseguys FOR THOSE WHO INSIST THAT NEW YORK'S MAFIA IS MAINLY A RELIC OF THE BAD OLD PAST, CONSIDER THIS: THE DAY JOB OF THE MAN CURRENTLY ALLEGED TO BE THE ACTING BOSS OF THE GaMBINO CRIME FAMILY IS TOP SALESMAN FOR THE CITY'S ...
Slow-Motion Horror Show
May 28, 2008; ... Does a nation's sovereignty allow it to destroy its own people? ACCORDING TO OFFICIAL RESULTS BY ZIMBABWE'S ELECTORAL COMMISSION ON MAY 2, THE GREAT AFRICAN LIBERATOR, ROBERT MUGABE, LOST THAT COUNTRY'S MARCH 29 ELECTION TO MORGAN TSVANGDUI, LEADER OF THE MOVEMENT FOR DEMOCRATIC CHANGE, ...
HANG MAN
May 28, 2008; ... A SHORT LIFE ENDS ON RIKERS ISLAND, IN A PLACE WHERE SUICIDE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO On the day that he arrived at Rikers Island last October, Steven Morales was a major suicide risk. He was just 17 years old, charged with murder, accused of suffocating his infant daughter He was a product of ...
Chasing Their Tales
May 28, 2008; ... Chasing Their Tales McPherson and Aguirre-Sacasa set stories in motion, but don't move them very far Port Authority By Conor McPherson Atlantic Theater 336 West 20th Street 212-279-4200 Good Boys and True By Roberto Agu ...
Rant and Roll
May 28, 2008; ... How Theater Failed America By Mike Daisey Barrow Street Theatre 27 Barrow Street 212-239-6200 Oedipus Loves You By Gavin Quinti and Simon Doyle P.S.122 150 First Avenue 212-452-310 Rant and Roll Mike Daisey ...
Meet My Giant Termite
May 28, 2008; ... Puerto Rican sculptor Charles Juhasz-Alvarado gets buggy at Exit Art The termite might be an unlikely symbol of the commonwealth relationship between Puerto Rico and the U.S., but for Charles JuhaszAlvarado- a sculptor who lives in San Juan- the insect has become a kind of idol. At Exit ...
Heads They Lose
May 28, 2008; ... Recommendations by R.C. Baker Francisco De Goya: "Los Desastras de Ia Guerra" Peter Blum 99 Wooster Street Through August 1 Heads They Lose Decapitations. Impalements. Stabbings. Hangings. Point-blank firing squads. Francisco de Goya ( 1746-1828) ...
The Gang's All Here
May 28, 2008; ... The Gang's All Here Mobsters do the mambo-a colorful look back at pre-Castro Cuba Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba ... and Then Lost It to the Revolution By TJ. English William Morrow, 396pp., $27.95 BYTOM ROBBINS The best image of the capitalist/ criminal cabal that ran ...
Fruit of the Boom
May 28, 2008; ... Fruit of the Boom A novelist sorts through a complicated Pakistan A Case of Exploding Mangoes By Mohammed Hanif Random House, 336 pp., $24 BY BRIAN FRANCIS SLATTERY 'You want freedom and they give you chicken korma," says Ali Shigri, an officer in the Pakistani Air Force and the ...
Fat Chance
May 28, 2008; ... Counter Culture Madangsui 35 West 35th Street 212-564-9333 Fat Chance You can call it kui, or even 'cue, at 35th Street Korean You probably couldn't fit any more restaurants onto the single block of West 32nd that has comprised Manhattan's ...
Che Wins Cannes!
May 28, 2008; ... Che Wins Cannes! Or at least the only Cannes award that really matters: ours CANNES, France- The competition for the Palme d'Or is ongoing as I write, yet the red carpet has been rolled up as you read. You will know, as I can't, whether my comrade journalists agree that the ...
Cheap Sex
May 28, 2008; ... Cheap Sex Despite the labels and levity, the big-screen SATC is a poor-man's knockoff Sex and the City: The Movie Directed by Michael Patrick King New Line Cinema Opens May 30 Oh, please- spoiler alert? Fine, I won't tell you whether Carrie ...
Later That Day, I Got to Thinking About Why Your Movie Sucks
May 28, 2008; ... Questions for Michael Patrick King, writer and director of Sex and the City 1 Who are the four pathetic bimbos in funny outfits inhabiting this movie, and what have you done with our girls? 2 If Big- maybe not a genius, but formerly someone in the normal range of ...
Falling Short
May 28, 2008; ... Falling Short Program of French tales broad but not deep 'L'origine de la tendresse' and Other Tales The World According to Shorts Opens May 30, Cinema Village Seven short films ranging from 1 999 to the present, "L'origine de la tendresse " and Other ...
Doc Block
May 28, 2008; ... Doc Block Non-fiction-filled Sundance at BAM opens with a bust, then rocks Sundance Institute at BAM May 29 through June 8 BAM Ah, to experience the fruits of Sundance's programming labors without the Park City frostbite, deafening hype, and droves of ...
Vivre sa vie
May 28, 2008; ... Vivre sa vie Directed by Jean-Luc Godard Janus Films May 30 through June S, Film Forum A milestone "Everything is permissible" mo- ment in narrative film, Godard's fourth feature is a rocket from Pandora's Box. It's sectioned into 12 "tableaux," each chapter ...
Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
May 28, 2008; ... Bigger, Stronger, Faster* Directed by Christopher Bell Magnolia Pictures Opens May 30, Sunshine Cinema and AMC Empire 42nd Street My first boyfriend was a juicer. Steroids were the drug of choice at my high school, hav- ing somehow washed into the Canadian sub- ...
Savage Grace
May 28, 2008; ... Savage Grace Directed by Tom Kalin IFC Films Opens May 30, IFC Center and Clearview 62nd and Broadway A lip-smacking episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Depraved, designed more for trainwreck gawkery than psychological illumination, Tom Kalin's garish melodrama ...
Victory Lap in Your Living Room
May 28, 2008; ... Victory Lap in Your Living Room Glen (the friendly Irish dude) and Markéta vacuum up your love The word Glen Hansard uses to describe the last couple years of his life is unfathomable. Fair enough. Glen's just walked onstage at Radio City Music Hall, whereupon an exuberant, ...
Usher Doesn't Have Sex Anymore
May 28, 2008; ... Usher Here I Stand Jive Usher Doesn't Have Sex Anymore He now 'makes moments that will outlast the world' inste ad. You'll live with it. BY CLOVER HOPE When a guy puts his newborn son's gurgling noises on his album, it's clear where his mind has ...
The Grand Ole Opries of Brooklyn
May 28, 2008; ... An unironic country scene flourishes, real-estate woes notwithstanding As the booze-fueled reverie of the CasHank Hootenanny Jamboree spilled out of Buttermilk Bar in south Park Slope, rebel yells could be heard a block away. This last-Thursday-of-the-month tribute to classic threechord ...
Al Green
May 28, 2008; ... Al Green Lay It Down Blue Note There's still babies to be made, people I'd wager that if you were born between the years 1971 and 1977, Al Green had a hand in it. Literally? No. But at some point between your pops' slow-dance clutch and your mama's bedroom eyes, ...
Dr. John and the Lower 911
May 28, 2008; ... Dr. John and the Lower 911 City That Care Forgot 429 Crucial, caustic postcards from New Orleans 'This record ain't mad as it coulda been," Dr. John told me recently, sitting in his Morningside Heights office. Fan-pleasing funky grooves aside, City That Care ...
Spiritualized
May 28, 2008; ... Spiritualized Songs in A&E Spaceman Records/Fontana International More redemption songs from theAnti-Winehouse Spiritualized mastermind Jason Pierce says he'd already written the material on Songs in AdE when he was hospitalized in 2005 with a serious case of ...