|
|
|
$catName
If you like Philly film and think Kickstarter’s a kick, Philadelphia Film Society’s has your cup of tea. PFS took over the Roxy Theater building on Sansom Street (with more than one floor for screening) last year and now the local cine-festival producer has a $40,000 goal for its Kickstarter campaign: a Roxy renovation that includes everything from new seats to paint touch ups. Give until it hurts, cineastes.
Everything is coming up rosy — English rosy with the Philadelphia International Flower Show’s omnipresent Britishness — Brilliant! opened during the weekend at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Along with serving up shepherd’s pie, a fine Beef Wellington and a well’s worth of gin drinks, the Brilliant! black tie gala offered an early look at mini-fields of green topped with pig statues, sensational manicured rose gardens and several Queens — cardboard cutouts of Elizabeth the likes of which are strewn throughout Center City.
Lansdale band Friends with Murder does their song "Dearly Beloved" at good, old Laurel Hill Cemetery, final resting place of people named Wister, Wistar, Furness, Rittenhouse, Pemberton and Peale — not to mention Harry Kalas and Adrian Balboa. This video makes me wonder: Is there anything Laurel Hill would say no to?
Every year, Vida, a web site focusing on "women in the literary arts," breaks down the output of several national literary/literary-ish publications — Paris Review, New Yorker, Granta, Harper's — by gender. And every year the results skew male. We're talking writers, authors, book reviewers and more. Dudes all over the place. Emily Guendelsberger took one look at it and said, "I always did wonder why Philip Roth was so acclaimed." Check out Vida's amazing assortment of bar graphs here. Ooh, even better, go here for the extended intro and slideshow.
This weekend, Philadelphia’s most prominent media-centric dynasty (as if we had a bunch) the Robertses of Comcast/Universal/Xfinity fame made their presence known at several top notch events. If I had known, I would have brought my bill.
View gallery
Editor's Note: Please welcome City Paper food editor Caroline Russock to the world of music criticism. Don't worry, she's only going to be commenting on the potable aspects of shows around Philly.
Okay, so Kung Fu Necktie has a $4 Citywide featuring 16 ounces of Pabst and a generous shot of Heaven Hill. I had a few, they were fine. Review over, right?
Eh, not really. So Mac DeMarco has been a long time coming to Philly and last night's show was pretty much perfect. He was growly and wonderful, equal parts crooner and cool rock and roll with just the right amount of stand-up calibre band banter. "Baby's Wearing Blue Jeans" plus "Rock and Roll Night Club," "Freaking Out the Neighborhood" rounded out with a cover of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" transitioning to a sweet rendition of "Still Together" that lead to a few pretty hilarious KFN pickup attempts. Solid set and afterwards MDM asked the crowd for afterhours Philly suggestions (El Bar, obviously) earning him the title of the most party dude on Captured Tracks.
Yeah The Divine Lorraine is the most exploited and photographed building in Philadelphia (sorry, Independence Hall), but you gotta admit this is a pretty cool shirt by PussyCatTees.
You know those parties that feel totally perfect? The ones where everybody gets to dance to music they love, and it keeps you moving without wearing you out? Where rock and electronica sit side by side without anybody batting an eyelash because something’s too jarring or out of place? Where people keep themselves in check so well that you don’t have to clean up blood or haul buckets of vomit out the window?
Some of the best shows have that effortless atmosphere of fun and intimacy too, like Friday’s Isaac Delusion show at North Star Bar.
Tonight’s show at North Star Bar is a trip through a reverb-drenched sonic forest. The Downtown Club, a Philly-based trio rooted in British post-punk like Gang of Four and Public Image Ltd., will get you moving early on. Metronomic drumlines and gritty picked bass lock in tandem with singer April Harkanson’s vocals, alternating between hushed utterances and anguished belting, sitting on top of the whole mix. Stay for Cruiser, the project of local musician Andy States, and their jangly and timeless take on dream pop. Their latest EP (produced by Jeremy Park, who also produced Youth Lagoon’s The Year of Hibernation) features jangly guitars and States’s baritone moving in and out of melodic soundscapes as beautiful as they are catchy. Paris duo Isaac Delusion closes the night with party-ready synth-driven music combining hip-hop beats with light-footed vocals that’ll have you leave the venue with a smile on your face. Of course, be sure to bring your dancing shoes, as silly as they may look at whatever gallery you’re hitting up right before, because this line-up begs it of you.
Fri., March 1, 9 p.m., $8-$10, North Star Bar, 2639 Poplar St., 215-787-0488, northstarbar.com.
John really brings it on this White Stripes cover. More on John & Brittany here. Also, check out one of their originals, "Zzzoloft" here.
Deadline: 5 p.m., Tuesday, April 16
Fiction: $5 entry fee per story. Stories should be 3,000 words or less and previously unpublished. No more than three fiction submissions per author.
Poetry: $5 entry fee per five poems. No more than 10 poems per poet.
Prizes: Winners get all the money — minus the judges’ honorariums — and have their work printed in City Paper. Runners up, also chosen by the judges, get posted online. Hopefully there will be a reading, too (but we said that last year).
Eligibility: Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware residents are invited to participate. Employees and regular freelancers for the City Paper are ineligible, obvs.
Submitting: All checks should be made payable to City Paper Writing Contest at the address below or via PayPal to paypal@citypaper.net. Stories and poems should be e-mailed to gimmefiction@citypaper.net or mailed the old-fashioned way to:
City Paper Writing Contest
123 Chestnut St., Third Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19106
We'll announce the judges soon. No phone calls please regarding specific entries. Manuscripts will not be returned. We’re okay with genre fiction. We’ll put up with weirdly arranged poetry. And now: I think you know what time it is.
- Activism
- Arts
- Arts Events
- Books
- Dance
- First Person Fest
- Last Chance
- Museum
- On the Fringe
- Philly Artists
- The Curator
- Theater
- Visual Art
- Arts News
- Artist Profile
- Arts Preview
- Street Art
- Been There, Done That
- Big Ups
- Comedy
- LOL With It
- Stand-up
- Critical Mass
- DVD
- Events
- Friday Fill-in
- Ice Cubes
- In Memoriam
- Interview
- Just Do It
- Just Opened
- Kaleidoscopic
- LGBTQ
- Art Phag
- Mailbag
- Movies
- Film Fest
- Movie Review
- On set
- Scenester
- screening
- trailer!
- Music
- 10 Track Mind
- Album
- Album Review
- Concert Review
- DJs
- Local Support
- Now Hear This
- One Track Mind
- Philly Bands
- Show
- Somebody Else Was There
- Song
- The Showdown
- concert photos
- jazz
- DJ Nights Blogged
- Night Watch
- Now See This
- Poetic License
- Printed Matter
- Radio
- Shopping
- Coveted
- Fashion
- What We Heart
- TV
- 24
- Idol Hands
- Mad Men
- ProjRun
- True Blood
- Useless Lost Recaps
- Couch Potato
- Shore Trash
- Turned ONN
- TopMod
- Video Games
- Free Online Game
- PSP
- PlayStation 2
- The 1-Upper
- Wii
- Web Junk
- CAGE MATCH
- Free Online Toy
- Weekend Omnibus
- Win
