02 Apr 2013

What's Happenin': Thursday, April 4, through Wednesday, April 17

By Mike Schulz

Wayne Music

Wayne "The Train" Hancock

Rock Island Brewing Company

Saturday, April 6, 9:30 p.m.

 

Acclaimed country musician Wayne "The Train" Hancock plays a Rock Island Brewing Company concert on April 6, and you'll need to be at least 21 to attend. However, all ages are welcome to learn about the artist's gifts right here! AllMusic.com, for instance, calls Hancock "arguably the finest country traditionalist working the 21st Century country scene." And Scram Magazine, which describes Hancock's 2003 CD Swing Time as "a great goddam live album," raves that Hancock "imbues his material with the kind of I-don't-give-a-f--k edge that pushes each and every one of these 'old-fashioned songs' right up into your face."

Hmm. Given the language, maybe you should be at least 21 to read this article, too.

01 Apr 2013

Gee, I Didn't Hate "Joe": "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" and "The Host"

By Mike Schulz

Dwayne Johnson in G.I. Joe: RetaliationG.I. JOE: RETALIATION

If you handed a box of crayons to a group of eight-year-olds with action figures, they'd probably come up with a more entertaining storyline for G.I. Joe: Retaliation than the one we're stuck with, which is your standard blockbuster nonsense about a megalomaniac's plan for world dominion and the crack team of well-armed, quip-ready hotshots attempting to thwart him. In a welcome surprise, though, director Jon M. Chu's follow-up to 2009's G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra is, unlike its forebear, quite a bit of zippy, throwaway fun, a fast-moving and happily unpretentious diversion with jokes, and good ones, obviously written specifically for viewers well over the age of eight.

01 Apr 2013

Girls Gone Wilder: "Spring Breakers," "Admission," and "The Croods"

By Mike Schulz

Selena Gomez, Rachel Korine, Vanessa Hudgens, and Ashley Benson in Spring BreakersSPRING BREAKERS

At the screening of Spring Breakers that I attended, I counted eight viewers who walked out of the movie, and stayed out, well before the end credits rolled. In all honesty, I'm amazed the tally wasn't higher than that. The movie being touted in print and in trailers promises a rowdy, randy romp in the sun with built-in audience-grabbers: Disney princesses acting nasty! James Franco with cornrows and grillz! But the movie that writer/director Harmony Korine has actually made - despite, indeed, its also being a rowdy, randy romp in the sun - bears so little relation to its cheeky, borderline-innocuous advertising campaign that patrons can be easily forgiven for feeling badly misled and deciding to bolt. It would be like going to see Dumbo and instead getting Gus Van Sant's Elephant.

19 Mar 2013

What's Happenin': Thursday, March 21, through Wednesday, April 3

By Mike Schulz

AntigoneTheatre

Antigone

QC Theatre Workshop

Friday, March 22, through Saturday, March 30

 

It seems to have taken forever to get here, but guess what, folks? Spring officially starts this week! The sun is shining! Birds are singing! And over at the QC Theatre Workshop, the season's arrival is being celebrated by our area's classical-theatre troupe the Prenzie Players with angry gods, family dishonor, rebellion, treachery, imprisonment, suicide ... !

Wow, Prenzies. Like a nice production of Barefoot in the Park would've killed ya?

17 Mar 2013

Buddies Hack It: "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" and "The Call"

By Mike Schulz

Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, and Jim Carrey in The Incredible Burt WonderstoneTHE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE

A mere week after the release of Oz the Great & Powerful, the garish, boring box-office smash that's neither great nor powerful, Misnomer March continues with The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, a comedy about warring Las Vegas magicians that's awkwardly cast, overly sentimental, and decidedly not incredible. Yet considering how roundly disappointing the 2013 film year has been thus far, you can still have a fair amount of fun at director Don Scardino's outing, despite this slapstick with heart being scattershot at best, and despite the movie almost appearing apologetic about its most unexpected and mordantly funny bits.

09 Mar 2013

Wizard of Blahs: "Oz the Great & Powerful" and "Dead Man Down"

By Mike Schulz

James Franco in Oz the Great & PowerfulOZ THE GREAT & POWERFUL

As numerous effect-heavy entertainments have proved over the years, few film actors, and even fewer good ones, look altogether comfortable performing in wholly pixelated landscapes opposite wholly digitized characters. Yet I'm not sure I've seen any star look less connected with his artificial environment than James Franco does in Oz the Great & Powerful, director Sam Raimi's mega-budgeted and intensely disappointing prequel to The Wizard of Oz.

05 Mar 2013

What's Happenin': Spring 2013

By Mike Schulz

Sara WatkinsMusic

Sara Watkins

The Redstone Room

Friday, March 15, 8:30 p.m.

 

On March 15, the Redstone Room will host an evening with a musician who received a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, toured with the likes of Lyle Lovett and Dolly Parton, served as guest host for Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, and has been a nationally renowned vocalist and fiddle player for more than 22 years.

I will attempt not to seethe with resentment at the fact that the musician in question is only 31 years old.

04 Mar 2013

Spring Theatre from A(ntigone) to Z(ine of Grrrl): 99 Days of Area Stage Productions

By Mike Schulz

Rock of Ages at the Adler TheatreWelcome to the Reader's annual article on springtime area-theatre productions, where our trek through the season's comedies, dramas, and musicals will have us taking a walk in the woods with Antigone, wandering into suburbia with Eurydice, and realizing that something's afoot in our town when Talley's folly makes Cinderella go boom on Avenue Q.

Okay, so that takes care of 10 upcoming titles ... only 50 or so to go ... .

03 Mar 2013

Fee-Fi-Fo-Fumble: "Jack the Giant Slayer," "Phantom," "21 & Over," and "The Last Exorcism Part II"

By Mike Schulz

Nicholas Hoult in Jack the Giant SlayerJACK THE GIANT SLAYER

It happened to Hansel and Gretel. It happened to Red Riding Hood. It happened to Snow White. (It happened to a couple of Snow Whites, actually.) And now it's Jack, of "... and the beanstalk" fame, who's getting a pricey, kitschy, effects-filled makeover, serving as protagonist for director Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Slayer. At the rate this trend is going, I can hardly wait for the inevitable big-budget updating of The Pied Piper with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard, and Harvey Fierstein taking on the role of a lifetime in The Frog King.

25 Feb 2013

Gold Men Sunset: Notes on the 2013 Academy Awards Telecast

By Mike Schulz

Best Actor Daniel Day-LewisSeth MacFarlane, I thought, did a fine job hosting the 85th Academy Awards ceremony. He turned out to be a fine choice for the frequently thankless Oscar-emcee position, tossing in some fine jokes in between the generally fine production numbers and mostly fine acceptance speeches ... .

I'm sorry, but I am alone in thinking that last night's telecast, in the end, was just a little too "fine"?

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