Recent reports of teen suicides have made the consequences of unchecked bullying and racial harassment (such as a cross burning in Fletcher this fall) painfully clear. Bullying is certainly not a new phenomenon, and it could easily be dismissed as an unfortunate but perhaps unavoidable part of growing up. Bullying doesn’t end with adolescence, however: […]
Search Results for: stronger together
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Cranky Hanke’s Screening Room: What I’ve learned in 10 years and how I got there
Justin Souther’s article that appeared this week on my 10 years at the Xpress caused me to reflect on just what those years had meant to me, what they’d given me and what I’ve learned from them. And how, yes, I sometimes have felt like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange (1971). It also made me decide — after I read it on Tuesday — that I’d break my threat or promise (you decide which) not to write a Screening Room this week. Well, after all, it was really a promise to myself not to work over an unprecedented Christmas off — and since I’m at least starting in on Wednesday, I might pull that off yet.
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King at Diana Wortham Theatre
Unbridled enthusiasm is unseemly in a reviewer, to be sure — but that’s easily got around when necessary by quoting someone else. So let me quote my father, who accompanied me to Friday night’s performance of Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King at Diana Wortham Theatre: “Heck if that wasn’t the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”
Somewhere between Buddy Holly and Bruce Springsteen
The jangly urgency in the opening notes of The Taking or the Leaving says it all. This is a new Brian McGee: louder, faster and better than ever. “I really wanted to make a record that was going to take a step forward sound-wise, and I wanted things to get a little louder,” he says […]
Thanks WNC for showing your pride!
On Oct. 2, over 5,000 people gathered in downtown Asheville to celebrate, raise awareness and be entertained. Blue Ridge Pride 2010 was a huge success, and we are grateful to each and every person who made it possible. Thanks to our volunteers, vendors and sponsors. Thanks to the City of Asheville for your support of […]
Green Scene: Building a movement
Bill McKibben thinks big. His 10/10/10 initiative, billed as a “global work party,” is intended to elicit “bold energy policies from our political leaders … on a scale that truly matters.” The goal, organizers say, is not to reduce global warming one project at a time but to send a pointed message to legislators about […]
Open For Biz: Instant city
If you’d asked around downtown Asheville a year ago what people thought about Biltmore Park Town Square, chances are you’d have heard at least one mention of the popular Regal Biltmore Grande Stadium 15 movie theater. But the massive planned community's idyllic "small town" design might also have sparked references to The Stepford Wives or […]
Outsider Art
Eef Barzelay was born an outsider. Sure, that might sound like the typical country music cliché, but for the 40-year-old frontman and founder of Clem Snide, it's true. Inspiration in the Wal-Mart parking lot: “I like to take things that are kind of ugly or mundane and try to make them beautiful,” says Clem Snide’s […]
Superior Poetry
Joe Zimmerman is an accomplished poet who resides somewhere in the Biltmore Forest, without permission. He has many accolades and credentials (and resumes) and has graduated from many prestigious poetry colleges, including (but not limited to) Harvard, Oxford, and Cal Polytechnic State and San Luis Obispo Community College. In his spare time he enjoys bird […]
The Biz
Asheville architects Michael DeVere and Crawford Murphy plan to revolutionize the construction industry, help save the planet and — if all goes according to plan in the next year or so — provide several hundred local manufacturing jobs here in the process. How do they plan to accomplish all this? By using a simple idea […]
Throne of Blood
Classic Cinema From Around the World will present Throne of Blood at 8 p.m. Friday, June 11, at Courtyard Gallery at their new location, Phil Mechanic Studios, 109 Roberts St., River Arts District. Info: 273-3332.
Cranky Hanke’s Screening Room: On hating movies
We’re all guilty of saying it, I think. “God, I hated that movie” is a phrase that just rolls off the tongue. I’ve certainly said it myself, but isn’t “hate” an awfully strong word—and an even stronger emotion—to expend on a movie? Step back for a moment and think about it. Isn’t this giving a lot of bad movies simply a lot more power than they could possibly deserve?
One-year wonders
At a time when many small businesses are contracting or closing, why would anyone dare to start a new one? And what steps could they take to up the odds of staying afloat? To find out, Xpress surveyed five Asheville businesses that opened about a year ago; all are surviving, and some even thriving, despite […]
Review of Short Order Durang
There’s something to be said for knowing one’s place in the world, and a show presented at “The Usual Joli Grey Admiral’s Vault, Social Aid, Yacht Club, and Speakeasy off Broadway” is one that is definitely not afraid to embrace the local.
Clouds of Glory: William and Dorothy and Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Classic Cinema From Around the World will present Clouds of Glory at 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 15, at Courtyard Gallery, 9 Walnut St., in downtown Asheville. Info: 273-3332.
Top 100 movies of the decade
I’m sure this collaborative list from Justin Souther and myself (and it really is a collaboration—we’ve been batting these choices back and forth for weeks) is going to have its fair share of detractors—and that’s fine. I can already make a pretty good guess at the outrage over the omission of certain titles, and what […]
A lot to say …
For Western North Carolina, 2009 showed no shortage of challenges and feats, setbacks and advancements, wins and losses. Like the rest of the nation, we struggled with a dismal economy, even as some old and new businesses managed to keep their heads above water. We withstood droughts, deluges and the biggest snowstorm in years. We […]
After Asheville
When Ryan Ford arrived in New York City nearly four years ago, he carried only a backpack of clothes and $300 in his pocket. Ford, a painter who has shown his work widely in the WNC area, had decided to move to the Big Apple in an effort to take his art more seriously. "New […]
Cranky Hanke’s Screening Room: Snow Day
Since we have snow, let’s take a cursory glance at snow in the movies. Most cineastes are, of course, well aware that most of the time movie snow has only the slightest relation to real snow. Anyone who’s seen Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night knows that it might easily be soapy foam. Anyone who doubts this should look at the feet of Woody Allen and Harold Gould during the snowy duel scene in Allen’s Love and Death. That’s merely the tip of the snowflake.
Asheville City Council: Keeping a safe distance
Health Dept. reports on H1N1 Asheville City Market headed to Pack Square It will be up to a new Asheville City Council in a new year to determine what level of protective buffers will be installed around Asheville's streams. That decision by the current Council came at its Nov. 10 meeting, weeks after a Planning […]
Cranky Hanke’s Screening Room: When did you first fall in love with the movies?
I realize that this is a presumptuous question that supposes that the reader did fall in love with the movies in the first place. Still, I’m assuming for argument’s sake that such a condition probably has something to do with the reason you’re reading this column in the first place. The question in my mind is whether this was a cumulative thing for people or if there’s some outstanding defining moment that brought this about.