A & E

Yoda Finally Gets Props

As a child of the Star Wars era, Yoda has a special place in my movie-mad heart. Especially old-school Yoda. The over-the-top-gymnast-on-crack-CGI version that appeared in the crass, lame-o prequels kinda left me cold.

Well, after years of neglect, Yoda finally has his own stamp.

I’m on my way to the post office as I type this. Very happy, I am.

Along those lines, what movie characters do you want to see on a stamp?

My first vote goes to Crispin Glover as Layne in River's Edge, one of the truly great performances of the modern era.

Evidence, you seek? Check out the clip below. Brilliant, he is.

— Jason Gargano

Pachyderms and Pumpkins

Elephants are fascinating creatures. From their complex social attachments and structures to their amazingly multipurpose trunks that are used for such a wide range of purposes — eating, drinking, smelling, bathing, snorkeling, feeling sound vibrations in the ground and more — they must outshine most mammalian organs. And don’t forget the adage about how elephants never forget.

This weekend (noon-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday) is your last chance to head to the Cincinnati Zoo’s HallZOOween celebrations, including the “ton of fun” that is the Zoo’s trio of Asian pachyderms — namely, Jati, My-Thai and Princess Schottzie — smashing pumpkins for the occasion. But their behavior isn’t limited to Halloween. In their forages for food in the wild, elephants often stomp on their food to break it down to a manageable size for their trunks to scoop it into their mouths. The herbivores enjoyed the pumpkins, although when I went on Thursday most were small enough not to require smashing. They seemed to like rolling them around with their trunks too.

As the media were allowed inside their habitat, we were informed of an emergency escape plan if something should go awry: Run for the bushes to our right and jump between the three wires that make a sort of fence. The elephants believe they’re “hot,” but the electricity isn’t actually on. A good time was had by all, including the middle-aged giants in our midst.

— Julie Mullins

Final Friday Roundup

Another Final Friday Gallery Walk is upon us. The weather is cooperating, so you have no excuse to not wander around downtown, taking in some of the best exhibitions Cincinnati’s seen in a while. Let’s start in the most obvious place:

Country Club (6-9 p.m. in the Carl Solway Gallery building, 424 Findlay St., West End. 513-792-9744): I’m pretty excited about the real opening of the much-anticipated joint venture of ex-CAC curator Matt Distel and his partner Christian Strike. The inaugural exhibition, I will be alright, features work by some of the artists Country Club has taken on. A few of the names will be familiar to CAC regulars: João Paulo Feliciano, John Pilson and SIMPARCH, for example. Others are a bit more elusive: Kamrooz Aram, Kambi Olujimi and Jacob Dyrenforth, to name a few. The gallery is coming out with guns blazing, thank the gods. Artist Harmony Korine flips off conservative culture by juxtaposing (or drawing a parallel between) Osama bin Laden and precious E.T. in his prints. Olujimi capitalizes on a fear-based culture, transforming the vaporous images of clouds into wanted posters. “Who the fuck are we even running from?” seems to be the message here. While the exhibition will include almost all media, the message is a direct one according to Distel and Strike: “I will be alright explores utopic/dystopic themes with a sense of cautious and/or conflicted optimism. The exhibition title itself suggests a hopeful look into the future while simultaneously implying that some type of troubling event or impending trauma must first be overcome.”

Publico (7-11 p.m. at 1308 Clay St., Over-the-Rhine, 513-784-0832): Here comes another wave of Philadelphia at Publico. Artist Andrew Suggs will have his first solo show here, Resound, opening this evening. Suggs’ work is a multi-channel video, featuring young people singing out-of-generation Pop songs. In other words — people in their twenties singing tunes from the 1960s that everyone knows. The simultaneous awkwardness and beauty of the performance “illustrates complex relationships to persistent cultural artifacts,” according to Paul Coors. I like anachronisms like this seems to be, but I wonder if I would have understood the point of the video had I not been told. Whatever: I always believe Paul. I’ll take his word for it at least until I see the video for myself.

Stage Door: Anon(ymous)

I’d like to open the Stage Door a day early because I saw a production on Wednesday evening that’s probably not on your theatergoing radar — but it should be. There are tons of choices at Cincinnati theaters right now, but Naomi Iizuka’s Anon(ymous) is around only for the weekend at UC’s College-Conservatory of Music, so you need to catch it quickly.

For all intents and purposes, Richard Hess’ inventive production is the world premiere of a work that made the cover of American Theatre magazine in February 2007. It was staged in April 2006 at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis (like our own Cincinnati Playhouse, this company has been honored with a regional theater Tony Award), but the always creative Hess has re-imagined Iizuka’s allusive text by adding seven songs composed by CCM musical theater major Christy Altomare. The playwright gave her blessing to this approach; I hope she gets a chance to see this production, because it deepens the show’s heart and intensifies its emotional drama. But whether she sees it or not, it’s a production that Cincinnatians ought to check out.

Anon(ymous) is about a refugee, who answers questions about his name with “Nobody” but who is really a sort of everyman (or at least every immigrant), washed up on the shore of a nonsensical and diverse America. He has a string of adventures — some amusing, some dramatic, some life-changing and a few that are death-defying — as he struggles to find his way home. If this story sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because Iizuka was inspired by The Odyssey, the ancient Greek epic by Homer. If you remember more details, you’ll find a few of Anon’s adventures are parallel to Odysseus’ encounters with the one-eyed, man-eating Cyclops or the enticingly beautiful Sirens. Of course, here they’ve become a twisted, sadistic butcher (who wears an eye-patch) and a set of four hookers (the script calls them barflies) who hang out at “the end of the road, rock bottom.”

CAC Gets in the FLOW

You might have noticed the lines of blue painter’s tape slicing the high lobby walls of the Contemporary Arts Center into angular forms. A closer look at this work in progress will show lightly penciled numbers in some of the shapes. What might now seem like an elaborate paint-by-numbers is the beginning of “FLOW,” an ambitious wall-painting installation by Philadelphia-based artist Odili Donald Odita.

The work will take shape over the next few weeks and be completed in time for the opening on Nov. 9. It will encompass the lobby and stairwell walls and incorporate a total of 101 colors. Treating each wall as a separate plane, each will have a distinct color scheme with a specific intent. While Odita’s work is abstract, his compositions often imply landscapes or African textile patterns. Critics have often described them as “internal geographies.” The scale will surpass that of Odita’s prior installation work, including “Give Me Shelter,” which he created for the 2007 Venice Biennale.

Kara Walker and Jay Bolotin

I believe in Kara Walker’s artwork. Is that a stupid thing to say? I don’t care.

Her exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art is sure to be a stunner. Holland Cotter’s review in last weekend’s New York Times left me a little breathless, a little desperate for a plane ticket to New York.

But believing in Walker’s art and reading about its amazing presence at the Whitney made me think of two other things.

First, the Contemporary Arts Center brought Walker to Cincinnati in 1997, so early in her career, long before she had the ability to rearrange the Met or hold a solo show at the Whitney.

Second, Walker made a motion picture out of her silhouettes! Does this remind anyone of Jay Bolotin’s first movie in 1994? He should have a solo show at the Whitney!

Thoughts?

— Laura James

Stage Door: Choices Galore

This weekend has more theater than you can shake a stick at, and most of it is worth seeing. It's my guess that the Playhouse's Altar Boyz will be a popular work, so you'd be smart to get a ticket early in its run before it's sold out. It's a sweet, funny musical that satirizes "boy bands," those highly choreographed groups of harmonic singers who make young girls squeal. But this is a smart production (by the same director who staged the Broadway version, which is still running in New York), a good entertainment choice.

There's lots of other work onstage right now — in fact, this week has offered more new theater than almost any period I can remember. There's not a clunker in the crowd: More Fun Than Bowling at ETC is quirky but well-staged; Cincinnati Shakespeare's Cymbeline is a work by the Bard that's hardly ever staged (if you prefer more familiar Shakespeare, you might try to get a ticket for the final weekend of Othello at the Playhouse's Shelterhouse Theatre) and Know Theatre is presenting a mind-bending piece by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, The Pillowman. (The latter is about child abuse and torture, so read about this one online at www.knowtheatre.com before you go to see it.)

Finally, if you're willing to take your chance on a waiting list, head to UC's College-Conservatory of Music for a provocative production of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins in the Cohen Family Studio Theater. That's right, it's a musical with nine presidential assassins as its central characters. It's political and rude, and full of music you won't soon forget.

Don't stay at home when you have so many good choices!

— Rick Pender

Friday's Flicks: Getting Wild with Sean Penn

The unpredictable state of movie release patterns is a pain in the ass. Anywhere from as little as two to as many as a dozen movies might open in a given week. Such diverse, often nonsensical scheduling habits are a logistical nightmare for editors of film sections, not to mention a headache for moviegoers trying to navigate various options.

(Making matters worse is that about a third of the films that open in this market either screen for critics after our print deadline or don’t screen at all. But that’s an issue for another conversation. Besides, you probably don’t care about the plight of lowly film critics, do you?)

This is actually a good week for both audiences and critics. Nine films are opening, many of which are at least intriguing if not entirely successful — from Sean Penn’s soulful, poetic adaptation of Into the Wild to Rendition, Gavin Hood’s politically minded follow-up to Tsotsi, to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (pictured above), a laconic, polarizing film that has garnered wildly diverse critical reaction.

(Brad Pitt as Jesse James photo courtesy of Warner Bros.)

Fred Noe to Host Charity Bourbon Tasting

On Oct. 25, the Tri-State Chapter of the World Association of the Alcohol Business Industries (WAABI) will sponsor its fifth annual Bourbon tasting at the Marriott RiverCenter in Covington.

Fred Noe, Master Distiller and the great grandson of Jim Beam himself, will host a tasting of the company’s Small Batch Bourbon Collection, including Knob Creek, Basil Hayden's, Booker's (the first bourbon bottled straight from the barrel, uncut and unfiltered) and Baker's.

The cost is just $50 per person and includes dinner, pop, two drink tickets, the bourbon tasting and a night of education and entertainment. Silent and live auctions will also be held. All proceeds will benefit the Sky Ranch for Boys and the Free Store Food Banks' Kid's Cafe.

Friday's Flicks: Kentucky Boy Done Good

George Clooney has gone from Northern Kentucky University dropout (where he studied journalism in a failed attempt to follow in his father’s footsteps) to struggling TV actor to one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. He’s an Oscar-winning actor who has first crack at the few worthwhile scripts in Hollywood. He’s guided a pair of films as a writer/director (the oddball, largely ineffective Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) and the incisive, highly effective Good Night, and Good Luck). He’s a politically minded guy who has spoken out for relief in Darfur, repeatedly questioned the policies of our current administration and playfully slammed convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff during a Golden Globes acceptance speech. Oh, and he’s a rich, funny and charming two-time recipient of People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” who has a plush, sprawling home in Lake Cuomo, Italy, and a stable of loyal, longtime friends.

How did this mischievous Kentucky boy reach such an admirable position? A mix of good luck, family connections and hard work are certainly factors, but the most decisive moment in Clooney’s career was clearly his role on TV’s wildly successful ER (the early-’90s version, not the mid-’80s version of the same name in which he also starred with the incomparable Elliott Gould), a window of opportunity the once-floundering actor wouldn’t squander.