The Buffalo News : Entertainment

Monday, December 1, 2008

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Gusto

Comedy group scores some laughs

By the time Randy Reese had entered his 32nd straight hour of improv comedy at North Tonawanda’s Riviera Theatre, he was just about ready to collapse.

 (Updated: 11/28/08 11:26 AM )
Dining review: Delicious excess at new steakhouse in Walden Galleria

It’s so over-the-top, it’s almost impossible to get a real handle on this place. The Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse, part of an Ohio-based chain and newly opened in the Walden Galleria, thrives on superlatives.

 (Updated: 11/28/08 11:28 AM )

EVENT LISTINGS FROM GUSTO

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'Sound Check': Rolling Stone list is fun but omits some great voices
News Pop Music Critic

Updated: 11/28/08 11:29 AM

“If a singer is not singing from the soul, I do not even want to listen to it — it’s not for me.”

'Synecdoche, New York': A one-of-a-kind fantasy
Arts Editor

Updated: 11/28/08 11:26 AM

You look up at the screen in slack-jawed awe — not at Spielbergian dinosaurs or what screenwriter Jenny Lumet (“Rachel Getting Married”) wittily called an “exploding planet movie.”

'The Alphabet Killer': Thriller depicts Rochester slayings, toll on detective
News Staff Reviewer

Updated: 11/28/08 11:21 AM

Horror-meister Rob Schmidt previously directed Eliza Dushku in 2003 slasher movie “Wrong Turn.”

'One Day You'll Understand': Lawyer pursues the fate of relatives in the Holocaust
News Staff Reviewer

Updated: 11/28/08 11:22 AM

As the trial of Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie plays on television, calling out old ghosts in 1987, a French lawyer pursues an obsession with what happened to his mother’s parents during World War II — a subject she does not wish to discuss with him — in “One Day You’ll Understand,” a quiet but powerful film from Israeli writer-director Amos Gitai.

On DVD: ‘Hancock’ is a different type of lifesaver
News Staff Reviewer

Updated: 11/28/08 12:01 PM

He’s drunk, belligerent and a superhero who does more harm than good when he’s out saving the world. Will Smith plays the mysterious title character in “Hancock” (Sony Pictures, available now), a cranky superhero with no memory of his past and a really bad public image.

American Repertory Theater offers playful tale of cranky guest
News Arts Writer

Updated: 11/28/08 11:25 AM

A long time ago in a media landscape far, far away, newspaper columnists and radio personalities were some of the world’s reigning celebrities. And during those fleeting days, which came to an abrupt end with the advent of television in the 1950s, nobody was better known or more polarizing than Alexander Woolcott.

Dropped by label, Eric Hutchinson's career is on the rise
Special to The News

Updated: 11/28/08 11:56 AM

In the not-so-ancient past, major record labels could play God — if they decided to dump some young singer/songwriter, for instance, his or her career was toast. Luckily for aspiring musicians and their fans, those days are deader than the Chrysalis imprint.

Club Chatter: Boris at Soundlab, benefit for Jeff Mayne and a busy holiday lineup
News Pop Music Critic

Updated: 11/28/08 11:57 AM

Behind the wall of sleep

Guns N' Roses' 'Chinese Democracy' is a mess of a record
News Pop Music Critic

Updated: 11/28/08 11:44 AM

If you’re going to spend 15 years and 13 million bucks making one album, it really should come out sounding as brilliant as Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” — or at least the rock music equivalent of it. Even if you’re a halfway washed-up hair-metal casualty from Los Angeles. There really can be no excuse for this sort of protracted navel-gazing. Narcissus, remember, stared at his own reflection for so long, he fell in love with it, only realizing it was not real when he tried to kiss it. Geez. The guy should’ve gotten out of the house a little more often.

Disc is testament to Peter Delano's physical renaissance
Arts Editor

Updated: 11/28/08 11:48 AM

There are two heart-rending stories behind this disc, which was recorded in 1996 but never released until this year.

Sparks fly on Jimmy Hughes album
News Pop Music Critic

Updated: 11/28/08 11:46 AM

You’re forgiven if you’ve never heard of Jimmy Hughes. The former gospel singer-turned-R&B progenitor had the first hit for Fame records with “Steal Away,” back in 1964, thereby putting the Muscle Shoals sound on the map. Within a few short years, the Fame studios at Muscle Shoals would be hosting the likes of Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett, and the “Memphis sound” would become de rigueur.

Back in Babeville

Updated: 11/28/08 6:48 AM

Ani DiFranco has been so many things to so many people over the years since she first emerged from the weekly “open mic” nights inside Allentown’s Nietzsche’s. Killer guitarist, folkie with a punk attitude, activist, poet ... the list goes on. But it is only recently that one might add the descriptives “playful” and “optimistic” to that list. Calm down, though — it’s not like “Red Letter Year,” DiFranco’s rather brilliant new album, is full of misty-eyed reveries on the joys of marriage and the unending bounties of motherhood. Ani’s still Ani — still edgy, still searching, still suspicious of accepted fact and conventional wisdom. She has gotten better at writing about it, that’s all.

FUN FOR ONE

Updated: 11/28/08 6:47 AM

Go single–or bring a friend


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