Author: rudy panucci (Page 16 of 34)

CAB5, the fifth gathering of Charleston Area Bloggers, will take place Friday May 25 at the coffeshop in Taylor Books. Bloggers will be meeting between 8 and 9 AM. I was lucky enough to attend CAB4 (as seen in Rick Lee’s blog, here), and I’ll be at Taylor Books Friday morning. The meeting is open to any blogger in the Charleston Area (extending to the entire state, really). It’ll be a fun meeting of the minds. Maybe we can get a record turnout this time.

Go ahead, follow this link. It’ll stick in your head for days.

This week’s SOTW, in honor of this weekend’s Vandalia Gathering, is a cool little tune by progressive bluegrass band, The Yonder Mountain String Band. “Left Me In A Hole” is a lament to a lost love from their 1999 CD “Elevation.” Despite the sad subject matter it’s an uptempo song with bright folksy vocals.

I first discovered the Yonder Mountain boys last year, when they provided the highlight of a CD tribute to the Beatle’s “Rubber Soul” album. On checking out their website, I was mightily impressed. I’m not normally a big fan of country-leaning music, but occasionally a bluegrass band will cut through the twang, and get to me with their musicianship. The Yonder Mountain String Band manages to stay true to traditional bluegrass instrumentation while bringing a fresh approach to arrangements and vocal harmony. They manage to do this without giving in to typical Nashville gloss and phoniness. As they say in their press kit, they’re “bridging the gap between bluegrass and rock.”

Our SOTW is not from their latest self-titled CD. The new CD takes the band even further into new musical territory. Best of all, you can hear their new CD for free. It’s streaming in the background when you visit their website. While visiting their website, you can also order their CDs and buy merchandise. I don’t know if these guys have ever been on Mountain Stage, but if they haven’t, they should be. They have the perfect sound for the show. They seem to be circling West Virginia for the next week, with shows in Ohio, Maryland, and Virginia. Maybe we can get them to play here some time.

This week’s Monday morning jumpstart art is “A Very Sunny Day In Dunbar.” It’s a digitally assaulted photograph of the recently-dismantled vacant Ames Department Store in Dunbar. I took this photo last week, but thought it would look better with a surreal sky and giant sun. The sun appears courtesy of NASA. click the image to see it bigger

Animated Discussions
by Rudy Panucci and Melanie Larch

Dreamworks’ Over The Hedge opens this weekend, and it may be lost in the rush as crowds flock to “The Da Vinci Code” instead of taking in a fine family flick. Based on the comic strip, which has been running in the Sunday Gazette-Mail lately, all indications are that this is a fun, well-made little cartoon, but it may not be “flashy” enough to compete against summer blockbusters.

Initial reviews are generally positive, but not enthusiastically so. “Over The Hedge” just doesn’t seem to be a big summer movie, despite an all-star cast that features Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Steve Carell and William Shatner, among others. It’s an indication of how far computer animation has come that the novelty has worn off. It’s not special any longer, and it’s going to take more than computer-animated cute little animals to stand out. The ad campaign for this film hasn’t been as ubiquitous as those for CGI cartoons usually are. Those ads that have run don’t make the film look much different from all the other CGI animal cartoons that are out there. Does anyone remember Disney’s “The Wild?”

With Ice Age 2 closing in on 200 million dollars, and Pixar‘s Cars due out next month, it’s possible that “Over The Hedge” could wind up lost in the glut. With the low-budget but heavily marketed Hoodwinked out on DVD this week, this could be a case of really bad timing for Dreamworks.

And that would be a shame. “Over The Hedge” is a sweet little cartoon that acts as sort of an origin story for the comic strip by Michael Fry and T. Lewis. The writers and directors of the movie actually treated the source material with respect, which is rare for adaptations of comic strips or comic books. The designs had to be tweaked somewhat to be translated into 3D modeling, but they really seem to have stayed true to the spirit of the comic strip. Let’s hope that “Over The Hedge” doesn’t wind up as box-office roadkill.

It’s never good to kick a man while he’s down, but with the Bush Bop Bag, you can at least punch the president in the nose, while his poll numbers are at rock bottom. This is a fresh take on the old inflatable bop bag, only instead of featuring Bozo the Clown, it features a different bozo.

Produced by Rocket USA, a company that’s also cool enough to make toys based on Futurama and Family Guy, this punching bag of the punching bag in chief can be found online at Cool Cheap Stuff and Amazon. You can usually find this particular bag of hot air for less than 20 bucks.

Think of this as a less risky way of expressing your true feelings over the war in Iraq, the price of gas, the erosion of our civil liberties, or the way he pronounces “nuke-yoo-ler.” You can wail away at will without the fear of being dragged to the ground by the Secret Service and then whisked away to a secret prison where you’ll be tortured and forced to listen to Dick Cheney croon “Volare.”

It’s a stretch, but any tenuous link that lets me work in a cheap Marx Brothers reference in the headline is worth making.

Saturday, the Preakness Stakes, the second jewel in horse racing’s famed Triple Crown, takes place at Pimlico, which is a fun word to say, wherever the hell it is. This is a very big deal for some people. Not as big a deal as the Kentucky Derby, because there seems to be less alcohol involved, but it’s a big deal nonetheless. NBC will be showing the big race at 6:14 PM, which means that you can watch it, then get dressed and head on over to the Clay Center.

Because at 8 PM, for one night only, the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra presents Mozart’s The Marriage Of Figaro, which has a plot worthy of the aforementioned brothers Marx. It’s a race to the altar, as Figaro tries to wed his bride-to-be before she’s bedded by a philandering Count. This will be an elaborate version of the opera, with the Symphony at full strength under the baton of Maestro Grant Cooper. Director Richard McKee brings us a full staging, bolstered by the West Virginia Symphony Chorus, and several guest soloists.

If You Go: The Marriage Of Figaro kicks off at 8 PM at the Clay Center, Saturday May 20. Tickets start at $12 for the general public, with discounts for students. Call 561-3570 or visit the Symphony’s website for more details.

Friday night, West Virginia Patriots For Peace presents a benefit concert Celebrating The Fabulous 60s at Christ Church United Methodist on Quarrier Street in Charleston. This promises to be an incredible evening that rekindles the spirit of protest music from the turbulent Vietnam era.

Songs And Words Of Protest features Julie Adams and Colleen Anderson, along with the Carpenter Ants, Larry Groce, John Lilly, Kate Long, Ron Sowell and more. It kicks off at 7:30 PM, but the doors open at 7 for pre-show face painting. Bell bottoms and tie dye are the recommended attire as our loyal protest group aims to take us back to the days when more people had the energy to be passionate about government outrages.

You’ve probably seen the Patriots for Peace holding their weekly vigil outside the Library downtown, protesting the Iraq war. Now that the vast majority of the country agrees with their position, maybe a good crowd will come out and enjoy an evening of great music and free speech.

If You Go: The concert kicks off at 7:30 PM at Christ Church United Methodist, 1221 Quarrier Street, Charleston. Suggested donation is $10, for more information call 345-0427.

This week’s SOTW is not really a song, it’s an instrumental — but it’s a good one! Caravader is a big band blending of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” with music from Star Wars. It’s by The New Morty Show, one of the more enduring of the mid-90s swing revival bands.

While bands like The Brian Setzer Orchestra, Royal Crown Revue, and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy were garnering critical acclaim and decent record sales, The New Morty Show worked the live circuit, not releasing their first CD until 1998, after the boom went bust for new swing music. However, they are still plugging away, and have released three fine albums with a mix of traditional big band swing and oddball swing-styled covers of tunes like “Enter Sandman,” and “White Wedding.”

You can buy New Morty Show CDs here, and for booking information, go here. Meanwhile, check out the swingin’ tune!

We kick off this week with a self portrait in shadows. “A Man Called Rudy” looks like the title card, if there were a detective show with that name produced by Quinn Martin back in the early 70s. Shot on Washington street, outside the post office back in January, and colorized a few weeks ago, this is just an exercise in color composition. Click to enlarge.