Philadelphia City Paper, February 13th, 2014 by Philadelphia City Paper

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Publisher Nancy Stuski Editor in Chief Lillian Swanson Senior Editor Patrick Rapa Arts & Culture Editor Mikala Jamison Digital Media Editor/Movies Editor Paulina Reso Food Editor/Listings Editor Caroline Russock Senior Staff Writers Daniel Denvir, Emily Guendelsberger Staff Writer Ryan Briggs Copy Chief Carolyn Wyman Associate Web Producer Carly Szkaradnik Contributors Sam Adams, Dotun Akintoye, A.D. Amorosi, Rodney Anonymous, Mary Armstrong, Meg Augustin, Bryan Bierman, Shaun Brady, Peter Burwasser, Mark Cofta, Alison Dell, Adam Erace, David Anthony Fox, Caitlin Goodman, K. Ross Hoffman, Deni Kasrel, Alli Katz, Gary M. Kramer, Drew Lazor, Gair “Dev 79” Marking, Robert McCormick, Andrew Milner, Annette Monnier, John Morrison, Michael Pelusi, Sameer Rao, Elliott Sharp, Marc Snitzer, Tom Tomorrow, John Vettese, Nikki Volpicelli, Brian Wilensky Editorial Interns Larry Miller, Maggie Grabmeier, Edward Newton, Robert Skvarla, Saffa Khan, Thomas O'Malley Production Director Michael Polimeno Editorial Art Director Allie Rossignol Senior Designer Evan M. Lopez Editorial Designers Brenna Adams, Jenni Betz Staff Photographer Neal Santos Contributing Photographers Jessica Kourkounis, Mark Stehle Contributing Illustrators Ryan Casey, Don Haring Jr., Joel Kimmel, Cameron K. Lewis, Thomas Pitilli, Matthew Smith Human Resources Ron Scully (ext. 210) Circulation Director Mark Burkert (ext. 239) Sales & Marketing Manager Katherine Siravo (ext. 251) Account Managers Colette Alexandre (ext. 250), Nick Cavanaugh (ext. 260), Amanda Gambier (ext. 228), Sharon MacWilliams (ext. 262), Megan Musser (ext. 215), Stephan Sitzai (ext. 258) Office Coordinator/Adult Advertising Sales Alexis Pierce (ext. 234) Founder & Editor Emeritus Bruce Schimmel

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contents A L’ECOLE FRANCAISE You Will Love Your French Classes & Amaze Yourself! Registration any time and also Saturday, 2/22 from 9am to 12 noon. alecolefrancaise.com 610.660.9645 4 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

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Cover story, see p. 12

Naked City ...................................................................................6 A&E................................................................................................18 Movies ........................................................................................24 Agenda ......................................................................................26 Food ..............................................................................................31 COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ALLIE ROSSIGNOL & JENNI BETZ DESIGN BY ALLIE ROSSIGNOL

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naked

the thebellcurve

city

CP’s Quality-o-Life-o-Meter

[0]

Councilman Jim Kenney says the city should consider non-salt options for melting ice, like beet juice. And everybody just, like, stares at him.

[ - 2]

Phillip Eric Weems, who wrote the book Crime Pays, Vol. 1 while serving 12 years in prison for robbery, is sentenced to 10 years for a check-cashing scheme.“This is basically a writers’ retreat for Crime Pays Vol. 1 Part 2,” he explains.

[ - 4]

The Red Cross says there’s a blood shortage in the area. “Perhaps beet juice would do the trick,” offers Councilman Kenney.

[ + 3]

The Vatican says that Pope Francis plans to visit Philadelphia in September 2015. “I tell you, I cannot wait to ride your worldfamous Zoo Balloon,” says the pope. “It’s like the main reason I’m coming.”

[ + 1]

Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell introduces bills to allow the city to borrow $250 million to build a high-tech police headquarters.“It’ll be beet powered!” says Councilman Kenney. “No, it won’t,” says Councilwoman Blackwell.

[ + 1]

[ - 1]

[ + 3]

Opera Philadelphia invites local media to live-tweet a performance at the Academy of Music. “Behold! They are favoriting to bring down the chandelier! #ThatsTheO nlyOperaReferenceBellCurveKnows.” A milk truck gets sucked into a sinkhole in Kensington. “Who needs milk anymore?” cackles Councilman Kenney, his face dripping a ghastly pink-ish purple. Eighty-eight percent of those who took a poll by CBS Philly say that the Eagles should consider drafting openly gay college player Michael Sam. And there goes the lonely, slumping shadow of Mike Missanelli, trudging down Passyunk, kicking atashen icicles hanging from bumpers and wondering what happened to this city, to society. Is there no place for a man like him anymore, a place where loudmouth homophobes can feel safe and at peace?

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BEHIND BARS: Michael Ta’Bon spent a decade in prison, mostly for armed robbery. Now, he builds a wooden prison cell once a year and lives inside it. NEAL SANTOS

[ incarceration ]

BUILDING AN UNPRISON CELL To protest prisons and warn kids against pursuing a life of crime, a man jails himself each February. By Daniel Denvir

brand new prison is rising from the icy winter streets in Germantown. The institution is temporary and, with only one 7.5- by 5.5-foot cell, small by the standards of America’s booming corrections system. Michael Ta’Bon, or O. G-L.A.W. (God’s Love at Work), is building the “Unprison Cell” and spending his fourth straight February living inside it. “Walk a mile in my shoes. You wanna be like me?” the 39-yearold, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, asked a reporter on Sunday. “I got these chains and I got these real uncomfortable cold boots that we wear upstate. Put these on, put these chains on. Walk around. Hop, skip, jump. How you feel? You don’t like the way that feel? … You didn’t even get to the strip search yet.” The mostly wooden structure, on East Chelten Avenue near Chew Avenue, is parked in front of a women’s halfway house. Ta’Bon — a rapper, ex-convict and radical-protest-performance artist — sleeps, covered by a blanket, on plastic bread pallets on the floor. With this protest, Ta’Bon is warning young people away from a

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lifestyle that could kill them or send them to prison, and protesting a government that fails to provide good jobs and schools, but does find money for jails. This year, Ta’Bon is building a bigger cell on top of a trailer. He plans to take his show on the road. The sign on the back of his mobile prison cell reads “Jail is 4 Suckaz’!” He has a second motto on the cell, too: “Education over incarceration.” “One accusation is lack of education — that’s the cause, the effect is mental starvation,” he raps into a tape recorder as he sits behind the seat of his parked car, a decommissioned police Crown Vic. “That is one justification, for crime operations, in the ghetto habitation, which becomes rationalization, for our incarceration, and penetration, of governmental domination.” Ta’Bon spent a decade behind bars, mostly for armed robbery. “Some of ’em I did do, some of ’em I didn’t do,” he says. His story is this: Born in Pennsylvania Hospital, he was raised all over Philadelphia by a blind mother and an HIV-positive father who sold heroin, and then became addicted to it. It was up to Ta’Bon to take care of his little sisters, one of whom had a tracheotomy, another a colonoscopy bag. “We moved around. We didn’t have no money. So my mother was like a gypsy,” he says. He counts out a long list of schools that he was kicked out of.

“Walk a mile in my shoes. You wanna be like me?”

>>> continued on page 8

[ is tired of the cold ] [ a million stories ]

✚ SCHOOL DISTRICT TO ADD MORE TOP EXECS WHILE SCHOOLS SUFFER Amid an ongoing budget crisis, Superintendent William Hite plans to expand the executive ranks at the School District of Philadelphia, according to a new organizational chart released last week to City Paper. Last year’s chart listed 47 positions, while this year’s lists 57. Such jobs typically pay more than $100,000 per year, and several are assigned to politically connected staffers. One is Loree Jones, who served as chief of staff to the School Reform Commission under Chair Pedro Ramos, before he resigned in October. Jones will be the head of Family and External Relations, a newly created office that will oversee a handful of other departments within the School District — including a similar office that had been established last year and headed by Evelyn Sample-Oates, with the purpose of overseeing that same group of departments. Jones’ new position “will provide strategic and operational oversight over key external relations functions,” according to an email from District spokesperson Fernando Gallard. “It will specifically be charged with improving better services to parents and school communities.” But Jones’ job description closely matches one already assigned to Sample-Oates: “Responsible for the District’s

engagement initiatives with parents and the community-at-large,” according to an October 2012 email from Hite. Jones has worked closely with Ramos for years. After Ramos resigned as Mayor John Street’s managing director in 2007, Jones succeeded him in that position. As SRC chief of staff, Jones

earned $129,000. It is unclear how much she will now earn — the District says her salary is yet to be determined. Other top central office staffers typically make between $129,000 and $210,000 a year. Hite makes $270,000. The reshuffling comes as City Councilman Bill Green takes office as SRC chair and he will likely hire his own chief of staff. Green’s former City Council aide, Sophie Bryan, was paid a salary of $100,000 to run the District’s Charter School Office. Under the new organizational chart, however, Bryan occupies the newly created position of special assistant to the Office of the Superintendent. The District says that the position

Ten more top jobs are on the chart this year.

previously existed but had been vacant. Bryan is primarily

engaged in labor negotiations. The District did not say what Bryan’s new salary is.

It is also unclear whether she will remain in her new position, or follow her old boss to the SRC. Last year, the District hired former Department of Licenses & Inspections chief Fran Burns as its chief of operations. She is paid $175,000. At what was likely a much bigger job at L&I, she earned just $125,000, according to Philadelphia magazine. The School District initially denied City Paper’s request for the organizational chart, contending that it was a “draft,” but released the document on Thursday after City Paper filed an appeal with the state Office of Open Records. While central office staff has been reduced by about 40 percent since 2011, Hite has been criticized in the past for paying >>> continued on page 10

photostream ³ submit to photostream@citypaper.net

SHADOW TREES: Photographer Steve Ives was walking to work about 8:15 a.m. on Jan. 26 when he noticed the clear and beautiful winter sunlight shining off the fresh snow. Then the shadows cast by trees near the Rodin Museum stopped him in his tracks. STEVE IVES

editor’sletter By Lillian Swanson

A VALENTINE’S DAY SAMPLER ³ SICK OF WINTER? Who isn’t? But the good

news is there’s relief in sight this weekend. That’s because two holidays bookend the long weekend, with Valentine’s Day on one side and Presidents Day on the other. This week’s issue has nothing to say about the stone-cold guys on Mount Rushmore — sorry, George and Abe — but plenty to tell you about warm romance and Cupid’s pointed arrow. Arielle Pardes makes her debut in our pages with a cover story that celebrates love, but with a City Paper twist. She talked to a half dozen couples who chose unusual venues to celebrate their weddings, and reports that they are part of a trend of favoring fun over tradition when it comes to exchanging wedding vows. Deeper inside the paper, in the Food & Drink section, you’ll find a piece on that quintessential ingredient for Valentine’s Day — a box of chocolates. But, of course, we’re not talking about a Whitman’s Sampler. Food Editor Caroline Russock has found the most exquisite handmade chocolates, created by Tradestone Confections in Conshohocken. And she tells a delicious backstory: Two chefs, who met at Le Bec-Fin, have created chocolate jewels with unusual flavors. Pistachio citrus, anyone? Our salute to the holiday takes yet a different turn online with the “Valentine’s Day Planner” at citypaper.net. Dismissing pricey oysters-and-champagne tasting menus and boring long-stem roses, these Naked City blog posts provide cheap, fun and offbeat ways to honor your main squeeze. Think an ’80s-prom-themed party would be cool? Our online events calendar and the “Valentine’s Day Planner” have all the details on the party planned at Pub & Kitchen on Friday night. Or, how about a romantic night out with champagne and pizza at Gennaro’s Tomato Pie in South Philly? You bring the champagne. We have information in our events calendar, too, for readers who have soured on the holiday. Check out the “Ex-Files” edition of the First Person Arts Story Slam, the ever-popular anti-Valentine’s Day event, held this year on Friday night. All of this is to say that when it comes to Valentine’s Day, we’re red, er, read, all over. (lswanson@citypaper.net)

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✚ Building an Unprison Cell

[ the naked city ]

<<< continued from page 6

In 2012, he chained himself to the Love Park sculpture to protest police brutality. “I started robbing people, selling drugs, the typical poor ghetto kid.” Who was he sticking up? “Anybody.” Ta’Bon, who embraces a mix of Christian and Muslim beliefs, says he was angry with God before finding his purpose in life. Today, he also prophesies a scary, techno-dystopic future, including a government that will forcefully implant electronic chips under citizens’ skin and lock up dissidents in FEMA-run concentration camps. He is eclectic. People stop by to ask Ta’Bon what he is doing. He says they ask, “‘Why you living in there? What’s happening? What’s going on?’ So I’m still giving ’em sidewalk therapy as I build. And I can explain to them that each screw, each bar that I put up, each piece of wood that I put up, represents a bad decision that I made — that boxed my own self in prison.” In this Northwest Philadelphia zip code, 137 people were admitted to state prisons in 2008 at an ultimate estimated cost to taxpayers of $16.6 million, according to the most recent data collected by the Justice Atlas of Sentencing and Corrections. That year, the state locked up 4,472 Philadelphians at an estimated cost of $544.8 million. Overall, the state has

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nearly 50,000 people behind bars. Ta’Bon frequently makes the news. In 2011, in one of his protest actions, he walked into the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce’s annual luncheon while Mayor Nutter was speaking. Having cuffed his hands behind his back and wearing his trademark jumpsuit, he demanded jobs and training for ex-offenders. In 2012, he chained himself to the sculpture in Love Park to protest police brutality. He can’t say when the cell will be completed. Snow storms, arguments with his wife and a funding shortfall have all conspired to slow him down. But Ta’Bon won’t be detained for long. At least not on someone else’s terms. Learn more about O. G-L.A.W. and donate to his unprison cell at glawmovement.com. (daniel.denvir@citypaper.net)

✚ A Million Stories

[ the naked city ]

<<< continued from page 7

One office reflects a reliance on privatesector support. excessive salaries to top employees while

overseeing widespread layoffs of teachers and other staff. In November 2012, the Daily News reported $311,351 in salary increases to nonunion workers primarily clustered in District information technology, human resources, finance and grants, and compliance. According to a District fact sheet, the “updated organizational structure is aligned to the District’s Action Plan v2.0 — a set of six strategies to accomplish overarching goals tied to improved student outcomes.” Gallard says that a revised action plan to be released this week “will further illustrate the need for an organization that is designed to support key core educational goals.”

The District says that one new office, the Strategy Delivery Unit, “is a monitoring position” that will “track the District’s progress against its strategic priorities and the goals the District outlined in its Action Plan.” Another office, Strategic Partnerships, reflects the District’s increasing reliance on privatesector support. Controversy has surround-

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ed the involvement of outside groups like the Philadelphia

School Partnership (PSP), an entity that has been friendly to charter schools and hostile to the teachers’ union, and the William Penn Foundation, in School District decision-making and funding. Strategic Partnerships is headed by Stacy E. Holland. Holland, who also served as a board member at PSP, and makes $160,000. The District says it has raised about $3 million

since the position was created. The overall cost of any sixfigure salaries created this year — and it is unclear how many new hires will be made — cannot yet be calculated. What is certain is that the District faces yet another huge budget deficit in the coming fiscal year, and a fresh round of mass layoffs is likely if significant support from Harrisburg and City Hall are not forthcoming. —Daniel Denvir

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artsmusicmoviesmayhem

icepack By A.D. Amorosi

³ IT’S VALENTINE’S WEEKEND, so don’t mind

me if I talk about the music of love and the sounds of romance. To me, the dulcet tones of l’amour happen to be opera — Opera Philadelphia’s Ainadamar at the Academy of Music to be specific.The 21st-century tango-and-effects-driven opera got a leg up from an army of local Twitterers meant to marketOsvaldo Golijov’spoly-stylistic work. Bravo. Anything that brings attention to Opera Philly and its cause is greatly desired. As long as they were on mute, it’s cool. Helping to drag opera into the modern age is Karina Kacala,the onetime marketing manager at First Person Arts.This week, she starts the same role at Opera Philadelphia. (Becca Jennings, meanwhile, takes over for Kacala at First Person.) “I’m a former opera singer, so I’m very excited about the move,” says Kacala. Brava to her. Having new opera news to crow about is better than a dozen Pitchfork headlines. ³ Speaking of romantic music, the soulful Sound of Philadelphia and the men who made it famous — Kenny Gamble,Leon Huff and Thom Bell — have some things cooking. Bell, the arranger and composer best known for stirring up the sweeping sound of the O’Jays, clued me in to some happenings within their partnership. It’s already known that Philly developer Carl Dranoff took over the trio’s Philadelphia International Records’ offices and studios on Broad Street in December 2013 to build SLS International.Its 47 stories (150 hotel rooms, 125 luxury condominiums) will make it the tallest original residential building in Pennsylvania. But Bell offered me a fun fact I didn’t know. “We bought that property from Allen Klein, the guy behind the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and ABKCO, in 1973,” says Bell. “And no, I won’t tell you what we paid for it then or what we got for it now.” The other notable progress on the Gamble/Huff/Bell front has to do with the planned jukebox musical of Sound of Philadelphia material hopefully bound for Broadway: It just finished its first draft last week. “Now things are getting good,” says Bell. The musical’s libretto is rumored to have been penned by writers from the Tyler Perry camp. ³ Supper is a good place to eat any time of the week, but I can’t help but confess that Sundays somehow feel homier to me at Mitch Prensky’s South Street eatery. With Valentine’s Day coming, so too must come Prensky’s annual post-V-Day pajama brunch (Sun., Feb. 16), where diners are encouraged to wear their jammies and get a free mimosa. ³ More icepack at citypaper.net/nakedcity. (a_amorosi@citypaper.net) 18 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

CHANGE OF PLANS: What started out as a portrait of Lamb of God and the group’s fans turned into a gripping courtroom drama.

[ movies ]

HEAVY METAL ON TRIAL A local director thought he was making a tour documentary — until the lead singer was arrested. By Shaun Brady

ocumentary filmmaker Don Argott seems to have a knack for being in the right place at the worst time. While working on The Atomic States of America (co-directed by longtime partner Sheena M. Joyce), the Fukushima disaster struck and thrust the film’s topic of nuclear energy back into the headlines. His latest, As the Palaces Burn, started as a tour documentary on the metal band Lamb of God and their diehard fans, until lead singer Randy Blythe suddenly found himself in a Prague jail, on trial for manslaughter. “It’s certainly not lucky for the people on the other end of it,” Argott admits, “but from a story standpoint it is a little uncanny.” The third excursion into headbanging territory for Argott and Joyce’s Philly-based 9.14 Pictures, As the Palaces Burn premieres this Sunday at the Troc, which was also the setting of Lamb of God’s live DVD Killadelphia. It follows their 2005 debut Rock School, about the Paul Green School of Rock Music, and 2011’s Last Days Here, profiling troubled Pentagram singer Bobby Liebling. The duo are also behind the Barnes Foundation doc The Art of the Steal and are working on an upcoming film about Kurt Vonnegut. A self-proclaimed lifelong metalhead, Argott is aware of

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the hurdles these films face in finding a wider audience. “We try to make all of our films accessible to larger audiences, but an extreme metal band is polarizing,” he says. “Even if the story’s really cool, it’s hard to get past the fact that it’s still heavy metal. Sometimes it’s hard to get people to pay attention to certain things if they’ve already decided it’s not for them.” The initial idea for the film was to accompany the band on its world travels and show how heavy metal has united fans from diverse cultures. By June 2012, Argott had already followed the group to Israel, India and South America, and assumed he was essentially finished with shooting when the band’s manager called: When the band’s plane landed in the Czech Republic, Blythe had been unexpectedly arrested and charged with manslaughter in the case of a stage-diving fan who had died after a concert two years earlier — allegedly after a shove from the singer. Blythe faced a possible 10 years in prison for an incident he didn’t know had happened. “My first inclination was, ‘Fuck, I guess I gotta get a ticket to go to Prague now,’” Argott recalls. “Here we thought we were making one film and it turned into something completely different.” Instead of smoothing over this disruption, the directors embraced it. “We thought that we should try to make the film follow the way that everybody experienced this event,” Argott says,

A stage-diving fan had died after a concert.

>>> continued on page 20

[ like an unhappy accident ] soundadvice

[ album reviews ]

³ xiu xiu | C+

³ vtgnike | B+

They’re still avant-garde only if Jamie Stewart’s navel constitutes a movement by itself. On Angel Guts: Red Classroom (Polyvinyl), Xiu Xiu burrows deeper into analog synths, programmed drums, distortions and dissonance. Occasionally, they stumble onto beauty (“New Life Immigration,” “Bitter Melon”) like an unhappy accident. As for lyrics, it’s the usual: provocations for the easily provoked, hysterical wailing about “Black Dick,” enough presaging about suicide to make you want to give Stewart the nudge he needs. His idea of love? “I hate everyone but you.” —Dotun Akintoye

Moscow producer Vtgnike makes his debut on Nicolas Jaar’s new Other People label with Dubna, a fluid piece of dreamily amorphous electronica that meanders its way through bleary drones, elusively soulful vocal fragments, limpid snatches of harp (and balalaika!) and break beats that play like a muffled, misremembered translation of Chicago juke. It has some of the scuffed-up, subaqueous chill of Actress’s ballyhooed Ghettoville, with 1,000 percent more humanity. —K. Ross Hoffman

³ francis harris | B Like its predecessor, 2011’s Leland, Francis Harris’ Minutes of Sleep (Scissor and Thread) was composed as an elegy to a recently passed parent. Not surprisingly, it’s another deeply ruminative affair, suffused in melancholy and receding even further from the dance-floor imperatives of the Brooklyn producer’s earlier work. Still, Harris’ dependably silky, subtle house grooves play a crucial supporting role. That beat — steady, stoic, impassive — may be the —K. Ross Hoffman most comforting sound here.

flickpick

By Emily Guendelsberger

³ boats | BCharity comps tend to be musically insubstantial, so Edinburgh’s Transgressive North has managed quite a feat with BOATS, which is both conceptually coherent and highly worth hearing. A generous cast of indie and electronic A-listers contributed tracks incorporating recordings of the Light of Love Children’s Choir (i.e. the very Southeastern Indian “untouchable” children the comp’s proceeds go to support). —K. Ross Hoffman

[ movie review ]

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON [ B ] AMONG THE WORLD’S great filmmakers — or, more precisely, filmmakers

capable of greatness — Hirokazu Kore-eda is unusually difficult to pin down. He followed Nobody Knows, a heartbreaking true-life tale of abandoned children living on their own, with the samurai movie Hana; and the heartbreaking family drama Still Walking, with the blow-up doll romance Air Doll. With Like Father, Like Son, he surprises by working in largely the same vein as 2011’s I Wish, a gentle tale of boyhood dreams slightly marred by the central product placement of a Japanese rail line. Like Father, Like Son also focuses on families separated by distance, adding an element of intrigue: As their only child, a son named Keita (Keita Ninomiya), nears his sixth birthday, Ryota (Masaharu Fukuyama) and Midori (Machiko Ono) learn he was switched at birth with another couple’s child, a revelation that seems to snap Ryota’s misgivings about his son into sharp focus. Ryota is a driven office worker who has sacrificed his family life in the name of success and expects his son to do the same; that the boy enjoys his piano lessons but fails to push himself, even at 5, strikes his father as a mark of failure — or it did, until their lack of blood relation seemed to explain it. Ryota looks down on the middle-class family that has been raising his biological son, scowling at the father’s lack of ambition, which naturally leaves him more time to spend with his several children. There’s a schematic feel to the movie; you could remake it for American audiences without changing a shot. But Fukuyama’s dedication to Ryota’s prickly perfection would get lost in the translation, and with it the movie’s most intriguing aspect. —Sam Adams

He was switched at birth with another child.

THE OLD SWITCH-A-ROO: Ryota (Masaharu Fukuyama) discovers that he’s been raising a child (Keita Ninomiya) that’s not his.

MESSAGE IN A BUTTHOLE

³ AS A REACTION TO the ongoing furor about

Russia’s anti-gay stance in the run-up to the Olympics, Philly band Potpourri of Pearls has released a timely tune called “Sochi” (see potpourriofpearls. com). The song — and its corresponding video featuring a flying cartoon butthole — attempts to redefine Sochi as: “n. A delightful anus; v. To do butt sex.” We talked to Potpourri’s Adam Brody about it. City Paper : How did this come about? Adam Brody: I think the first thing that inspired me was the sort of — neologism? I don’t even know how to pronounce that word, I’ve only seen it written. CP: It doesn’t come up very often. AB: Yeah. Neo-LOG-ism? Neo-LOW-jism? That’s great, it has “jism” at the end. If that’s how you pronounce it.Anyway, a decade ago, Dan Savage shifted Rick Santorum’s name to mean something completely different as a sort of political action — take something back despite a moment of homophobia. … With the video — this is sort of the way that I always try to work, you know, shock and awe. CP: Were you living in Pennsylvania when the Santorum redefinition happened? AB: Yeah! … I revisited the Spreading Santorum website a couple weeks ago, and when you open it up, the first thing you see is “a frothy mixture of fecal matter and lube.” [Laughs.] It’s so nasty! Our definition for Sochi by comparison is tame. Maybe if I had more standing as a public figure I could have made a more disgusting definition without fear of nobody wanting to look at it or watch it whatsoever. But the word Sochi is cute! I think buttholes — er, cartoon buttholes — are kinda cute. (emilyg@citypaper.net)

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✚ Heavy Metal On Trial <<< continued from page 18

Blythe’s arrest may have been a saving grace. “and 30 minutes into the film this record-scratch moment happens.” As it turns out, much of what had been initially shot added an extra resonance to this ill-fated turn of events. Lamb of God’s latest album, Resolution, documented Blythe’s newfound sobriety; the trial turned what had been a personal redemption story into one visible to the world, with the singer hoping to be freed this time from a literal prison. On top of that, many of the fans that Argott had interviewed told stories of being helped through difficult times by Lamb of God’s music. This moving relationship between the band and its fans typically remains unseen by those turned off by metal’s relentless aggression. But echoes of that subculture emerge when the band confronts the reality that regardless of Blythe’s involvement, a fan died at one of their performances — a fact that turns out to have a profound effect on them. “You become invested in these guys and these fans and start to understand their world,” Argott says. “So when this event happens, it still relates back to the foundation that we’ve laid, because now heavy metal’s essentially on trial and the audience

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[ arts & entertainment ]

understands that culture. This is what they have to defend.” The trial also marks a defining moment in the life of Lamb of God, which formed in the early ’90s in Richmond, Va. After nearly two decades together, the band evidenced the usual dysfunction, showing the cracks resulting from personal demons and internal dissensions. The trauma of Blythe’s arrest may have proven to be a saving grace. “Like any tragic event,” Argott says, “I think this put things in perspective and maybe made them appreciate each other a little bit more. Tragedies force you to wake up and realize that you shouldn’t take things for granted. So I think it definitely brought them all closer together.” (s_brady@citypaper.net) ✚ Sun., Feb. 16, 9 p.m., $15-$100, The

Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-922-6888, thetroc.com.

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[ arts & entertainment ]

curtaincall

³ TRUE WEST There’s the West of American mythology, a place of open spaces, big dreams and limitless possibilities. Trailblazing heroes went there and discovered gold, made fortunes and invented the movie industry. Then there’s Sam Shepard’s True West. The open spaces are gone, replaced by endless suburbia. The possibilities are mostly gone, too, but the big dreams remain. Shepard’s play, a battle of wills between two brothers who are rival would-be screenwriters, is a favorite of audiences and theater companies, and no wonder: On one level, it’s pretty much surefire — short, punchy, full of mordant wit. The likeable actors here — Jeb Kreager as Austin, the buttoned-up brother, and Brian Osborne as Lee, the loose-cannon one, plus cameos by Joe Canuso and E. Ashley Izard — nail their laughs. But the greatness in Shepard’s play lies in its dark side. Beneath the surface comedy is a play full of mournfulness and violence. This True West, an angry meditation on lost manhood and toxic families, is brilliant but staggeringly difficult to get right. For starters, it looks like a realistic play but isn’t — the nesting-box imagery is as close to Shepard’s poetry as it is to conventional playwriting. The audience should feel uneasy throughout, in an evening punctuated by hairpin turns and long, ominous pauses. At Theatre Exile, everything speeds along. Someone — director Matt Pfeiffer, I assume — chose to perform the play in one act rather than two, which further downsizes it. The star performance here turns out to be Thom Weaver’s lighting design, which packs several quirky, scary surprises. Don’t get me wrong — it’s an entertaining evening. But in terms of conquering the heights of True West, this production is about as far from it as Austin and Lee are from the Weinstein brothers. Through Feb. 23, $35-$37, Theatre Exile at Plays & Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey St., 215-218-4022, theatreexile.org. —David Anthony Fox

³ TROUSERS Inis Nua Theatre Company’s decade of producing plays from Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales has provided not only entertaining performances, but revealed sensibilities different from our own. Consider Paul Meade and David Parnell’s Trousers, which at first seems to fit a familiar Odd Couple sitcom groove. In 2006, Dermot (Jared Michael Delaney) is a fastidious Dublin bachelor who enjoys herbal tea and yoga. College chum Mick (Adam Rzepka) appears, bedraggled and distraught, dumped by his wife. Mick, the archetypal slob, disrupts Dermot’s tidy, lonely life, and stirs up old memories. Seventeen years before, the boys spent a summer in New York City. Director Tom Reing’s production flows effortlessly between periods, spicing the transitions with Janelle Kauffman’s whimsical video projections and Aaron Oster’s inspired music choices. The friendship’s end, precipitated by a girl, gradually plays out, even as their new adult relationship develops. Trousers isn’t a punch-line comedy, but rather a character study about how men grow up. Its modest themes are achieved through sincere and detailed acting, a montage of lovely moments. The boys’ plaintive rendition of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Only Living Boy in New York” — Dermot on guitar, Mick playing harmonica, 22 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

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PAOLA NOGUERAS

CP Theater Reviews

True West

both singing — speaks volumes. The play ends easily, maybe too neatly for Americans accustomed to dramatic profundity. But nothing’s lost in translation in Inis Nua’s fine production: Life’s difficulties are real, Trousers shows, but sometimes the best solutions are simple. Through Feb. 23, $25-$30, Off-Broad Street Theater, 1636 Sansom St., 215-454-9776, inisnuatheatre.org. —Mark Cofta

³ ONDINE Why do we consider fairy tales a children’s realm? The not-forkids (due to its maturity and complexity) Ondine, Frenchman Jean Giraudoux’s 1938 fantasia by The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, splendidly proves that magical allegories can be entertaining and meaningful for adults. The eight-year-old company’s first guest director, Aaron Cromie, maintains the playfully absurdist IRC aesthetic nurtured by founder Tina Brock in shows ranging from European classics like Franz Kafka’s The Castle and Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs to modern works like Charles Mee’s Paradise Park. From Lisi Stoessel’s storybook sets and Adriano Shaplin’s atmospheric sound to Jill Keys’ colorfully bohemian costumes and Cromie’s clever puppets and cutouts, Ondine shimmers with impish delight. So does Ama Bollinger as the water sprite title character, a hyperactive beauty whom knight errant Hans, played with stiff-spined commitment by Andrew Carroll, instantly loves. Inconveniently, Hans is already betrothed to mere mortal Bertha (Sarah Knittel), causing all sorts of humorous problems at court. The Illusionist (Susan Giddings) must conjure key future scenes to reveal the triangular relationship’s inevitable arc. Giraudoux’s script bogs down in debate — particularly in Act III’s sham trial — but Cromie’s 11-actor ensemble, featuring Brock’s aged king, Robb Hutter’s supercilious Lord Chamberlain and other IRC stalwarts, keep the action swirling around Bollinger’s Ondine, a childlike force of nature. Giraudoux’s musings about our relationship with the natural world’s mysteries elevates Ondine above absurdist playfulness. Through March 2, $20-$22, Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5, 825 Walnut St., 215-285-0472, idiopathicridiculopathyconsortium.org. —Mark Cofta

INVITES YOU AND A GUEST TO EXPERIENCE THE BEAUTY OF THE ROYAL BALLET The Royal Ballet returns to US cinemas nationwide on February 20th with Tchaikovsky’s classic tale of a cursed beauty, Swan Lake. Dancing the twin parts of Odette/Odile and handsome Prince Siegfried, Zenaida Yanowsky and Nehemiah Kish make a captivating pair! ENTER TO WIN A PAIR OF TICKETS TO SEE THIS SPECIAL ONE NIGHT ONLY EVENT ON THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20 BY SENDING YOUR FULL NAME AND HOME ADDRESS TO FATHOMEVENTSPHILLY@GMAIL.COM WITH THE SUBJECT LINE “SWAN LAKE”.

No purchase necessary. Passes valid at participating theaters only for exclusive showing on Thursday, February 20 at 7:00PM. NCM Fathom Events, Philadelphia City Paper and their afﬁliates accept no responsibility or liability in connection with any loss or accident incurred in connection with the use of this prize. Tickets cannot be exchanged, transferred, or redeemed for cash, in whole or in part.

INVITE YOU AND A GUEST TO A SPECIAL SCREENING! To enter to win a pair of passes to a special advance screening of

send an email to:

www.citypaper.net/win No purchase necessary. One (admit two) pass per person. Passes are available on a first-come, first-served basis, while supplies last. Seating at theater is limited to available capacity and theater discretion. This film is rated PG-13.

OPENS NATIONWIDE FEBRUARY 21 C I T Y PA P E R . N E T | F E B R U A R Y 1 3 - F E B R U A R Y 1 9 , 2 0 1 4 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

movie

“A COMPELLING

shorts

UNTOLD STORY. A FUN AND ADDICTIVE ADVENTURE.”

FILMS ARE GRADED BY CITY PAPER CRITICS A-F.

About Last Night

PETER TRAVERS

COLUMBIA PICTURES AND FOX 2000 PICTURES PRESENT A SMOKEHOUSE PRODUCTION “THE MONUMENTS MEN” MUSIC EXECUTIVE BY ALEXANDRE DESPLAT PRODUCER BARBARA A. HALL BASED ON THE BOOK BY ROBERT M. EDSEL WITH BRET WITTER SCREENPLAY BY GEORGE CLOONEY & GRANT HESLOV PRODUCED DIRECTED BY GRANT HESLOV GEORGE CLOONEY BY GEORGE CLOONEY

✚ NEW ABOUT LAST NIGHT Read Drew Lazor’s review at citypaper.net. (Wide release)

ENDLESS LOVE

his contemporaries, making the most of a big budget with set pieces and effects that highlight his hero’s most marketable abilities. He shouldn’t be faulted for simply existing in the shadow of Verhoeven’s timeless original — rather, it’s the carousel of flat performances, on both sides of the law, that develop the most drag. —Drew Lazor (Wide release)

Read Shaun Brady’s review at citypaper.net. (Wide release)

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON | B Read Sam Adams’ review on p. 19. (Ritz at the Bourse)

ROBOCOP | C

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Move beyond the expectation that José Padilha’s shiny new RoboCop should possess the same satirical sneer and sense of place present in Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 classic and you’ll see it for what it is: a shoot-’em-up that values style over socio-economic substance. There’s nothing wrong with such an approach, of course, but it’s saddled with its own set of issues. The victim of a car bombing organized by local mobsters, white-hat Detroit cop Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) becomes the prime candidate for a new initiative. To save his life, amoral robotics CEO Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) hires a gifted doctor (Gary Oldman) to rebuild him into a badass crime-fighting hybrid — one whose on-the-street presence sidesteps a Senate bill prohibiting Sellars’ all-machine products from operating in America. Single-handedly flat-lining crime in a futuristic Motor City, Murphy becomes a public sensation, but the success comes at the expense of his long-suffering wife (Abby Cornish) and young son. Padilha, the mind behind Brazil’s smash Elite Squad movies, presents action with more snap and innovation than many of

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✚ CONTINUING GLORIA | B+ Long divorced and nearing her 60s, Gloria (Paulina García) knows who she is, but not necessarily how she fits into the world. Meeting Rodolfo (Sergio Hernández) at a nightclub doesn’t change that, exactly, but it upsets her carefully ordered life enough to make her question whether her habits are the product of self-knowledge or a fear of changing. Chilean director Sebastián Lelio unrolls his film at a leisurely pace, almost fetishizing the lack of incident. But it’s a pleasure to soak in the details of Gloria’s life, and especially of García’s multilayered performance.As Gloria does with Rodolfo, she draws us close, perhaps for a quick afternoon rendezvous, then turns us away. Though she’s attached to her own children, she bristles every time Rodolfo takes a cellphone call from one of his own kids, often heedless of where he is or what he’s doing. After she mocks him at a dinner party, he abruptly vanishes, leaving her to decide whether hers or his is the greater offense. In a sense, there’s not much to Gloria besides García’s performance, but that’s like saying there’s not much to a hurricane beyond the wind and the rain. Like the film itself, García’s bearing isn’t showy, but it conveys both the weight of the years she’s lived and the life

still left in her. It’s a deeply satisfying movie, even if it’s never particularly exciting. —Sam Adams (Ritz Five)

HER | B+ Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) works for a company called BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com, where he dictates mock-personal correspondence to a computer that then prints it out in a facsimile of human script. But IRL contact is tougher for him — at least until Samantha, an artificially intelligent operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), comes along. Her presents itself as a movie about technology, but writer-director Spike Jonze isn’t overly concerned with the sci- in his sci-fi romance. What interests Jonze is love, and how — or whether — it survives the way that relationships allow people to change, sometimes in incompatible directions. Johansson’s voice-only performance places Samantha as a girlnext-door type, developing unfamiliar emotional needs and then disguising them with jokes. It’s a magnificently designed film, shot in smoggy pastels with the (human) characters in collarless retro-chic shirts. But it’s also more intellectualized than it could have been, as if Jonze is waiting for the audience to meet him halfway as well. —Sam Adams (Ritz East)

KIDS FOR CASH | B+ In 2008, allegations of kids-for-cash corruption began surfacing in WilkesBarre, prompting an investigation led by the Philly-based Juvenile Law Center, which uncovered evidence that judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan had been handing down

heavy sentences to minors accused of comparatively benign crimes. The “cash” came into play via Robert Mericle, the builder of these facilities, who paid Ciavarella and Conahan seven-figure “finder’s fees” for their assistance in helping the projects get off the ground. In interviews with victims and their families, first-time director Robert May, who previously produced The Fog of War and The War Tapes, coaxes out details that humanize the outrage. Hamstrung by a manipulative justice system and, in many cases, already disadvantaged, these citizens had no recourse, and some came out permanently wounded. But it’s May’s sitdowns with Ciavarella himself that prove most disquieting. Contrite in a cold, contractual sense, the judge insists his actions were philosophically motivated, making his claims that “people didn’t know how to be parents” with a chilling sense of sanctimony. It’s never clear how honest he’s being, which renders May’s exploration of his choices that much more disturbing. —Drew Lazor (Ritz at the Bourse)

LABOR DAY | F There are bad movies, and then there are movies like Labor Day. Originally scheduled for Paramount’s prime Christmas Day Oscar slot, it was scuttled to the January boneyard once people finally saw the foolish thing. Adapted from a novel by Joyce Maynard, Labor Day is the tale of escaped convict Frank Chambers (Josh Brolin), who bolts out a prison window during an emergency appendectomy and ends up spending a long weekend with a hotcha, anxiety-ridden single mom (Kate Winslet) and her impressionable ado-

lescent son (Gattlin Griffith). Frank’s supposed to be holding them hostage, but it’s fifty shades of “hey” when he ties Winslet’s trembling yummy mummy to a kitchen chair, and the two are quickly making the beast with two backs — but not before Brolin has already fixed the stonework in her crumbling basement, cleaned the gutters and taught her awkward son how to play baseball. The erotic centerpiece of this daft movie arrives when Brolin teaches Winslet and son how to bake a peach cobbler — a laughable sequence during which sexual innuendo is applied to fruit filling. This scene will be talked about for years, and should show at midnight every weekend alongside The Room. —Sean Burns (Wide release)

THE MONUMENTS MEN | CGeorge Clooney’s fifth directorial outing tells the true(-ish) story of the Monuments Men, a group of guys at the upper end of the greatest generation tasked with preserving and rescuing Europe’s prized art and architecture from the Nazis. It’s a curious story that should allow for a fresh perspective on WWII, but Clooney uses it as an occasion to make a throwback tribute to the all-star war movies of the 1960s. Clooney-as-director struggles with the big question of whether saving Western civilization’s greatest masterpieces is worth the loss of even a single human life, which he usually solves by giving soaring monologues to Clooney-as-actor. As a filmmaker he seems uneasy about the dilemma, shifting from race-against-time heroics to sudden polemics on man’s inhumanity to man. The result becomes an odd amalgam of the earnest propagandizing of Good

Night, and Good Luck and the cornball retro humor of his forgotten ’20s football farce Leatherheads. Not even the well-chosen cast (which includes Bill Murray and John Goodman) can bridge that disconnect, leading to an unexpectedly aimless adventure. —Shaun Brady (Wide release)

THE PAST | A-

[ movie shorts ]

215-387-5125, ihousephilly.org. Barbara Hammer: Early Short Films:

The avant-garde lesbian filmmaker will be in attendance for a post-screening discussion. Thu., Feb. 13, 7 p.m., $9. Everything You Always Wanted to

At the center of Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s terse, quietly harrowing melodrama is a fragmented family coming to terms with its own inescapable history. Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) returns to France from Iran to finalize his divorce from Marie (Bérénice Bejo), but it’s clear they still care about each other, despite Marie’s engagement to Samir (Tahar Rahim of A Prophet). It’s not only their history together that threatens everyone’s fragile happiness, however. Samir is married to a woman in a coma, which binds his new relationship to his wife’s trapped consciousness. The cause of her vegetative state is just one of the film’s secrets, some shared, some grasped tightly by a single person, which slowly emerge. The film’s stubborn richness seems to argue that, if it can take a lifetime to truly get to know another person, why should a story fully reveal itself in the span of two hours? As the film continues to bloom in the mind weeks later, it’s a question hard to ignore. —Shaun Brady (Ritz at the Bourse)

Know About Sex* (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972, U.S., 88 min.): Woody

Allen’s parody of the sexual revolution. Fri., Feb. 14, 7 p.m., $9.

PHILAMOCA 531 N. 12th St., 267-519-9651, philamoca.org. The Best Offer (2014, Italy, 131 min.): The art-world thriller starring Geoffrey Rush. Sun., Feb. 16, 6:30 and 9:30 p.m., $10. The Crazy Family (1984, Japan, 106 min.): A demented black comedy about consumer culture. Wed., Feb. 19, 7:30 p.m., free.

WOODMERE ART MUSEUM 9201 Germantown Ave., 215-2470476, woodmereartmuseum.org. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

(1974, U.S., 104 min.): Four men hijack a subway train and threaten to kill one passenger each minute until the city pays a hefty ransom. Tue., Feb. 18, 7:30 p.m., free.