Saturday, October 31, 2009
Film / Hillsborough / Spectacle Hillsborough house of horrors
Posted by Zack Smith on Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 11:39 AM
Who wouldn't want to live in a house where a strangely indestructible white-masked serial killer began his reign of terror? For many horror fans, Kenny Caperton is living the dream.
Caperton is the owner and proprietor of the Myers House North Carolina, a Victorian residence in rural Hillsborough designed to replicate the veneer of the house used as the residence of the Myers family in John Carpenter's horror classics Halloween and Halloween II.
He moved into the house in March 2009. Since then, it's served as the base for a number of local horror events, and will celebrate its first Halloween Bash starting tonight at 7:30 p.m.
The event includes screenings of the original Halloween and Halloween II, special appearances from two child actors from the horror film The Strangers, a couple of costume contests (including one based around Michael Myers, the iconic killer from the films), a memorabilia raffle and more.
Caperton says he's heard from fans coming in from other states to attend his party: "There's a lot of people who want to check it out. Halloween fans are just like Trekkies." It's only appropriate, given Myers' look originally came from a Captain Kirk mask.
Caperton describes himself as a "crazy Halloween fan" (he even enjoys the Myers-less Halloween III: Season of the Witch). "The original Halloween has been my favorite movie my entire life," Capterton says. "I just grew up with it. I always told everyone that if I could have any house in the world to live in, it would be the Myers house."
Video / Spectacle / Dance Thrill the world: A tribute to Michael Jackson
Posted by Sarah Ewald on Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 8:24 AM
DURHAM—At 8:30 Saturday night, Oct. 24, Michael Jackson fans gathered at The Pavilion at Durham Central Park for a tribute to the late entertainer calledThrill the World. It was a part of a worldwide event meant to synchronize participants at 12:30 a.m. UTC/GMT doing a dance similar to the one in Jackson’s “Thriller” music video.
The first“Thriller” dance took place in Toronto in 2006, in an affair that drew 62 people and set the Guinness Book of World Records' "record" for most “Thriller” dancers in one place and time. By last year, the event had gone global and attracted more than 4,000 did the (nearly) inimitable dance.
Approximately 40 people turned out to the Durham gig, which was planned and executed locally within a span of two weeks.
Footage taken by Belem Destefani. Video produced by Belem Destefani and Sarah Ewald.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Raleigh / Spectacle / Food The hunt for fried October: the food horrors at the N.C. State Fair
Posted by Zack Smith on Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 7:48 PM
It's the next-to-last night of the North Carolina State Fair, and my friends and I are stalking the fairgrounds in search of deep-fried butter. Everyone we've talked with claims that it's here, but no one's actually seen it.
Since Oprah Winfrey shared the flash-frozen sticks covered in batter with her audience at the Texas State Fair earlier this month, everyone has wondered if it will make its way to North Carolina. And rumors are flying around. "It's like the Loch Ness Monster," says James Rice of the booth Rice's Corn and Lemonade. "Everyone claims they've heard it's here, but no one's seen it."
It wouldn't be surprising if deep-fried butter showed up. I remember when I was a kid and saw news reports about this new novelty item at the fair called "fried dough." Even at a young age, it seemed weird that you could sell something that was the basic ingredient of most pastries by itself if you just deep-fried it.
Today, fried food forms the basis of most of the fair's cuisine-the official blog for the fair is even called "Deep Fried." As one wanders from one end of the fairgrounds to another, they might encounter the aforementioned fried dough, along with fried Oreos, fried candy bars (Snickers, Three Musketeers or Milky Way), fried pickles, fried strawberry cobbler bites, fried banana pudding bites, fried pecan pie, fried alligator tail, fried PB and J, fried Twinkies (also available frozen and dipped in chocolate) and the ever-popular fried cheeseburger on a stick.
The sticks are particularly important. The gourmands are like civil engineers of grease; if there's a way to get something on a stick, they'll find it. It's simply a matter of shoving a splint of bamboo through some flash-frozen consumable before coating it in the batter of choice (usually cornmeal), and sending it on to the cauldron of trans fats.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Uncategorized If you missed Chef Shirle' on Rachael Ray
Posted by Danny Hooley on Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 1:03 AM
... here's a link to the clip.
As reported last week, Shirle' Hale Koslowski (a Durham resident, personal chef and bassist/vocalist for Free Electric State) appeared Monday in a taped segment of the Rachael Ray show to demonstrate a wine rack she made from coffee cans.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Theater / Chapel Hill "A theatrical night out with the boys that's not to be missed:" Deep Dish Theater's Glengarry Glen Ross nets Indy's latest 5-star review
Posted by Byron Woods on Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 7:31 PM
Our complete review of the Deep Dish Theater production of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross will run in next week’s Independent. But for a show deserving a five-star review—only the paper’s 11th since 2003—a little advance warning seems entirely in order. Our advice is get your tickets now: They might be a little harder to come by on Wednesday. Deep Dish’s box office phone number is 968-1515.
In the meantime, just a little reading material while you’re waiting on hold…
Here’s the picture—and it’s not a pretty one. In the U.S., unemployment is skyrocketing; its peak, at over 16 percent, represents the highest level since the Great Depression. Credit is tight and home sales are tanking. Over a year passes before the President uses the r-word—recession—and admits that the economy is in significant trouble.
But the year is 1982, not 2009. The president is Ronald Reagan. And in Chicago, David Mamet is writing a play about a quartet of desperate real estate salesmen facing a real squeeze play of a sales contest—one that will put two of them on the street at the end of the month.
First prize is a Cadillac. Second’s a set of steak knives.
Third prize? You’re fired.
Those are the stakes in Glengarry Glen Ross, a scuzzy, profane—and frequently hilarious—profile of office politics with the gloves decidedly off, in a time a bit too close to our own for comfort.
In this production at Deep Dish Theater, artistic director Paul Frellick leads a seasoned cast of regional veterans and a notable newcomer to the scene in a theatrical night out with the boys that is not to be missed. Director and cast navigate the choppy waters and jazzy counter-rhythms of Mamet’s text, which stands as a world-class primer in the less-than-delicate art of verbal self-defense. With actors David Ring, John Murphy, Harvey Sage and talented new arrival Joshua Purvis wielding invective with expert timing, Glengarry Glen Ross repeatedly suggests the verbal equivalent of a kung-fu film with all the non-fight scenes removed.
That’s right: just the good stuff remains.
Catch the rest of the review -- and the week's other theatrical news -- Wednesday in the Independent.
Theater / Reynolds Industries Theater / Duke Performances Waiting it out: Putting a fine point on Beckett's Waiting for Godot
Posted by David Fellerath on Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 12:42 PM
Indy freelancer Sam Wardle attended opening night of The Classical Theatre of Harlem's production of Waiting for Godot. Here's his report.
Waiting for Godot
Performed by The Classical Theatre of Harlem
Duke Campus: Reynolds Industries Theater
Friday, Oct 23
"Why people have to complicate a thing so simple, I can't make out," playwright Samuel Beckett quipped more than 50 years ago about his masterpiece, Waiting for Godot. Oddly enough, I was left wondering, after watching the Classical Theatre of Harlem's retelling of the play as a Hurricane Katrina morality tale, if this new interpretation didn't go too far in the other direction.
While critics and viewers have spent the six decades since Waiting for Godot premiered wondering who symbolized what, and why, this retelling leaves little-almost too little-to the imagination. What was once a surreal work about, well, God knows what, the Harlem reimagining places the play's six characters within parameters we can all understand, or at least recognize: The two tramps are Hurricane Katrina refugees in a wasted section of the Ninth Ward. Pozzo is a white slave owner, a throwback to New Orleans' pre-Civil War days as a center of the slave trade, and Lucky, his slave, is, well, a slave. Godot is the federal government, coming too late-or not at all-to the city that it so badly failed, and Godot's nameless spokesboy is the media, or the White House public relations machine, or whatever polite arm of society it is that the master refrains from whipping. Or maybe Pozzo and Godot are one, two sides of the same frivolous, oppressive coin.
Indeed, if there's any doubt as to the thrust of this particular Beckett renaissance, the Classical Theatre of Harlem premiered this production to massive crowds in Gentilly and the Ninth Ward. It's a tremendous and inspiring example of sheer, almost inaccessible art finding voice in a current event, but it's not necessarily true to the original.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Television / Food Rockin' Chef on The Rachael Ray Show
Posted by Danny Hooley on Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 5:20 PM
Personal chef and singer/bassist extraordinaire Shirle’ Hale Koslowski is no stranger to television – she did a cooking segment on News 14 for a while until she was replaced by some dorky guy. But this latest development is just surreal.
Koslowski, who plays in the Durham band Free Electric State with her husband David, will appear Monday, Oct. 26 on the “Rachael Ray” show, which airs in the Triangle at 10 a.m. on WTVD.
A wine rack that Shirle’ made out of coffee cans will be featured in Ray’s regular "Double Duty Tips" segment. It turns out that a production assistant on Ray’s show spotted it on Shirle’s “Rockin’ the Stove” blog.
“I got this email, like, two months ago, in the morning,” Koslowski says. “I thought it was spam. I’m sitting here in my office, laughing, and going, ‘Hey David, check out this piece of spam I just got from The Rachael Ray Show.’” David thought it was “junk,” too, but when Shirle’ examined the return address, she saw that it was from Oprah Winfrey’s company. So she wrote back, and the segment producer called her within minutes.
A script was emailed to Shirle’, and David shot the footage that outlined the steps for making the wine rack. The producers will edit it down to a one-minute segment that will likely include David as well, enjoying a glass of wine with his wife.
Shirle’ is still just surprised by the whole thing.
“I had no idea that anyone subscribed to my blog, other than friends and family.”
By the way: Free Electric State plays tonight at Tir Na Nog in Raleigh with The Poles and Gross Ghost. And Shirle’ is hosting a vegan brunch at Durham’s The Pinhook on Nov. 8 from 12-2 p.m.
Theater / Interviews / Visual Art and Artists Picasso's Closet: The Independent Interview with Ariel Dorfman
Posted by Byron Woods on Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 8:11 AM
I spoke with Ariel Dorfman about his play, Picasso’s Closet, for about 45 minutes in his office at the John Hope Franklin Institute at Duke, at midday on Oct. 13, 2009. Nasher Museum of Art will present a staged reading of the play in conjunction with its Picasso and the Allure of Language exhibit, Oct. 29-31, at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at the Duke Box Office website.
Independent: This must be a difficult script to produce.
Ariel Dorfman: This is an experimental play. Let’s say I’ve tried to do, modestly, in theater with time what Picasso does with space—which is to create many perspectives and break down the barriers of identity. Therefore it verges between the popular and the experimental.
As different characters place their viewpoints one after another, there are these interstitial planes of reality coming at each other…
Most biopics, say, tend to be rather linear. Or at least they go back and forth—childhood to adulthood to childhood to adulthood—
—the narrative of ping pong—
—and they’re very predictable in that sense.
I said to myself, “How can I possibly write a play about Picasso as if Picasso’s art had never existed?” It had to be influenced by Picasso; the greatest homage to him is really not the character on stage, but the art with which he’s being portrayed. It’s a post-Picasso play, whereas most plays about Picasso I’ve seen—most plays about artists I’ve seen—tend to act as if the artist had not influenced them at all.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Video / Film A sort-of preview for Decasia: Light Is Calling
Posted by Marc Maximov on Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 3:18 PM
Tonight at 7, N.C. State’s Campus Cinema is showing Decasia, Bill Morrison’s hypnotic collage of decaying film stock from the early days of motion pictures. For lovers of the visual arts it’s a must-see, well worth a trip to Raleigh if you don’t live there.
For a preview of sorts, check out this short Morrison made two years after Decasia. Using the same methods and collaborating with the same composer (Michael Gordon of Bang on a Can), Light Is Calling is an 8-minute feast of images and sound that someone was thoughtful enough to post on YouTube in high definition (for best results, click through to watch the video on YouTube, then be sure to click the little “HQ” button at the bottom right of the screen to see it in high quality).
Theater / Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC) / Reviews Fighting temperamental scorpions, impossible odds - and the age of jade: David Copperfield at DPAC
Posted by Byron Woods on Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 12:28 PM
Magician David Copperfield’s greatest adversary isn’t the sort of technical snafu that reportedly had him scrub one of the most amazing effects from his 5:30pm performance of An Intimate Evening of Grand Illusion at DPAC yesterday afternoon: a 50’s model Lincoln convertible that we saw him, somehow, suddenly produce—not only out of thin air but set squarely in the middle of it, atop a set of pillars—despite a group of witnesses standing all around during the late show Tuesday night.
His true nemesis isn’t the 8-foot industrial fan whose whirring blades he walked through at another point on his way to…somewhere else, let’s say.
It’s not the stinger of the live black scorpion—or the attitude it copped at one point in the proceedings, leaving us in suspense before finally obliging our host with the payoff of another illusion.
It isn’t even some wiseguy local critic in the second row, who had the foresight to bring along a magician of his own—Joshua Lozoff, whose stage show Beyond Belief had two sold-out runs at Manbites Dog Theater and whose new show, Parlor Magic, is now playing at the Siena Hotel.
No: David Copperfield’s real opponent is the age of jade.
More after the jump.
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