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It's fun to keep up with the mobster-and-oligarch news from Russia. And things get really interesting when our market-manic media tie Russia's economic woes to the privatization of former state enterprises. (There are limits, of course. Our media generally see privatization as bad medicine for them, but still necessary for us.)
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Whatever else it may accomplish, the new Tom Cruise movie, The Last Samurai, demonstrates that Hollywood continues to conjugate that popular verb, "meet." Whatever the claims from the industry and the dutiful hype from the faithful Fidos of the media, the picture positively shouts its origins in some communal cogitation that no doubt concluded with
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RGRTA, the Terminalator Rochester Central Station's proponents must think there are no speed bumps ahead for the downtown bus terminal plan. But even as the December 15 deadline for public comment approaches, the opposition is coming together. Opponents of the plan have been studying the
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First lesson When representatives of all the city's interest groups crowd into her office and "start talking to Maggie Brooks" ("Lessons from the Johnson Loss," November 12), I hope her first response to that cacophony is something like this: The single most important key
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The 2004 Monroe County budget may or may not include big social service cuts. It may also include putting welfare on a charge-back system. Safety Net is a state program for people not eligible for the federal welfare program. The cost is split between the state and the county. One proposal floating around in
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Anyone remember those old What If comics Marvel used to make that wondered how things might have turned out if certain scenarios had played out differently? I only have two that survived my childhood ("What if Elektra hadn't died?" and "What if the Thing and the Beast continued to mutate?"), but the idea
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Whatever else it may accomplish, the new Tom Cruise movie, The Last Samurai, demonstrates that Hollywood continues to conjugate that popular verb, "meet." Whatever the claims from the industry and the dutiful hype from the faithful Fidos of the media, the picture positively shouts its origins in some communal cogitation that no doubt concluded with
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As the winter winds are set to billow across Lake Ontario, a wind of a different sort has already blown into Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery. It came in the form of a new director, Louis Grachos, who arrived this past January. Grachos has introduced several new initiatives calculated to reinvigorate the gallery, including a
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You might think, by the age of 71, Joe Romano would have mellowed out a little. After six decades of playing, he might not be as aggressive or experimental on the saxophone. Then something on his new
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One way to find interesting food is to cruise around a neighborhood, making notes when you see something that looks like a restaurant. On a recent drive up North Clinton, I first saw Chimo's Sandwich Shop, which had actually been recommended a few times, then Las Palma a block up. Speaking with the owner
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In its fourth decade, Neil Simon's quirky gag fest The Sunshine Boys works amazingly well. Considering those who have played it, I've always regarded the play as a showcase requiring master comic actors and comedians. But, though it is headed by one exceptional performance, the Jewish Community Center's holiday revival of The Sunshine Boys
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It's a fine pre-Autumn night, and the stretch of Meigs Street between Park and Monroe Avenue is teeming with life. People are gathered on porches, getting an early start on the weekend's festivities. The murmur of distant conversation fills the air. As we walk toward Monroe Avenue, a 20-something woman standing on one of the
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What is art? And what is art's purpose? Are these questions that can even be asked, much less answered? Well, yes, if you exempt the last 100 years or so.
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After 33 years of writing about them, it's difficult to find a new way to describe Garth Fagan Dance. Yet, though the dances are always definably Fagan's, they are newly inventive. Fagan adds unique work every year. How difficult must it be to achieve that level of creativity?
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The future of PaeTec Park and the future of Empire Precision Plastics are indelibly linked. The oft-delayed ground-breaking for Rochester's soccer stadium will not happen until the parties involved have found a new home for Empire. And, more importantly, until it is decided who is going to pay for the relocation.
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Three years ago, American writer James Howard Kunstler sat down with famed urbanist Jane Jacobs in her Toronto home. Kunstler asked her why she'd settled in Toronto. "We came in protest of the Vietnam War," said Jacobs, who grew up in Scranton and came into her own in New York City, struggling against a
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Central Station's a big mistake On the proposed bus terminal: Have they lost their minds? We are talking about the city's center, the corner of Main Street and Clinton Avenue --- our town's personality, so to speak. We have plowed down the
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Although a single swallow, as Aristotle reminds us, doesn't make a summer, some viewers may be forgiven for hoping that three Westerns can constitute a trend. The release of Open Range, The Last Samurai (despite its setting in Japan, very much an example of the form), and now, The Missing within the span
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I tried --- mostly on a dare --- to watch Matthew Barney's entire six-hour-and-thirty-seven-minute Cremaster Cycle (also previewed by Alex Miokovic and Heidi Nickisher on page 18) over the course of one evening after being told it was a virtually impossible task. For starters, there's the whole time commitment issue, and there's some question
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In a remarkable display of sobriety and honesty, the Republicans in the County Legislature have passed a budget --- the first rational one in years. "Rational" may be too generous a word: It's absurd to cut funding for school nurses but continue to
