Kaleidoscope

	print	email	reply	rss feed

Published: Oct 20, 2010

Fat Wreck Chords all-star team Me First and the Gimme Gimmes is pop punk's greatest cover act. Which, yes, makes them lords of a small fiefdom. But it's one they rule with panache and benevolence, meting anthemic, shout-along versions of country ("Goodbye Earl"), show tunes ("Over the Rainbow") and classics both popular ("I Am a Rock") and obscure ("One Tin Soldier") in equal measure. And if you can't get behind a guy named Spike singing a 100 percent earnest version of "Natural Woman," you deserve to be expelled from the kingdom. (Hmm. Their Tuesday show at North Star is sold out, so maybe you knew all this.)

There are, of course, plenty of recognizable names in The Best American Comics 2010 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sept. 28) — Ben Katchor, Chris Ware, Robert Crumb, Chris Ware again — but some equally worthwhile entries are turned in by relative rookies like Theo Ellsworth and Gabrielle Bell. Which, cough, makes me think of City Paper  's annual Comics Issue, which is now accepting entries. (More info at citypaper.net/comicsissue.)

Where other artists might limit themselves to one or two sonic tricks per track, Sufjan Stevens isn't shy about making room for a little bit of everything. His new album, The Age of Adz (Asthmatic Kitty), concludes with one of his most ambitious pieces. Some 25-plus minutes long, "Impossible Soul" works in a full choir, auto-tune and a dancefloor breakdown. After all that, there's still 10 more joyous minutes.

The Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival (Oct. 21-24, phillyasianfilmfest.org) celebrates its third season with a collection of homegrown movies that highlight the local Asian-American experience. Two biggies in this lineup of shorts, docs and full-lengths are writer/director Sebastian Ho Conley's cutesy, partially animated love story Colin Hearts Kay, and The People I've Slept With, a spicy feature by Quentin Lee about anonymous sex and unplanned pregnancy. Whoops.

The Puzzler
GenderEDGE
Neighborhood 3
The Early Bird
Crisis Connection
Safety Dance
Burn After Reading
Oleanna
Narcissus in the Studio
Paul Taylor
Sharp Dance Co.
Peoplehood Parade & Pageant