
May 20
Dare to: Ride a new (upside-down!) wooden coaster
The sounds of cracking whips and stampeding horses launched us click-clacking up the first hill. That’s when the panic set in.
Thursday, May 23, 2013

The sounds of cracking whips and stampeding horses launched us click-clacking up the first hill. That’s when the panic set in.

I notice people smiling at me. It’s that genial Kansas City smile, so I can’t tell if they’re thinking ‘how charming’ or ‘dork.’

In the last few years, the Kansas City-based video production firm T2 Studios and its so-called Experience Lab have gained a growing reputation for creating what are called immersion experiences. In a world of way-too-much stuff passing before our eyes, what all these flashy sights are about is an elevated form of marketing.

Parts of Fridays performance of the Kansas City Symphony, led by conductor and pianist Asher Fisch, were plagued by a variety of issues with balance, blend and synchronization. Despite the flaws, the orchestra was able to capture the music's inherent beauty.

Ann Hamilton and her former teacher, Cynthia Schira, have teamed up for a joint exhibition at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. An Errant Line derives its most compelling moments from the human drama of the presepio.

It may not be a sacred space, technically speaking, but when the Kansas City Chorale and organist Jan Kraybill join forces for a concert this Friday, Helzberg Hall will be filled with numinous sounds worthy of a cathedral.

The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 is the third volume of Rick Atkinsons Liberation Trilogy, which details the triumph of the Allied powers in Europe and North Africa. He began researching the project in 1999. But, arguably, he began working that story 18 years before that, during a three-hour drive through southeastern Kansas.

The local art world will remember Byron Cohen, who died May 10 at the age of 72, as a dealer who loved his work and was also good at it. Cohen was an avid art collector before retiring from real estate development to become a dealer.

The very idea of a ballet adaptation of Ernest Hemingways novel The Sun Also Rises ought to invite snickers. Yet there was no derision in evidence when the Washington Ballet gave the world premiere of Septime Webres two-act staging at the Kennedy Centers Eisenhower Theater.
The Harriman-Jewell Series presented an eclectic performance Thursday by Cantus, a nine-voice, Minneapolis-based mens vocal chamber ensemble. On the Shoulders of Giants was a polished and rewarding program to hear. The really outstanding voice of the nine belongs to tenor Paul Rudoi, but theres no weak link in the group.

In the third volume of Rick Atkinsons Liberation Trilogy, he reconstructs the period from D-Day to V-E Day by weaving a multitude of tiny details into a tapestry of achingly sublime prose.

A reader-friendly version of more than 200 years of U.S. Army history would seem a contradiction in terms. But thats what Kansas City area military scholar D.M. Giangreco achieves with The United States Army: The Definitive Illustrated History.

That's a wrap! Dunder Mifflin Paper Co. lives on, but "The Office" has closed shop. The NBC workplace comedy, set at the fictional company's Scranton, Pa., branch, aired its finale Thursday to end an eight-year run.

In one photo, a woman is on all fours, presumably picking something up, her posterior pressed against a glass window. Another photo shows a couple in bathrobes, their feet touching beneath a table. And there is one of a man, in jeans and a T-shirt, lying on his side as he takes a nap.

Into Darkness picks up shortly after J.J. Abrams 2009 Star Trek prequel, as Captain James T. Kirk tries to balance his new authority aboard the Enterprise with his natural propensity for rule-breaking. Its not going well.

With just one departure, “Saturday Night Live” is losing its excitable “Weekend Update” city correspondent, Stefon; its frenetic incarnations of James Carville, Al Pacino, Vincent Price and Julian Assange; and any number of unctuous, self-satisfied game-show hosts. All of which is to say that Bill Hader, an eight-year veteran of “Saturday Night Live,” will be leaving that NBC late-night franchise when its season ends Saturday.

This old-fashioned film provides a glorious cinematic display of man vs. nature — although from Thor Heyerdahl’s perspective, he was more caught up in man vs. the scientific community.

As "The Office" airs its series finale after eight years on NBC, the time feels right to salute the show that spawned it. Transplanting the BBC-produced, British version of "The Office," starring a previously unknown scamp named Ricky Gervais, to American soil was an exacting business.

Ticketmaster has agreed to settle claims for up to $23 million over a lawsuit affecting more than a million people who, after buying a ticket online, were enrolled in a rewards program that cost $9 a month but never gave them any benefits.

On Wednesday, Bob Dylan became the first rock star inducted into the 115-year-old American Academy of Arts and Letters, joining a membership that includes E.L. Doctorow, Chuck Close and John Ashbery.