Coury Turczyn

Technically proficient with its highly detailed settings and carefully rendered characters, Cars 2 nevertheless lacks the storytelling prowess that has been Pixar’s true ace in the hole—it’s entirely lacking in the emotional resonance of its predecessors.

On its surface, Knoxville isn’t exactly a town brimming with diversity. (See this issue’s report on census results.) But beneath its placid exterior are communities within communities that often go about their business unnoticed—until they take the time to show ...

From the first huffing bass notes from Kirk Joseph’s sousaphone tuba on the very first cut off the first album by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, you know you’re about to be entranced for a lifetime.

The extermination of B-movies from theaters has long been lamented by exploitation aficionados; ever since Jaws came out in 1975, all the major studios realized they could profit from making their own big-budget gore flicks.

Last Friday night, Knoxville’s media elite gathered at the Crowne Plaza Hotel for the East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists’ Golden Press Card Awards. Which is to say, awards were doled out for the best regional reporting of 2010 among ...

em>Cedar Rapids is about a bland, normal-looking guy who discovers his secret wild streak at a convention of insurance agents in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. No way this is going to be sincere, right?

The last few years have been a wild rush of success for a band that sounds like it might have recorded for Stax or Motown 40 years ago.

Our new homelessness task force meets for the first time.

Jeffrey Saad has one of those jobs that we all fantasize about. As host of the Cooking Channel’s United Tastes of America—produced by upstart Knoxville television studio Lusid Media—he gets to travel the country and eat both the best versions ...

Okay, local musicians—now’s your chance to live out those School of Rock fantasies wherein you inspire a group of loveable kids to take up instruments and rock out (or play jazz, or classical, or other genres).

For local-music aficionados, John Tilson is one of the heroes of high-top rock; as co-leader of the Swamis, he helped define the Knoxville sound of sardonic/silly garage-rock that flourished here for much of the ’90s.

The locally iconic Raven Records returns after 16 years, now renamed Raven Records & Rarities and stocking not just vinyl records but also a wide array of "oddball, weird, cool stuff."

Can WDVX be any more beloved? Well, yes it can—by winning its seventh Bluegrass Radio Station of the Year award last weekend at the 37th Annual Bluegrass Music Awards.

Wayne Bledsoe has been writing about the Knoxville music scene at the News Sentinel almost as long as there’s been something called “the Knoxville music scene.” And in the wake of his 23-year-old son Andrew’s death last month, that scene ...

In our Year In Review issue, we excerpted stories that we either liked a lot or that we felt reflected some of the big issues Knoxville faced in 2010. But what did our readers feel were our most interesting stories? ...

Trying to raise a child to grow up right in this dark, twisted world is no easy task for any parent. Therefore, I feel perfectly justified in threatening my son with Santa Claus’ wrath.

Last week, the E.W. Scripps Company (our corporate overlord) announced the winners in the third-quarter Best of Scripps contest, and we picked up couple of awards in the small paper category.

Joe Powell: "My blog isn’t about 'one thing'—I write about what interests me, what makes me laugh, what inspires me, and hopefully my writing will bring readers back."

Here are some more blogs produced in the Knoxville area that are worth checking out.

Heather Baird: "My blog is all about adding more sparkle to your baking. I hope to inspire the at-home baker and others who need a little creative fulfillment outside of their 9-5 routines."

Nelson Gullett: "If there is a mission, I guess it’s simply to have fun and share music I love with others. I also want to help the artists I cover gain fans and gain exposure."

Mackey: "Our group of drunkards has had a great time drinking our way through Knoxville over the years and thought it would be fun to chronicle some of our experiences via a blog. Most of our stories haven’t made it ...

Alan Sims: "I started my blog to fill what I perceived as a gap in available information. I really wanted to read in-depth about life in the city and I couldn’t find that type of coverage on the few blogs ...

Christmas in Knoxville: It’s typically a time of leaf blowers, long lines at Honey Baked Ham, and briskly warm ice skating on Market Square. But now it is also a time for the music of Scott Miller.

Here it is: The absolutely perfect gift for anyone who loves their pets. Local artist Rachel Travis’ Boxie Pets are custom, hand-painted portraits on 4-inch square “boxes” that are an inch-and-a-half deep.

Independent book stores are an endangered species. Facing competition from chain stores, Amazon.com, and now e-books, locally owned booksellers around the country are worried they won’t survive the current recession. In Knoxville, we have three case studies: new-books store Carpe ...

We're sad to see a valued colleague depart, but happy to announce a new hire.

After nearly six years of catering to Knoxville’s book lovers, Carpe Librum Booksellers will be closing at the end of this year. Although being the city’s only independently owned outlet for new books gave it a unique niche in the ...

If you’re ever in the mood to fixate on the futility of avoiding your inevitable doom, then boy, does Mark Romanek have the movie for you. Never Let Me Go is a somber, beautiful, and painfully slow rumination on being ...

As we all know, a zombie apocalypse is imminent, and there’s really no use in asking why. Some day quite soon, we’ll wake up to a world of flesh-eating former humans shuffling along urban streets in search of fresh, non-zombie ...

Alan Sherrod, our fine-arts writer, has been awarded a fellowship by the National Endowment of the Arts to enter their Arts Journalism Institute in Classical Music and Opera.

Knoxville: It’s a tough town. And if you don’t learn the ropes fast, you’re liable to get bruised. But don’t worry—we’re going to make life easier for you. All you have to do is read our second volume of tips, ...

Machete is what it is: A revenge/conspiracy/action flick laced with political satire and ’70s-style goofiness. And why not?

This Friday, Knoxvillians will once again witness teams of sweaty filmmakers scrambling around downtown to make short films in a short amount of time. But the competition won’t be the familiar Marble City 10-Hour Film Festival, which dissolved after five ...

Okay. So the only way to really pull this scenario off without being seriously distasteful is to make it a dark social comedy, not unlike its French inspiration, The Dinner Game by Francis Veber. Right? Turn the tables and reveal ...

Last weekend, at the annual convention of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, Metro Pulse picked up three 2010 AltWeekly Awards. These awards are especially important to us because they honor the best writing and reporting from alt weeklies across the ...

As the name indicates, MoogFest is intended as a celebration of synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog and his technological achievements in electronic music. Which brings us to the headliners for this little shindig: Thievery Corporation, Massive Attack, and MGMT.

More than ever before, summer movies are all about the money—and watching the interstudio combat at boxofficemojo.com has become more fun than watching the movies themselves. But let us pause now amid the financial carnage to congratulate two champions of ...

George Barris and his brother Sam pretty much invented the business of customizing cars, back in 1940s Los Angeles. Nowadays, it’s an industry unto itself, as well as mass entertainment on all too many cable TV shows. But Barris still ...

For her first full-length CD—co-produced by Sean “Diddy” Combs, of all people—Janelle Monáe’s chosen to create a science-fiction concept album about robots, inspired by Fritz Lang’s silent epic Metropolis. It’s completely over the top—but in creative ways.

John Mayer may be our most unique living Knoxvillian who’s yet unknown by other Knoxvillians. He’s been a falcon hacker, a theme park designer, an animator, a mailman, and a comic strip artist, among many other occupations. This summer, a ...

Jerry Bruckheimer wields unlimited power to make any movie he wants, and that typically means one with a big chase scene, several explosions, and a wisecracking hero. From this unremarkable aesthetic, he has captivated a nation and accumulated unimaginable wealth. ...

Neil Young’s best performances can be blissful (“Like a Hurricane”) or harrowing (almost anything from Tonight’s the Night or On the Beach), and a few songs have become so deeply ingrained that they resist commentary (“Cinnamon Girl”). He’s been on ...

While his Southern-style flavors are huge, his restaurant location for RouXbarb is what you’d call “intimate.”

With its world-class studio, its Round-Rug concert series, and its Glowing Bowl food service, the Glowing Body yoga studio has very quickly become a community fixture, drawing the yoga faithful from all over town to the Happy Holler environs.

There can be no substitute—Marble Slab Creamery is the place.

No, Gatlinburg is not in Knoxville. But we just can’t compete!

f there’s one hair salon that put Knoxville on the beauty map, it’s Frank and Belinda Gambuzza’s Salon Visage and its ever-growing number of locations and services. Innovative without being too chi-chi, it’s the go-to salon for Knoxvillians who want ...

Oh, dear. How the once-slavish fans turn on you once you completely reject them (after one short year) in order to further a dubious career built on acting like a self-entitled dork with few actual results on the playing field.

Just try to get a parking space on a Saturday at McKay, then prepare yourself to enter the Old Media Thunderdome as combatants vie for deals on books, CDs, DVDs, and video games.