CAMP X-RAY Opening Friday Good acting is often the result of finding a suitable role. Upon initial inspection, Kristen Stewart playing a newbie detention guard at Guantanamo Bay in CAMP X-RAY doesn’t sound like a match made in casting boot camp. But before her one-note natterings in the Twilight movies, Stewart assembled a catalogue of […]
Neil Morris
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The night the lights went out in Cary: Carolina RailHawks tie Minnesota United 2-2 to conclude 2014 NASL season
WAKEMED SOCCER PARK/ CARY—Just as the Carolina RailHawks and Minnesota United FC were set to kick off the second half of last night’s match in Cary, a power surge doused the floodlights at WakeMed Soccer Park, momentarily enveloping the main stadium in total darkness. It proved a jackhammer-subtle metaphor for what would unfold in two […]
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Movie review: Birdman soars despite some turbulence
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) ★★★ ½ Now playing The more accurate parenthetical subtitle to Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) would be (The Unexpected Virtue of Contradictions). The film derides critical acclaim and Hollywood superlatives yet clearly craves the same. It’s an acting master class that skewers the self-indulgent acting process. […]
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Subtraction by addition: Carolina RailHawks draw 1-1 with Fort Lauderdale, but lose ground in playoff race
WAKEMED SOCCER PARK/ CARY—Throughout the 2014 regular season (heck, even last year, too), the Carolina RailHawks have displayed an uncanny ability to play counter to their given situation. Anytime the RailHawks appear on the verge of falling out of a possible berth in the NASL’s four-team postseason tournament, the team will reel off two or […]
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Movie review: Realistic tank warfare and murky ethics in Fury
FURY Opening Friday Ideals are peaceful; history is violent,” declares Don Collier (Brad Pitt), the battle-hardened commander of the five-soldier crew manning the titular Sherman tank in FURY. This maxim saturates writer-director David Ayer’s bleaker-than-bleak World War II film, set amid a hellish European Theatre replete with heroism but precious little humanity. As the film […]
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Movie review: Gone Girl plays a misanthropic game of LIFE
Gone Girl★★★ Now playing The byzantine plot turns of Gone Girl are forecast during the film’s opening moments. Kept man Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) strolls into the hometown Missouri bar he runs—named “The Bar,” just because—to visit bartending sister Margo (Carrie Coon). He comes carrying the board game “Mastermind,” which Go (as Nick calls her) […]
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Heavy Traffic: Carolina RailHawks in flux following sale of Fort Lauderdale Strikers
When the Fort Lauderdale Strikers announced last week that Traffic Sports USA was selling controlling interest in the North American Soccer League (NASL) club to a Brazilian investment group, chatter ensued about the effect this would have on various soccer entities. But besides the Strikers themselves, the group most affected by this sale is the […]
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Deadline in US Soccer Pro League Standards emerges as motive for sale of NASL’s Fort Lauderdale Strikers
Last week, the Fort Lauderdale Strikers announced the sale of the North American Soccer League (NASL) club from Traffic Sports USA to a trio of Brazilian investors: Paulo Cesso, Rafael Bertani, and Ricardo Geromel. The sale was trumpeted as an overdue boon for the sometimes star-crossed second-division South Florida franchise. The team currently ranks last […]
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The Back Nine: Carolina RailHawks outlast New York Cosmos in 5-4 thriller
WAKEMED SOCCER PARK/ CARY—When a time capsule is planted under the center circle of WakeMed Soccer Park to inform, a millennia hence, our planet of ape overlords or extraterrestrial invaders about the history of the Carolina RailHawks Football Club, the first artifact included must be a recording of the RailHawks’ 5-4 victory over the New […]
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Movie review: It’s worth taking A Walk Among the Tombstones
A Walk Among the Tombstones ★★★★ Now playing While taking A Walk Among the Tombstones, the engraved names you’ll encounter include Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and Mike Hammer. They’re the not-so-thinly veiled literary inspirations for author Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder, an alcoholic NYPD cop who accidentally causes the death of a young girl during a […]
