Arts & Entertainment >>

• Best Free Entertainment
  Sunday Cinema Series
  Seeing a movie isn't cheap. At least not in theaters. At the Kemper Museum, though, seeing a movie is free -- not to mention classy. For the Kemper's Sunday Cinema Series, host Michael Fabrizio selects a few films that fit a certain category, then screens them on a handful of consecutive... More >>
• Best Outdoor Festival
  Isabel's Fashion Spectacle
  Most of the summer's outdoor festivals cater to mainstream crowds. That's not a problem, but it does imply that artsy, alternative types who like neither vendor booths nor jam bands want to stay inside. Not so, we say. Hundreds of pale Kansas Citians whose good taste had kept them cooped up in... More >>
• Best Artist
  Adriane Herman
  After receiving her MFA in printmaking and showing her work at nationally acclaimed galleries, Adriane Herman -- former head of printmaking at the Kansas City Art Institute -- went on to complete two courses in cake decoration. Herman explains this choice by pointing out, "When asked how one can... More >>
• Best Gallery
  The Late Show
  Late Show owner and curator Tom Deatherage makes no attempt to kiss up to potential viewers or buyers. That's why his home-operated gallery has such an honest feel to it. Deatherage's selections are not based on what he thinks will appeal to a wide viewership or go along with trends. Whether... More >>
• Best Banned Art
  MK12's music video for the Faint's "Agenda Suicide"
  Because of connections as well as MK12's reputation, the local motion-graphics company was asked to make a video for the Faint's popular song "Agenda Suicide." It was supposed to play on MTV, a reasonable expectation given that MTV had sponsored the Faint's tour opening for No Doubt. But MTV... More >>
• Best Coffee Shop Art Project
  Can You Spare a Look?
  Last winter, the Broadway Café and Westport Coffee House displayed a photo exhibit called Can You Spare a Look? All of its photographs were taken by homeless people. Kansas City Art Institute seniors Dylan Mortimer and Hayes Ford wanted to deal with homelessness in a photojournalistic way... More >>
• Best Painting Exhibition
  Alex Katz's Small Paintings
  Alex Katz is so cool. Not hot-new-thing-out-of-Brooklyn cool. Icy cool. Unironic cool. It-is-what-it-is cool. His Small Paintings -- portraits, landscapes and still lifes -- are so stark and straightforward that they become almost transcendent. Katz isn't playing any tricks on us. He isn't... More >>
• Best Local Solo Show
  Hector Casanova
  Illustrator and painter Hector Casanova creates a variety of evocative images every week. Some are printed alongside stories in the Kansas City Star or other publications. But Casanova plays an interesting game with his assignments: He gives them dual meanings. His images clearly illustrate... More >>
• Best Imported Solo Show
  Michal Rovner: Works
  A good rule of thumb for judging art is to gauge the reaction that it gets in two different communities. If the art hits close to home for, say, people in Israel and in Kansas, then it's done its job. We devised this rule of thumb after observing reactions to Israeli-born New York artist Michal... More >>
• Best Local Group Show
  Out of the Nursery
  Inspired by the idea that even infants show preference for one color or texture over another, Peregrine Honig set about organizing a show in which some of Kansas City's edgiest artists examined themes of infancy and childhood in an attempt to return to the aesthetic senses they were born with. A... More >>
• Best Imported Group Show
  Tokyo Pop
  Giant Robot isn't the only place to see exciting new art by Asian artists. This past winter, original works by the biggest names in Tokyo's burgeoning art scene were on display at the Gallery at Village Shalom, located in our very own Johnson County. Yoshitimo Nara's paintings depicted cute,... More >>
• Best Use of the U.S. Postal System
  Mail Art
  Last November, after a call for mail art issued by Japeth Mennes at the height of the anthrax scare, the window of the Telegraph Gallery filled with postmarked items, all of which had made it through the system. One artist sent in a sewn puppet construction. Someone else sent a newspaper... More >>
• Best Show of Support for the Arts
  NCECA Conference
  This March, more than 25 galleries in the Kansas City area housed ceramics exhibits -- ranging in theme from the worldly Eight From Korea exhibit at the Leopold Gallery (which brought some of Korea's finest ceramists to town) to the racy Terra Sutra: 21st-Century Ceramic Erotica at the Arts... More >>
• Best Art Exhibit
  James Woodfill
  If we consider the entire town of Kansas City an art venue, then the best exhibit on display in that maze of winding roads and blocks of buildings is a loosely coordinated art installation by James Woodfill. Downtown last winter, Woodfill installed light displays on two buildings. At 1701... More >>
• Best Author Reading
  Michael Pollan
  When Michael Pollan -- author of Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World -- came to Unity Temple on the Plaza to read from his book this past June, the church was filled to the rafters with hippies. They knew that Pollan, who had focused on the book's chapter on apples when touring for... More >>
• Best Defense of Masculinity
  Rick Bragg
  With pop psychology feeding men a litany of reasons why they should get in touch with their "feminine sides," Rick Bragg doesn't bother. He's a sensitive guy, but he keeps it in check. That is to say, he doesn't read from the parts of his captivating new book, Ava's Man, that make him cry. In... More >>
• Best Literary Slumming
  Crosby Kemper III at Bloomsday
  Every June, Tom Shawver's Bloomsday Books earns its name, hosting a 24-hour reading of James Joyce's Ulysses. Lit lovers of all stripes sign up for thirty-minute slots, never knowing exactly what stretch of baffling text (half a page of made-up names of Catholic priests? a passage in French?)... More >>
• Best Book
  A City Divided -- The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960
  The most shocking revelation of Sherry Lamb Schirmer's new book, A City Divided -- The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960, is that the things we love most about our city are deeply rooted in racism. Most people would agree that Kansas City is great because it's such a homey place. Even... More >>
• Best Way to Meet Your Maker
  Indy Film Showcases
  Why'd you make the main character die at the end? Why did you film the bathroom scene through blue gauze? What was the significance of the midget, albino beagle? Indy Film Showcases let moviegoers ask directors the sorts of questions that might otherwise haunt them after they leave the theater.... More >>
• Best Place to Have a Drink
  The VIP Room
  If you're going to spend $8 to see a movie in an impersonal stadium theater, why not pay $15 and really get your money's worth? That's how much it costs to catch a first-run flick at the Palace's VIP Room. But the perks! Forget the Coke and Mountain Dew, man. Have a glass of wine or a cocktail... More >>
• Best Premovie Music
  Boulevard Drive-In
  One of the reasons the drive-in is so much fun is nostalgia. Going is sort of like sifting through the bins at a thrift store and fishing out an Eisenhower-era night on the town instead of a lamp. The folks at the Boulevard Drive-In know this, so they play it up. The old neon sign near the... More >>
• Best Kansas Citian to Hire to Liven up a Dull Party
  Cathy Barnett
  The actress Cathy Barnett (who worked as a stand-up comedian in New York in the 1980s) is as witty and clever offstage -- playing herself -- as she is portraying characters onstage. Although she's been lucky enough to get juicy roles at almost every theater in town, she's developed a successful... More >>
• Best Comedy
  Fuddy Meers
  "Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be ... stark raving lunatics." That seemed to be what Fuddy Meers was shouting at the Unicorn last December. David Lindsay-Abaire's play starred a perfectly cast Melinda McCrary as a befuddled, mousy woman trying to maintain her... More >>
• Best Play
  Proof
  There's been a Proof backlash of late. During the past year, critics started calling it "overrated" and "glib" -- though the long Broadway run of David Auburn's play continues to prove that Proof is highly appealing. The Unicorn's production put Cinnamon Schultz in the lead role of the depressed... More >>
• Best Musical
  Pinocchio Commedia
  Unheralded local director Christopher Clegg and out-of-town author Johnny Simons brought zest to Theatre for Young America's superb and evocative Pinocchio Commedia. The songs weren't Gershwin, but the show was tremendous. Its cast -- including Heidi Gutknecht, Jake Walker and a fire-eating Matt... More >>
• Best Actress in a Musical
  Lori Blalock, Dames at Sea
  The American Heartland Theatre's dose of sea-salted nostalgia had the strained peppiness of a Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney musical from the 1940s, in which those zany kids staged musicals in barns and high-school gyms. Giving Dames at Sea some valuable tension was Lori Blalock's sustained... More >>
• Best Actor in a Musical
  Jake Walker, Pinocchio Commedia
  When he wasn't writing plays or putting on comedy improv shows at the Westport Coffee House, Jake Walker found time to play the titular puppet in Theatre for Young America's Pinocchio Commedia. He was nearly hidden behind an oxygen-blocking mask for most of the play, but he gave the part --... More >>
• Best Supporting Actor and Actress
  Scott Cordes and Nancy Marcy, Fuddy Meers
  As if Melinda McCrary's stellar work in Fuddy Meers weren't enough, Scott Cordes and Nancy Marcy brilliantly embodied the looniest members of the year's sickest onstage family. As Cordes limped and lisped his way through David Lindsay-Abaire's quirky, complicated script, you weren't sure if he... More >>
• Best Actor
  Phil Fiorini, Wind in the Willows
  When Phil Fiorini stops acting, the local theater community might just fold up and die. He turned in a year's worth of diverse and always-on-the-money work in the Unicorn's Dirty Blonde and Spinning Into Butter and at the Rep in The Winter's Tale. But he may have topped himself in the Coterie's... More >>
• Best Actress
  Melinda McCrary, Fuddy Meers
  The Unicorn's year has been packed with compelling work by local actresses, including Teri Adams, Cheryl Weaver, Melinda MacDonald and Cinnamon Schultz. But comedy's the toughest nut, making Melinda McCrary's portrayal of amnesiac Claire in Fuddy Meers stand out. Claire greeted each day as if it... More >>
• Best Solo Performance
  Jason Chanos, Fully Committed
  When Jason Chanos last made an impression in a Kansas City production, it was as the lovestruck title character in the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival's Romeo and Juliet. In the Unicorn's one-man show Fully Committed, however, Chanos received his pass into adulthood from director Mark... More >>
• Best Duet
  Cheryl Weaver and David Ruis, Spinning Into Butter
  Though much of Spinning Into Butter failed to engage the sharp detours of Rebecca Gilman's script, the scenes between Cheryl Weaver and David Ruis were electric. As a college dean and a perturbed, agenda-wielding student, they circuitously danced around their power and ethnic differences. He... More >>
• Best Murder on Stage
  Work Song: Three Views of Frank Lloyd Wright
  At the end of the first act of the Rep's Work Song: Three Views of Frank Lloyd Wright, director and coauthor Eric Simonson staged the horrific arson murder of Wright's mistress and seven others so simply and creatively, it was more frightening than if he'd depicted the killings literally.... More >>
• Best Shakespeare
  Hamlet
  The enfant terrible of this year's theater scene, Randall Cohn, blew into town after a stint in New York and is now in Los Angeles -- and his absence is palpable. His Evaporated Milk Society's deconstruction of Hamlet, staged in a West Bottoms loft above a saloon, could have been remarkably... More >>
• Best Children's Play for Adults
  Binky Rudich and the Space Pandas
  Theatre for Young America had a banner year. But its most intriguing artistic choice of the season was Binky Rudich and the Space Pandas, a space odyssey written by David Mamet -- who's better known for acerbic adult plays like Oleanna and intricate films such as House of Games. With this play... More >>
• Best High-School Theater Trend
  The Laramie Project
  As topical as it's been to Kansans, the debate about evolution in the creaky Inherit the Wind looks like cotton candy compared with the murder of Matthew Shepard. Nevertheless, three area high schools had the chutzpah to stage Moises Kauffman's The Laramie Project. At Winnetonka, Barstow and... More >>
• Best Segue
  Angela Wildflower Polk, Three Little Pigs and Harlem Knights
  While spending her days working hard for the money as a pig who sings, dances and gallivants with glee in Three Little Pigs, Angela Wildflower Polk used her nights playing the embittered blues singer Alberta Hunter in Harlem Knights. At Theatre for Young America, she wore pink ears and a... More >>
• Best Theater Mural
  Pockets
  The little neighborhood bar called Pockets will never be mistaken for a hot new nightspot. Its regulars skew toward the retired, and it serves only popcorn and lots of double vodkas. But it holds an amazing discovery for fans of New York Times caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. Above the bar is a large... More >>
• Best Sunday Night Ritual
  Night Tides
  The Sunday night doldrums don't have a fancy name, but maybe they should (Mondaydreadophobia?). Like remedying the winter blues by hunkering down in a tanning bed and fantasizing about running naked along a beach, the best cure for this malady is a mini-escape. Flipping on 89.3's new-age music... More >>
• Best Radio Show
  Take Five
  Listening to Take Five is like spending a Sunday afternoon at a sound museum. Robert Moore, 89.3's music director, serves as curator -- and he has an innovative touch, eschewing categorization in favor of juxtaposition. Moore might start with a seldom-played number from the Beach Boys' brief... More >>
• Best Bizarre Bar Show
  Fake Hurricane at the Sandbar
  The idea of a hurricane happening in the Midwest is as corny as those "Surf Kansas!" bumper stickers. However, at the Florida-themed Sandbar in Lawrence, the owners are so enthusiastic about incorporating the hurricane idea into a campy floor show that it's oddly endearing. The festivities kick... More >>
• Best Nightclub Fashion Trend (Male)
  The Man Mule and the Mandal
  Since the demise of the manpri (male capri pants) a couple of summers ago, we've been hard-pressed to spot another prevalent male fashion statement among the bon vivants who frequent the nightlife scene. Oh sure, there are plenty of guys who still wear the tight, ribbed T-shirt tucked into... More >>
• Best Place to see Dorky Dancing
  AC's Garage
  We thought AC's Garage, a macho, NASCAR-themed bar tucked in the back of Torre's Pizza in Westport, would be the least likely place to see people dancing -- let alone dorky dancing -- but we were so wrong. But if loving dorky dancing is wrong, we don't want to be right. Um ... anyway ... some of... More >>
• Best Karaoke
  Brodioke at the Brick
  We don't know what's ironic anymore. Irony has become so pervasive that we lose track of when we're being serious and when we're kidding. Maybe we've just started parodying ourselves. Have you seen the ironic mullets? That's a freaking haircut, and whoever gets it has to wear it day in and day... More >>
• Best Door Guys
  Buzzard Beach
  One assumes that manning the door at Buzzard Beach can be a hazardous job. The door guys have to listen to the thudding dance beats emanating from the Have a Nice Day Café next door. And they have to keep the hecklers on the deck from getting too raucous with the HAND crowd. Not only... More >>
• Best Place to Play Pinball
  The Replay Lounge
  The reason the Replay Lounge is the best place to play pinball should be fairly obvious: The indoor part of the bar is practically filled with pinball machines. Whereas pool -- the game of choice in most bars -- requires a vague sense of athleticism and inspires cross-clique competition, pinball... More >>
• Best Ramp
  Have a Nice Day Café
  Whether or not you have the use of your legs, sometimes you just got to boogie. But not all nightclubs are wheelchair-friendly. Sure, they'll roll you in and out of the bathroom, but when it comes time to stir up some upper-body funky chicken, you'll be left grinding on some serious step.... More >>
• Best Salsa Dancing
  Westport Beach Club
  Legend has it that the musical term salsa (Spanish for sauce) came from a 1929 song by Cuban musician Ignacio Piñeiro, who wrote the tune to honor a roadside pork-sausage vendor. The song celebrates the peddler's Échale salsita! -- which he shouted each time he ladled the piquant liquid... More >>
• Best Weekly Event
  Memphis Black and Superwolf at Mike's Tavern
  DJs Memphis Black and Superwolf have long delighted Kansas City night crawlers with their stellar flea-market record finds, rare funk and soul 45s that can inspire dance in the stiffest of white boys. The duo performs all over town, but it's a weekly gig at Mike's Tavern that offers a regular... More >>
• Best Hip-Hop Event
  Oro Negro
  Kansas City's long-suffering rap scene blossomed this summer, largely thanks to the unifying work of the Oro Negro collective. Every Wednesday night at either Danny's Big Easy or Californos, large gatherings formed to hear dozens of DJs spin records and MCs pass the open mic. The enormity of the... More >>
• Best Kansas Hippie Festival Band
  Uncle Dirty Toes
  When hippies gather in Kansas (which is more often than it might seem), Uncle Dirty Toes is sure to be nearby. The band plays all the festivals -- from Gaea Retreat Center, near Tonganoxie, Kansas, to the more secret affairs on private farmland near Lawrence. And it plays all the hippie... More >>
• Best Blues Festival
  KCK Street Blues Festival
  The blues just doesn't work when it's too gussied up, surrounded by corporate banners and beer tents where you have to wear wristbands proving you're older than 21. The blues favors down-to-earth venues. That's why the music sounds so good at the Kansas City, Kansas, Street Blues Festival every... More >>
• Best One-Day Festival
  Spit Fest
  Taking place the same weekend as Spirit Fest, the Spit Fest offered one of the best locals-only lineups ever to gather at an all-day indoor affair. Inside the underused Madrid Theatre, Spit didn't have to worry about washing out in rain or drying up in the heat. Instead, concertgoers could... More >>
• Best Package Tour
  Down From the Mountain
  Most of the multi-artist events that visit Kansas City's arenas and amphitheaters stack young up-and-comers and never-will-bes, then frost the bill with one or two venerable headliners. Down From the Mountain's roster removed the fluff, delivering a lineup loaded with living legends. Del... More >>
• Best Show by a One-Man Band
  Bob Log III at the Brick
  Dressed in an unbreathably tight purple suit and a helmet with a phone receiver attached to the mouthpiece, Bob Log III must have been sweating up a storm the August night he performed at the Brick. Besides being toastily attired, Log played slide guitar, sang and kept separate drum beats with... More >>
• Best Emotional Show
  Richard Buckner
  While performing a set with his drummer, Richard Buckner's morose, melodic country-folk laments maintained a sense of structure, like an actor crying on command. But when he sang solo, Buckner's tunes wandered, panicked and collapsed. Maintaining only a loose semblance of the songs' original... More >>
• Best Sad Bastard
  Danny Krause
  "Someone will start telling me about something that happened to them, and the incident will seem significant enough to me as a universal common denominator that I decide to write a tune about it," says Danny Krause, who sings and plays guitar both solo and with a band called the Disappointments.... More >>
• Best Bad Jokes
  Neil Hamburger
  "Did you ever wonder what would happen if your favorite movies had been filmed inside a toilet?" frazzled stand-up comic Neil Hamburger queried this summer. Most audience members probably hadn't, but they were quick to shout suggestions, to which Hamburger responded quickly, predictably and... More >>
• Best Chance to Get Wet, Wet, Wet
  Princess Superstar
  The most charismatic performer to grace the Hurricane's stage over the past year was Princess Superstar. Backed by a DJ and bassist, she kept the venue's dance-music crowd from making an immediate retreat to the back deck with her saucy wordplay and powerful presence. Stepping into characters,... More >>
• Best Show to Chaperone
  No Doubt
  Usually, having to escort your children to a pop concert is like enduring a three-hour Barney marathon. Other than the sanity-preserving reminder that you're being a good parent and the kids will love you for it, there's no joy in the experience. But No Doubt's surprising showcase at the Uptown... More >>
• Best Uninvited Guests
  Dirty Force
  Dirty Force has never had a legitimate gig. Beginning this past Mardi Gras, a group of young musicians decided to play a little prank, showing up unannounced at various celebrations, strolling through the premises with their loud brass instruments. They started at Danny's Big Easy, where the... More >>
• Best Demolition Derby
  ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
  The Trail of Dead's reputation preceded its March concert at the Bottleneck; people knew that the high-energy Austin, Texas-based band was going to break stuff onstage. However, the scope and frenzy of its destructive impulses must have shocked even the most jaded observers. This was... More >>
• Best Battle of the Bands
  Club Wars
  With clashes, annihilations and other hyped head-to-head challenges cluttering the calendars of most hard-rock venues, competitive musicianship in Kansas City has already achieved oversaturation. But promoter Jim Kilroy's unique twist on the concept revitalized excitement in such events without... More >>
• Best Renamed Venue
  The Brick
  The Pub is a perfectly serviceable name for a live-music establishment. But it's also all too common, which is why the club at 1727 McGee rechristened itself. Its choice, the Brick, has an urban feel suitable for one of downtown's only vital nightspots, and its sturdy namesake implies a strong... More >>
• Best Local Commercial Theme Music
  U-Wrench It
  In the U-Wrench It commercial, spokes-hicks Chester and Otto come up with some "soothing" background Muzak to accompany panoramic overviews of gutted automobiles. The flowery instrumental so disturbs the duo's rugged sensibilities that they decide to silence the song -- by crushing the cassette... More >>
• Best Musical Gadget
  Eleni Mandell
  When Eleni Mandell plays alone, she's an inescapable focal point, a guitar-strumming dynamo exuding sensuality, danger and delusion in her siren songs. But at her most recent gigs with a backing band, attention has drifted to the fascinatingly odd equipment used by her ax man, Woody. This... More >>
• Best Use of Vocals
  Arturo Sandoval
  Arturo Sandoval's excellence on the trumpet came as no surprise. His work behind the bench was another expected delight; he had telegraphed his lesser-known talent for nimble piano work with a keys-only album released a month before his April 26 concert at the Music Hall. But Sandoval's vocal... More >>
• Best Brother Act
  The Gadjits
  After thoroughly establishing themselves as onstage sensations in 2000 (taking home a well-deserved Pitch Music Award for Best Live Act), the members of the go-go Gadjits finally went on record with concert-tested thrillers such as "Leawood Rock" and "We Were Right." Throughout the transition... More >>
• Best Sister Act
  Sister Mary Rotten Crotch
  The sisters most likely to inspire a conversion -- to the dark side -- continue to disregard convention and champion nasty habits. At the Pitch Music Showcase in April, the group's knuckle-rapping drums and spitfire sermons left genuflecting listeners hailing Mary. After singer Liz Nord took a... More >>
• Best Brother-and-Sister Act
  Rufus and Martha Wainwright
  On the strength of his celebrity-centered anecdotes alone, Rufus Wainwright, who on May 9 roasted Ryan Adams and Jon Bon Jovi while giving equal time to self-deprecating stories involving Bob Dylan and Yoko Ono, ranks among the year's most entertaining showmen. But the tasty tales were just thin... More >>
• Best Encore
  Bruce Springsteen
  By the time Bruce Springsteen had finished his third encore with the anticlimactic "Land of Hope and Dreams," many of his most hardcore fans had left the building -- they knew that the unremarkable anthem marked the true end of the show. But the September 24 audience wouldn't let Broooce leave.... More >>
• Best CD Cover
  On a Wire, The Get Up Kids
  The Get Up Kids' latest disc differs from 2000's peppier, catchier Something to Write Home About in nearly every possible way -- except for the caliber of its cover art. Travis Millard, a former Lawrence resident nationally known for his work on Spin's back page, designed both Write Home's... More >>
• Best Unreleased Song
  "The Conan Song", To Conquer
  Perhaps the most musically gifted local band never to release an album, To Conquer swirled former members of the Hillary Step, Haloshifter, Grovel, Thestringandreturn and Everest into a storm cloud whose onstage torrents witnesses will never forget. Riveting and epic, To Conquer's cacophonous... More >>
• Best Local Song
  "Crooked Crown", The Anniversary
  The Anniversary's appropriately angular "Crooked Crown" toggles obliquely between a moonlit fantasy realm and a modern club where pretty darlings shake their hips. Part psychedelic showcase for furry coed harmonies, part dance-floor anthem, "Crooked Crown" forms the strongest link between these... More >>
• Best Local Album
  Absolute Power, Tech N9ne
  Tech N9ne doesn't need riffs to exude rock energy. His rapid-fire flows hammer like Slayer's drumbeats, and his massive chorus-driven tracks feel more like arena anthems than club fare. His producers craft cuts that bang and thump for the hardcore crowd, his in-house talent adds gritty vocal... More >>
• Best Local Musician
  Mark Southerland
  From his days with the peppy-pop powerhouse Grumpy to his out-there experimentation with space-jazz cadets Malachy Papers, saxophonist Mark Southerland has established himself as one of Kansas City's most prominent and prolific musicians. This year, though, he might have outdone himself. Between... More >>