Writer/director Corneliu Porumboiu’s slyly stylish The Whistlers is one of those productions film buffs relish largely because of their cinematic references. In one scene characters appear in a theater where John Ford’s 1956 classic The Searchers is being screened. But while the 97-minute-long Whistlers’ Romanian characters may very well be searching for something (and/ or someone), the celluloid genre Porumboiu is most emulating isn’t the Western, but rather Film Noir.

There is also a Hitchcockian panache, paying homage to the Master of Suspense’s most famous scene from Psycho, as well as to mattresses, which hold a special place in the iconography of crime movies. Remember in The Godfather when they “go to the mattresses?”

Julie Whitney Scott – Free Presscolumnist, radio producer, actor and theater festival director – was honored with the Harold Award at the 20th Annual Central Ohio Theatre Roundtable Theater Awards Celebration show on February 16. Scott founded the Columbus Black Theatre Festival and received the award for her Mine 4 God Productions and for and presenting the annual Festival for eight years. The Harold Award is named for the late Harold Eisenstein the long-time theater director for the Gallery Players.

“I am honored, grateful, humbled, privileged and in awe of what God is doing and has done for me. What he is doing for me has blessed others and I will continue to pay it forward,” Scott said after receiving the award, “I was being recognized for something I had and was doing to serve others in my community, of my race, for the unity of all people, to ensure our stories, the here and now stories, the ‘we are no longer slaves’ stories were being told, under the title of Mine 4 GOD Productions. A title that from the beginning had to fight and preserver through the naysayers because I dared to use ‘God’ in my Theatre production company.”

Human Interest Story, playwright/director Stephen Sachs’ remake updating Frank Capra’s 1941 classic movie Met John Doe, has probably the most extensive multi-media stagecraft I’ve ever seen in an intimate theater production. Matthew G. Hill’s bravura video design conjures up the brave new virtual world of cable television, social media and beyond on the diminutive Fountain Theatre’s set, which Hill likewise wrought. One FX is a first: While an actor types on his keyboard the letters appear on an onstage screen.

James Brown has been on my mind lately, not sure why.

Wasn't the first time and definitely won't be the last he just pops in and we stare at each other.

My first JB experience was like seeing a being from another planet. And it all started when I....

Got mesmerized by his shoes so shiny they could be seen from outer space as he danced on TV's Shindig in September of 1965, singing Papa's Got A Brand New Bag.

I was ten. And transfixed. His dance moves – mainly from the ankle down – were...incredible. Never had I ever seen any man move like that – certainly not Fred Astaire. I still marvel at his grace and muscular control. I think Mick Jagger copied a couple of his moves. Sad.

But the transfixed part is the key.

That was a long time ago. And I'm still mesmerized by the man in toto.

Something about his music is so, I don't know – primal, yes, but more than that, African, I suppose. But what does that mean?

Village Taco reopened their newest location last month on Parsons Avenue (formerly Hal & Al's and TatoHeads) with yet another 100 percent plant-based vegan menu to the greater Columbus metropolitan restaurant market. Sitting within a block of Two Dollar Radio and new vegan bar Daddy’s, this neighborhood is fast becoming nicknamed “Vegandale of Columbus” (following the vegan neighborhood in Toronto, Canada).

Their menu boasts much more than tacos, too. They definitely do the typical TexMex favorites one expects from a taco joint: fat burritos, chimichangas, enchiladas and holy Toledo – fried vegan ice-cream. They can even wow patrons with loaded double decker burgers, popcorn chickun and have a kid’s menu, too.