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'Closer' movie: Julia Roberts. 'Closer' film review: The perfect dysfunctional date movie Mike Nichols' first feature film, an adaptation of Edward Albee's acclaimed play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is a harrowing dissection of two married couples whose inner demons are let loose during a night of game playing, drinking, and screaming. That was back in 1966. Fast forward to 2004 and to another Mike Nichols film adaptation of an acclaimed play, Patrick Marber's Closer, another look at two dysfunctional heterosexual couples, this time in the age of cyberspace and AIDS. Apart from the fact that the story's time frame has been stretched from one night to a couple of years, on the surface not much has changed since the mid-'60s: the new quartet also dwells in a social bubble in which they bicker, yell profanities, pretend to be someone else, and are utterly vicious to one another. On a deeper level,...

Kidney Brothers: Coal Tattoo (Hearpen)

Having grown up and loved from afar, forced to do so after I moved to NYC, there are few bands still playing live -- four decades later -- worthy of my unbridled accolades and devotion but so it is with the heady agro-blues of 15-60-75 Aka The Numbers Band. If you dig music and happen to hail from Northeast Ohio, you know what I'm talking about. Having followed their entire career, I can proudly boast that I'm one of their biggest fans. Yet, it's no leap of faith or youthful nostalgia.

If you've seen them live, regardless of the decade, then you know the passion and verve that the brothers Kidney -- singer/guitarist Bob and harpist/sax/keyboardist/vocalist Jack -- share with their audience, regardless of the size, every single time they take the stage. 

Along with horn player Terry Hynde (Pretender...