Monthly Archive for October, 2005

Page 6 of 6

Faux Documentary to Open in C’ville

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 4, 2005 in Entertainment. 3 Comments

Fictional documentary “CSA: Confederate States of America” will be opening in Charlottesville, David Maurer writes:

[Kevin] Willmott wrote and directed the faux documentary, which examines the previous 140 years of American history as if the South had won the Civil War. The modern-day CSA has “Dixie” as the national anthem, slavery is the norm, women can’t vote and any religion not based on Christianity is about to be banned.

By making a movie about “what ifs,” Willmott said he wanted to reveal a sometimes hard to look at view of “what is.” He does this with documentary-style interviews, fabricated movie segments, old government information films, television commercials, stock footage of real historic events and generous amounts of humor.

The movie got a great response at Sundance last year, leading to its simultaneous opening in Charlottesville and Memphis. It’ll show at the Regal on the Downtown Mall on Friday. “CSA” appears to borrow heavily from Harry Turtledove‘s ongoing Southern Victory series, which popularized the alternate history genre and focused on the same topic as the movie.

Mobile Site Version

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 4, 2005 in Site News. 1 Comment

By request, I’ve added a version of cvillenews.com for mobile internet devices. It’s really nothing more than a really lightweight version of the site.

No More Window Stickers?

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 4, 2005 in Politics and Taxes. 5 Comments

City Council is considering eliminating the property tax window stickers that we all have on our windshields, John Yellig writes in the Progress. Cities across the state are following the lead of Virginia Beach, who ditched the stickers to let the DMV enforce payment at the time of vehicle registration. The city stands to save $42k/year by making the switch, plus untold staff hours that go into dealing with the damnedable little things. A vote will come at Council’s next meeting, in two weeks.

Downtowners Angry about Concert Noise

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 4, 2005 in Development, Law and Justice and Music. 11 Comments

A couple of dozen downtown residents showed up at last night’s City Council meeting to protest what they say is excessive noise coming from the new Charlottesville Pavilion. On concert nights their windows rattle and sleep isn’t possible — the shows go too late and are held too often. The amphitheater manager says they’re working on the problem, and city staff has taken to monitoring noise levels throughout the city at 10-minute intervals during concerts. John Yellig has the story in today’s Daily Progress.

We seem to be on a ~3-year cycle of interest in noise ordinances. In 1998, a restaurant named the Jewish Mother was in the present location of the Blue Light Grill. They featured live music upstairs, which was played very loudly with the windows open until the wee hours of the morning, meaning that those of us who lived within a block or two couldn’t sleep. The business went under before a noise ordinance could be passed, and so interest in such a law was dropped. In the summer of 2001, we all went through the process again, culminating in Council passing a downtown noise ordinance, starting at 10pm Sunday-Thursday and midnight Friday-Saturday. If it’s ever been enforced, I haven’t heard about it — perhaps that’s about to change.

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