Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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The Real Liberace Behind the Candelabra portrays the showman as a monster TV by DEAN ROBBINS In Behind the Candelabra (Sunday, 9 p.m.), HBO assembles high-quality artists to tell the story of a low-quality one: the glitzy piano player Liberace. Steven Soderbergh directs, Michael Douglas camps it up as the inexplicably popular musician, and Matt Damon throws himself into the role of Scott, Liberace's boy toy from the 1970s and '80s. The title promises to take us behind Liberace's pose as a narcissistic, flamboyant heterosexual. What we find is a narcissistic, flamboyant homosexual, unappealing in every way. He uses people; he lies; he whines about his problems. His relationship with Scott follows a predictable arc from debauchery to disenchantment, with copious amounts of pills and plastic surgery along the way. The movie satisfies our voyeuristic curiosity, but there's not much more to it than that. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy every second of Behind the Candelabra. It's not often you get to see Douglas and Damon having hot sex with each other. Or Rob Lowe pushing drugs in a stunning 1970s coiffure. The movie delights in bad behavior, bad clothes and bad music. Like Liberace himself, it manages to hold your attention. Motive Thursday, 9 pm (ABC) Most police procedurals tease you with "whodunit," only unveiling the perp at the end. Motive takes a different approach, brazenly identifying the killer in the opening minutes of each episode. You can't miss him: He's the one with the title "The Killer" under his mug. Similarly, the soon-to-be-dead person is tagged with the title "The Victim." So you know exactly where the episode is headed, but you don't know why. That's the part Motive conceals until the end, and damned if you don't keep watching to learn the answer. It helps that the heroine, Detective Angie Flynn, is such good company. Kristin Lehman (The Killing) is stunning in this role. Her detective is witty, brassy, earthy and flirty. She's believable as a working-class single mother with a knack for thinking her way through a crime scene. In the sneak preview earlier this week, a high school band geek was "The Killer," and a popular science teacher was "The Victim." It was impossible to figure out why the student would kill the teacher … and that's where a witty, brassy, earthy, flirty detective comes in handy. Voces Saturday, 11 pm (PBS) I thought I'd seen enough Civil War documentaries for one lifetime, but "Rebel" begins with the provocative statement that approximately a thousand women "secretly soldiered" during the war. One of them, Loreta Velazquez, dressed like a man to fight for the Confederacy, then became a Confederate spy, then turned into a double agent, then wrote a sensational book about her experiences, then disappeared from history after the book outraged Southern sensibilities. Okay, "Rebel," you've got my attention. Velazquez was a Cuban immigrant who blurred every 19th century boundary. You can practically see the scholarly commentators drool as they discuss Loreta's trangressions as a woman, a Hispanic, a Southerner and a soldier. "I passed through the lines of the North and South," she wrote, "inventing my past as needed." If Loreta Velazquez hadn't existed, gender studies departments would have had to invent her. presents GYPSY WOMEN'S FUN • GAMES • MUSIC • FOOD • RAFFLES • PRIZES Biggest Biker Benefit of the Year! May 24th, 25th & 26th Don't miss it. Mark your calendars. May 24th • Pre Party Party starts the weekend May 25th • Scott Sather Memorial Poker Run (first bike out at 12 noon) Auction, Raffle & Pig Pickin May 26th • Bike Show and Rodeo Registration begins at noon NGS TO: PROUDLY HEY! THIS BY SPONSORED PAPER BELO OUR IONAL RES & EDUCAT SPAPER FAMILY NEW OLINA'S FUN NORTH CAR CE • MAR CH 2013 S T ANIMAL ALL ABOU Join us for our biggest benefit of the year in support of an Trum 's Truman mberland .com /cu villenews www.kids Cumberland County's Literacy and Education Program. Thank You to Our Sponsors: Thunder Road Magazine Healy Wholesale Company, Inc. Carolina Clean Mobile Detailing Hot Hog Leather DM Maintenance & Construction Wingmen MC East Coast Signs R.A. Jeffreys Huske Hardware Cheers Too Dent Professional Cooper's Body Shop Show & Pro Paint and Body, Inc. Ray Road Auto Parts, Inc. The New Vemco Music Co. VFW 670 Sellers Paint & Body Shop NAM Knights MC Cape Fear APA Knobles Screen Printing Up & Coming Weekly For more information call (910) 867-2364 Special thanks to Up & Coming Weekly WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM MAY 22-28, 2013 UCW 17