Month: March 2009

Categories
News The Fly-By

Daily Conversation

When Commercial Appeal publisher Joe Pepe took over from predecessor John Wilcox in 2006, he described Memphis’ daily newspaper as a business operating in “death mode.” Pepe wanted to reverse that trend.

“I want to add people,” he said, even though the paper was already deep into the protracted process of legal union busting and steadily reducing its staff through attrition, layoffs, and buyouts. “If we’re going to continue to write local, local, local … [we’ve] got to have people to do it. We have to fuel our own growth.”

But that approach hasn’t been the reality. The paper laid off 9 percent of its total workforce in 2008. The CA also laid off 46 more employees last week, including 20 members, or 15 percent, of its editorial department.

In an online address to members of the Memphis Newspaper Guild, union spokesperson Mark Watson announced that Warren Funk, the CA‘s attorney and chief contract negotiator, rejected any talk of temporary wage cuts. The layoffs that had been announced in February but were subsequently postponed commenced immediately.

The layoffs claimed several of the CA’s most recognizable names, including Watson, longtime reporter Jimmie Covington, performing-arts writer Christopher Blank, editorial cartoonist Bill Day, and feature writer Fredric Koeppel, best known for his dining reviews and wine columns.

Rather than growing The Commercial Appeal, which faces the same circulation and advertising challenges as daily papers around the country, Pepe has presided over a period of shrinkage. To cut production costs, the size of the paper was reduced. Its geographic reach shrank last year when the paper ceased home delivery to thousands of households. Guild employees haven’t had a raise in five years, and 2009 began with management taking significant pay cuts. Staff reduction has been ongoing since 2004 and, last year, the paper started outsourcing advertising layout jobs to India.

Three days after the most recent staff cuts, a front-page blurb announced the birth of a new column called “My Words.” The column will be comprised of reader-submitted material. Last week, The Commercial Appeal also quietly increased the price of its weekday newsstand edition from 50 to 75 cents.

In addition to adding reader-submitted material, the CA will be using shared editorial content created by Nashville’s Tennessean, the Chattanooga Times-Free Press, and the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Categories
Flyer Flashback News

Flyer Flashback

“A guy walks up to the bar, takes a look at me, and giggles. At that point, I realize how silly I must look hooked to a machine by my nose.”

That’s staff writer Bianca Phillips reporting in the March 25, 2004, issue on her experience at a mobile oxygen bar that had been set up at Stop 345 by Oxygen Rush.

Phillips writes, “Oxygen bars have been popular for a while in larger cities, but in Memphis, the trend is just getting started. For the past year, [Kelly] Derscheid and [Robin] Kendall have run the only mobile oxygen bar in the city, setting up at various nightclubs and parties on the weekends.

“Breathing the flavored air has been touted as a way to gain energy, reduce stress, and help ease headaches. Normally, we breathe in 16 to 21 percent oxygen but while hooked up to a recreational oxygen-dispensing machine, the dose is much higher: 87 to 92 percent. Fans claim it’s this higher percentage of oxygen that creates extra energy, though a recent article in FDA Consumer Magazine dismisses the assertion due to a lack of scientific evidence.”

Though Derscheid and Kendall closed up shop in 2006, they still have the equipment and occasionally get job offers. Kendall now works as a manager for Outdoors, Inc. Derscheid is a massage therapist, trains the Memphis Roller Derby’s traveling team, and is appearing in Craig Brewer’s $5 Cover.

— Susan Ellis

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fighting with Feathers

The grass was still soggy from morning showers as a group of about 50 people, most clutching pillows, stood in a loose circle on the greensward at Overton Park Saturday afternoon. Out of nowhere, a bearded guy — screaming and swinging two pillows nunchuck-style — ran into the crowd from a nearby parking lot and struck the closest person holding a pillow.

All hell broke loose as the first-ever Memphis Pillow Fight started. Suddenly, complete strangers were whacking one another over the head, back, and rump with pillows of all shapes, sizes, and colors.

“I thought this would be a fun way for people to connect,” said pillow-fight coordinator Caroline Allen, an English teacher at Southwest Tennessee Community College.

Allen organized the fight solely through Facebook, and by Saturday morning, the event page showed over 500 confirmed guests, though only about 150 ultimately showed up to fight.

“I was at home on Valentine’s night, and I made a Facebook event for this. I originally invited 70 people, and my friend Diana invited 100 people. Two days later, over 1,000 people had been invited,” said Allen, sporting pigtails and football-player face paint.

Shortly after the action began, a man carrying two pillows rode into the greensward on a pink bike.

“Get that guy on the bike!” Allen shouted into a megaphone.

Instantly, the gang of pillow fighters stopped hitting one another and ran toward the guy on the bike, pillows in the air ready for attack. In seconds, he and his bike were on the ground.

“I didn’t see that coming,” said a disheveled Brad Egnor, picking his bike up from the ground when the mob dispersed. “It was rather exciting, though.”

Let the feathers fly: Pillow fighters take a swing at Overton Park

Some pillow fighters showed up for the sheer fun of it. Others, like Amber King, came to vent a few frustrations.

“I lost my job in December, and this is a chance to get out some aggression,” said King. “It’s also a fun way to celebrate spring.”

Allen got the idea for the fight from an exhibit at a museum in Manchester, England, that featured a video of a pillow fight staged in front of the city’s town hall.

“People sit around and complain about how Memphis isn’t cool, but your city is what you make of it,” Allen said.

The fight lasted much longer than the scheduled 30 minutes, but many fighters — some blaming smoker’s lungs — pooped out as the fight wore on. By 4 p.m., most fighters were standing around talking rather than hitting.

Even so, Allen would occasionally pick up the megaphone and ask pillow fighters to attack a certain person. At one point, she asked participants to form two lines and attack one another Braveheart-style.

In the end, no serious injuries were sustained — except for maybe a bruise or two.

“I had my camera over my shoulder, and it got hit up against me several times,” said John Morgan, who alternated between pillow fighting and photographing the action. “I’ll probably have a few bruises tomorrow.”

As for future events, Allen hopes to organize a water-gun fight in the park during the summer.

Greg Withrow goes in for the kill.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Special Delivery

CREDIT: Florence and Laurence Spungen Family Foundation

In 1978, Ken Lawrence, a civil rights activist and writer, decided to use his hobby, stamp collecting, for the greater good. For over 30 years, he’d put together a collection of letters, postcards, receipts, and stamps from the Nazi era — all of it, some 250 pieces, to offer material proof to counter claims of Holocaust deniers.

In 2008, the collection, “The Nazi Scourge: Postal Evidence of the Holocaust and the Devastation of Europe,” was sold to the Florence and Laurence Spungen Family Foundation, with materials being added by foundation member Danny Spungen, who has been traveling with the collection and speaking about the Holocaust.

Among the items in the collection are documents on sex slavery in the concentration camps, a postal receipt for a prayer book sent to a French camp, and a biblical scroll used to wrap a parcel.

This week, the collection makes its way to Memphis, where it will be displayed at three venues over three days: the National Civil Rights Museum, the Belz Museum of Asian and Judaic Art, and the University of Memphis’ Ned R. McWherter Library.

According to Belz Museum director Nancy Knight, so many local groups were interested in the collection that the decision was made to show it throughout the city.

“People seeing this firsthand,” Knight says. “It has the power to move.”

“The Nazi Scourge: Postal Evidence of the Holocaust and the Devastation of Europe” at the National Civil Rights Museum Saturday, March 28th, 2 p.m.; at the Belz Museum Sunday, March 29th, noon; and at the Ned R. McWherter Library, Monday, March 30th, 1:30 p.m.; Danny Spungen will talk about the collection on Monday at McWherter Library at 1:30 p.m.

Categories
Art Art Feature

Four by Four

In his L Ross Gallery exhibition “Fortitude,” Anton Weiss takes the long view. Dark, cratered moons float above sienna and umber worlds. Loosely knit, ragged rectangles look like city-states coalescing and decaying, like civilizations rising and falling.

A scarred metal rectangle reinforces the bottom edge of one of Weiss’ most expressive works, Fortitude #5. Long slender lines of horizon, cut deep into the painting’s metal surface, divide a glowing earth from a luminous sky. Another rectangle at the top of the work dissolves into the soft-gray background.

Tested and tempered as a child in Yugoslavia during WWII, Weiss has learned the art of “fortitude” — how to live creatively and with conviction — what Weiss describes as being “always in revolt, looking for new, individual forms of expression.”
Through March 31st

Jared Small’s David Lusk show “Ramshackled Perfection” strikes viewers with a revelation: Sunlight transforms the most modest dwelling into a thing of beauty. Small also paints complex portraits of childhood. The child crowned with a silver tiara in It’s My Party folds her arms across her pink taffeta gown and slumps against a wall that sags, bleeds, dissolves. She looks baffled by her parents’ demand that she play the part of princess when her home is no castle.
Through March 28th

In her Perry Nicole exhibition, “Color Me Beautiful,” abstract impressionist Cathy Lancaster paints orange-reds that glow like hearths next to melting fields of snow in Winter. Her greens pulse with the light of sap rising in the fields of Spring. But the power of these paintings lies in their subtlety. Lancaster’s faintly drawn boundaries feel permeable. Her amorphous shapes hover and brush gently against one another. There’s lots of room in these paintings to pause and breathe, to immerse ourselves in Lancaster’s radiant washes of color.
Through March 31st

Demetrius Oliver asks us to entertain several points of view simultaneously as we explore worlds within worlds in “Sidereal,” his mixed-media exhibition at Clough-Hanson Gallery.

For the hauntingly original installation Almanac, scenes from the artist’s studio were reflected onto the surfaces of teakettles and photographed.

In one of the “teakettle” images, the artist’s camera sits on Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and in another on top of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s The Mysticism of Sound and Music. The camera’s viewfinder looks at viewers looking at Oliver looking for new ways to understand the world.

Just when we think Oliver’s getting too esoteric, he pulls us back into the “real” world with wry, raw humor as he wraps uncooked bacon around his finger and blows into a trumpet.

Instead of sublime music or angelic choirs in the digital video Harmonic Spheres, you’ll hear what sound like tectonic plates grinding, foghorns blasting, and muffled trumpets wailing. The camera zooms in and out of smoke and slowly pans a dark globe that proves to be the back of Oliver’s head rather than the orbiting planets suggested by the title.
Through March 27th

Categories
Hot Properties Real Estate

Living on the River

Living on the Mississippi is as good as it gets in Memphis. Residences overlooking the water get the best breezes in the city, world-class views of passing river traffic, and glorious sunsets.

This condo unit was one of two built in 1984 atop an existing three-story building with interior parking at the foot of Union Avenue. There is nothing between it and the harbor but Riverside Drive and the cobblestone landing.

The layout of this condo is unusually adept at orienting you to the outside. The interior is wrapped by 1,800 square feet of private deck — larger than many houses. The living and dining rooms and even both bedrooms have doors that permit direct outdoor circulation.

The first owner of this unit commissioned local woodworker Stephen Crump to build custom shoji screens for the living room, which has deck on three sides. The floor-to-ceiling screens are set into oak tracks and allow sun and views to be precisely modulated.

The dining room is two steps above the living room to provide better sightlines to the west. The deck steps up to the rear, staying level with the dining area and both bedrooms. The foyer has slate floors that are carried through to the wet bar and on into the kitchen.

Even though the kitchen has no exterior walls, a huge skylight fills it with natural light.

Counters are a richly colored granite, and all the appliances, including the stacked washer and dryer, are stainless-steel. Double wall ovens, a five-burner gas cooktop on the kitchen island, and a wine fridge at the wet bar make entertaining a breeze.

But that deck — oh, that deck! Wrapping part of the south and all of the west and north sides of the unit, it’s certainly unique in scale for downtown living. It offers almost as much square footage as the whole residence and more than doubles the space available for entertaining. What could offer a better scenario for living on the river? •

34 Union

Approximately 2,200 sq. ft. $649,000

Realtor: Crye-Leike,

754-0800

Agent: Rick Travers,

218-3961

Categories
News The Fly-By

What They Said

CREDIT: by Greg Cravens

About “Quit W(h)ining,” by Steve Steffens:

“I like wine, I know wine, but I haven’t had them all. … It’s very refreshing to come home and talk shop with the clerks, store managers, and owners that have made wine an everyday part of each of their lives and nine of 10 times turn me on to something I ordinarily would not buy. I have gotten no such help at these grocery stores.” — dbo

About “Is It Time for Pay Equity for College Coaches and Players?,” by John Branston:

“The athletes get treated better than anyone on campus. They get a fair deal. It isn’t like they are working in a sweatshop for 4 years making jerseys for the schools to sell. Plenty of NCAA athletes graduate with real degrees and handle their athletic commitments at the same time. If you look at the value of their scholarships/housing/meals (tax free, at least for now) you would be amazed that most of them are doing better than your average RedBird.” — 38103

About “On Target?,” Michael Finger’s account of trying to obtain a handgun permit:

“I don’t particularly care for the Memphis Flyer as a whole, but it is at least some balance to The Communist Appeal. As a right-wing gun nut, I enjoyed the article, nicely written without a ton of commentary.” — amaxware

Comment of the Week:

About “Beer at University of Memphis Football Games? It Could Happen”:

“As for Tiger sports (and I say this as a lifelong fan), they should take advantage of our Elvis and Memphis Grizzlies connections and rebrand as the Teddy Bears. Memorabilia sales alone would cover the budget shortfall.” — Jeff

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

A Sweet 16 Things to Do While You’re in Memphis

CREDIT: Stephanie Swartz | dreamstime.com

1 Beale Street

Downtown

Celebrate your team’s victory (or drown your sorrows after that tough loss) on world-famous Beale Street, right next to the FedExForum. Great music, terrific Southern food, and drink specials all up and down the street.

2 Cooper-Young District

Intersection of Cooper & Young, Midtown

An eclectic, artistic neighborhood in Midtown, Cooper-Young has some of the best food — and outdoor patios — in the city. Whether it’s Thai, seafood, Mexican, Irish, sushi, or just good ol’ American burgers, C-Y’s got you covered.

3 Graceland

3734 Elvis Presley Blvd., Whitehaven

332-3322 or 800-238-2000 • elvis.com/graceland

Graceland is the grand home of a kinda famous singer you may have heard of. Much of Graceland looks the same as it did when Elvis lived there, including the Jungle Room. Visit the “Sincerely Elvis” museum, which displays photos and home movies of the King.

4 Memphis Botanic Garden

750 Cherry, East Memphis

685-1566 • memphisbotanicgarden.com

A reigning center of horticulture, the Memphis Botanic Garden showcases the most beautiful plants and flowers in the Mid-South. The garden is open year-round and exhibits native wild flowers as well as more than 23 unique gardens. The Botanic Garden also features special events, educational programs, and art exhibits. The Live at the Garden Summer Concert Series is another great event at the Botanic Garden.

5 Memphis Brooks Museum of Art

Overton Park, Midtown

544-6200 •brooksmuseum.org

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art houses a permanent collection of more than 3,000 works of art, ranging through the Flemish and Italian Renaissance, the Baroque era, and French Impressionism.

6 Memphis Pink Palace Museum &
Sharpe Planetarium

3050 Central, Midtown

320-6320 • memphismuseums.org

Stephanie Swartz | dreamstime.com

This museum features a unique, in-depth showcase of local history, music, culture, and science. The Pink Palace also has a shimmering planetarium and a popular IMAX theater, which has featured movies on subjects ranging from Hurricane Katrina to the deep sea.

7 Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum

191 Beale, Plaza at FedExForum, Downtown

205-2533 • memphisrocknsoul.org

A must-see visit for all music fans, the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum allows visitors a self-guided tour with headphones. The recordings offer guests a course in Memphis Music 101, showcasing a history of some of the greatest music in the world.

8 Memphis Zoo

2000 Prentiss Place, Midtown

276-WILD • memphiszoo.org

Offering a home to more than 3,500 animals, including 500 species, the Memphis Zoo is ranked as one of the top zoos in the United States. Exhibits include Cat Country, Primate Canyon, Animals of the Night, Once Upon a Farm, China — home to Le Le and Ya Ya, the famous giant pandas — and the Northwest Passage, where the polar bears roam.

9 Mud Island River Park

125 N. Front, Downtown

576-7241 or 800-507-6507

mudisland.com

Mud Island is a park built atop a long sandbar on the Mississippi River, just opposite downtown. Attractions include a scale-model Mississipi River Walk, a river museum, and a 5,000-seat amphitheater.

Courtesy Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau

Peabody Ducks

10 National Civil Rights Museum

450 Mulberry, Downtown

521-9699 • civilrightsmuseum.org

Housed at the site of the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was assassinated, the National Civil Rights Museum offers interactive and informative exhibits on one of the most significant times in American history. With audio-visual displays bringing these events to life, the National Civil Rights Museum is a must-visit place for children and adults.

11 The Peabody

149 Union, Downtown

529-4000 • peabodymemphis.com

The Peabody hotel opened its doors downtown in 1925. Today, tourists and locals enjoy the exquisite lobby featuring ducks in the fountain, piano music, a bar, and one of the best restaurants in Memphis, Chez Philippe. And be sure to check out the rooftop, for one of the best views in town. The famous “march of the ducks” through the lobby happens twice daily at 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.

12 Soulsville: Stax Museum of American Soul Music

926 McLemore, South Memphis

946-2535 • soulsvilleusa.com

The Stax Museum of American Soul Music is a celebration of Memphis music made famous by stars like Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Al Green, and others. While touring the museum, make sure to catch WATTSTAX, a depiction of the development of the music label and the people who created it.

13 South Main Historic Arts District

South Main and G.E. Patterson, Downtown

578-7262

South Main has unique retail stores, including great boutiques and antique shops and excellent restaurants. The 13 art galleries in the area are all within walking distance of one another, and on the last Friday of each month, hundreds flock to the free trolley tour of the galleries.

14 Sun Studio

706 Union, Downtown

521-0664 or 800-441-6249 • sunstudio.com

Visit the historic site where rock-and-roll was born — the famous Sun Studio. Walk in the footsteps of greats like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Howlin’ Wolf, and many others. One of the best parts about visiting the studio is that you can make your own record and take it home.

15 Tom Lee Park and the Bluff Walk

Riverside and Beale, Downtown

312-9190

Tom Lee Park on the Mississippi River is a mecca for joggers, walkers, rollerbladers, and kite-flyers. You can gaze at the river and the boats that go by. Take the steps up to the Bluff Walk for an even better view.

16 Tunica County, Mississippi

tunicamiss.org

Tunica, 30 minutes south of Memphis on Highway 61, is the third-largest gaming destination in the U.S. With exciting casinos, gorgeous hotels, restaurants, gift shops, championship golf courses, dance pavilions, and big-name entertainers, Tunica is a great escape.

Courtesy Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau

Soulsville: Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

About Time

CREDIT: by Justin Fox Burks

If you want to watch the NCAA playoff games at Primetime — downtown’s newest sports bar — you’d better call ahead and make a reservation.

“It sounds crazy,” says River City Management’s Preston Lamm, “but we are selling out of seats for game times in our main dining room.”

Located at Second and Peabody Place in the location formerly occupied by Jillian’s, Primetime is mixing media, memorabilia, and gourmet pup grub into an upbeat and sophisticated venue just in time for March Madness. “We’ve got 30 television screens, and they’ll all be broadcasting the Tigers whenever they play,” Lamm says.

In addition to the big-screens, Primetime has plenty of other entertainment: a dozen pool tables, 14 bowling lanes (very retro), a dance club and DJ (Club Chill), and an impressive collection of local sports memorabilia (gold-medalist Rochelle Stevens’ track jacket and a photograph of Joe Lewis from a match at Ellis Auditorium).

Primetime also is serving a fresh spin on traditional bar food. “Our barbecue-chicken pizza with mozzarella and caramelized red onions is a fan favorite,” says Jimmy Rutkowski, Primetime’s assistant general manager. “We hand-toss our pizza dough every day.”

Other new twists on finger foods are Heavy Weight Poppers (fried jalapeno peppers stuffed with spicy shredded chicken or cheddar cheese and served with guacamole cream sauce) and Sweet and Spicy Wings. “We use a sweet and crunchy breading and drizzle on the spicy sauce,” Rutkowski says. “It’s a different take on a Memphis tradition.”

Bacon, cheese, or chili burgers weigh in at half a pound of ground sirloin and include a generous side of hand-cut fries for $5.95. “Our most expensive item on the menu is a six-ounce filet mignon for $10.95,” Rutkowski says. “We want our food to be fast, fresh, and affordable.”

Primetime Sports Bar, 150 Peabody Place, primetimesportsbar.net (543-8800)

Cordelia’s Table, located inside Miss Cordelia’s grocery store on Mud Island, is bringing the neighborhood back to the dinner table with good-tasting, fixed-price specials offered on Tuesday nights.

For $10, customers can dine in or take out a new meal every week, thanks to innovative menu planning by chef David Thornton. “I make whatever sounds good to me that’s within my price point,” Thornton says. “But I try to rotate one week chicken, one week fish, and two weeks vegetarian or vegan.”

The double duty for vegetarian meals reflects Thornton’s philosophy on healthy eating, developed in Portland where he worked and attended culinary school before returning to Memphis.

“I don’t think everyone needs to be a vegetarian,” Thornton says. “But we definitely need to add more plant-based meals to our diets.”

Eating veggies is easy to do with tempting combinations like these: grilled-vegetable and brown-rice burrito with black-bean salad on April 7th or mushroom cassoulet, goat cheese side salad, and dessert fruit salad on April 14th. Cajun and seafood entrées are delicious too: gumbo with rice, whole-grain bread, and roasted vegetable butter on March 31st or cinnamon shrimp salad with fresh-fruit dessert on April 28th.

“Our fish dinners are cooked to order, but everything else is ready to go,” Thornton says. “We want to serve people as quickly as possible.”

A friendly vibe on Tuesday nights is important, too, says Mary Caywood, who handles the restaurant’s marketing. “We push the tables together, so people can share time with friends or maybe meet someone new,” Caywood says. “It’s a little like an old-fashioned boarding house.”

Cordelia’s Table, 737 Harbor Bend, misscordelias.com (526-4772)

Team members at Whole Foods Market are firing up “The Giving Grill” in the store’s East Memphis parking lot for a cookout with a cause on Saturday, March 28th.

The cookout, which runs from 1 to 4 p.m., offers hotdogs, bratwurst, and hamburgers (all-natural, of course), along with veggie burgers and veggie dogs, potato salad, smoked mozzarella pasta salad, and roasted corn on the cob. Eat à la carte, or for $5, have entrée, chips, and drink.

“People like the food, and they like contributing to such a good cause,” says Liza Burke, the marketing team leader who is coordinating the event.

Along with the cookout, Whole Foods employees are donating artwork for an auction and sale from 2 to 4 p.m. “We will have all sorts of things, from a set of charcoal prints to painted barrels for collecting rain water,” Burke says.

The Memphis store hopes to raise $3,000 for Whole Planet Foundation, which distributes small loans of $300 to families in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The goal of the foundation is to help people escape poverty by developing small family businesses such as harvesting butterflies or growing bananas, coffee, or spices.

Whole Foods Market, 5022 Poplar, wholefoodsmarket.com (685-2293)

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

The Fake Charlatans

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What exactly has she done since her Best Actress coronation at the dawn of the decade? (What exactly had she done before Erin Brockovich, anyway?) Did I miss some clandestine Hollywood fiat that declared her Miss American Movie Star? Roberts fares poorly when compared with other actresses in her age bracket: She’s not as funny, glamorous, or sexy as Catherine Zeta-Jones or Salma Hayek, and she’s not an unwieldy, unpredictable bundle of energy like Uma Thurman.

Yet Roberts is not entirely unwatchable — she’s just unfailingly predictable. Any Roberts performance inevitably combines righteousness, vulnerability, and spunkiness with that hardheaded, plucky resolve she tries to project whenever she narrows her huge features into an expression of grim determination. I liked her best as the scheming bitch in 1997’s My Best Friend’s Wedding, but aside from that peek at her dark side, she might be the least substantial, least complex major movie star of my lifetime.

Is there an actor out there who can disrupt this longhaired, leggy tropophobe’s holding pattern? Tony Gilroy’s new film Duplicity clearly and convincingly shows Clive Owen is not the man for the job. He’s an odd leading man anyway — an ugly-hot B-movie tough guy whose screen charm derives from his determination to go about his business, no matter how silly it is, with a humorless sneer. Owen flails and double- and triple-takes his way throughout Duplicity, but he can’t penetrate the waxen, inexpressive mask his co-star dons in close-ups.

Gilroy, the skilled laborer who wrote and directed 2007’s entertaining Michael Clayton, assembles a similarly tricky, talky plot involving corporate high jinks, super-secret surveillance, and double-crosses stacked atop each other like Jenga blocks. The main storyline features Roberts and Owen as former government spies turned corporate moles looking to filch some intellectual property and ride off into their own Roman holiday. But no amount of flashbacks or switcheroos can hide the fact that the bulk of the film steals its split-screen visual strategies from the original Thomas Crown Affair and its verbal calisthenics from the Coen Brothers’ memorably inert Intolerable Cruelty — two dubious guideposts.

This cruel little romantic comedy/caper flick is much more interesting when its two leads stay in the out-of-focus background. Duplicity‘s supporting cast, including Kathleen Chalfant’s bifocaled bugger and Carrie Preston’s party-gal travel agent, supports the deadweight stars with bracing coolness and professionalism. Paul Giamatti’s sputtering paranoid CEO is entertaining in small doses, and Tom Wilkinson is fine as another version of the middle-aged man demented by his acquisition of limitless power and authority.

But Duplicity‘s overall lack of fun and excitement prove difficult to get past. While little more than a make-believe spring breeze, the film is most successful in propagating the outrageous fantasy that CEOs are intelligent enough to design multi-level espionage schemes while growing their above-board operations. I mean, we can all agree that could never happen, right?

Duplicity

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