Local Country/Western band Mack West celebrates the release of its self-titled debut CD this Sunday at the Northside Tavern. The show — featuring an opening set from Bill Alletzhauser of The Hiders — starts at 8 p.m. Admission is $5, or $10 if you want a CD with your cover charge.  

The career of French auteur Jean-Luc Godard can be viewed in stages: a celebrated debut with the Nouvelle Vague; a controversial, confrontational, Maoist phase; and an uncompromising, artistically vibrant period that runs into the present and finds the onetime enfant terrible of the press working far from the spotlight.  

Over the July 4 weekend, I visited the Midwest’s hottest visual-arts destination this summer — the Art Institute of Chicago’s new Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing, which opened in May. In Chicago, a town that takes architecture very seriously, the building is being hailed as a masterpiece. Although it’s three stories high, it feels light, intimate and low to the ground, the result of using lots of glass, accented by steel mullion strips, to give the limestone-cladded facade an open and inviting spirit.   

BLOGGERS: The Illinois-based Save-A-Life Foundation voluntarily dropped its lawsuit this month against local blogger Jason Haap, a.k.a. “The Dean of Cincinnati.” Haap wrote a well-sourced online article alleging the group taught a discredited technique to help drowning victims and misled donors about its finances.  

Love it or hate it, “You Are My Sunshine” is an immortal Pop standard, one re-imagined by B.B. King, Arethra Franklin, Johnny Cash, Bing Crosby and many other notable artists.   

When the world at large was first introduced to Colin Hay in the early ’80s, the chameleon-eyed vocalist was extolling the virtues of Vegemite and mugging shamelessly.  

Cincinnati Opera’s summer season isn’t quite virtual travel, but you can experience Spain at four pivotal moments in its long history. Three operas are standard repertoire and one contemporary work has its regional premiere. And all were written by foreigners. “There’s a rich Spanish tradition of literature but it just didn’t make (it) into opera,” says Cincinnati Opera’s artistic director Evans Mirageas.   

Regarding Joe Wessels recent column, “Let’s Not Make Another Mistake” (issue of May 20), I’m not for or against streetcars, as I don’t really think that’s the real issue as far as “spurring economic growth” here is concerned. I also don’t have an irrational “brand loyalty” to Cincinnati.   

One keeps waiting for 36-year-old Adrien Brody to capitalize on his unexpected Best Actor Oscar for 2002's 'The Pianist' and do some mature work that really moves us. Instead, he gets stuck running around in overactive action films ('King Kong') or playing soulfully perplexed, hangdoggy young men in arch, belabored "quirky" indies like 'The Darjeeling Limited,' 'Dummy' and the new 'The Brothers Bloom.' Grade: C-.  

John Parish and Polly Jean Harvey have been making music together for more than two decades. And while Harvey is better known for a solo career that has made her one of the most vital artists on the planet, Parish is the guy who initially recognized and nurtured her singular skills.