Entertainment

The Inland Northwest tastes different nowadays. Once dominated by the corporate restaurant culture, the local food scene now finds itself gorging on creative, chef-driven eateries where freshness and experimentation are the norm. Not that our community doesn’t still devour the reliable uniformity served at popular chains – the Olive Garden still reigns as the most popular Italian restaurant in Spokane – but a growing number of inventive idealists continue to steer people’s palates toward fresh, independent ideas and local flavors.

Lotta folks like dogs. Lotta folks like music.

At the end of every rock ’n’ roll dream is a greatest hits record. So when Rhino Records decided to put out a Candlebox greatest-hits compilation during the band’s dormant period, guitarist Peter Klett thought, “Maybe it’s time to get the band back together.”

ID: Wicked Stitch has been around for 15 years and is releasing its eighth album, “Sonic Fury,” at a show tonight. Style: Metal/punk/rock

The title is “Step Brothers.” You know, because there are two of them. But Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are essentially playing the same person, which is the movie’s fundamental, irreparable flaw.

Everybody’s got a story about a neighbor, whether the extent of community living is an apartment building, two houses with a shared driveway, or rural properties hundreds of yards apart. You live in proximity long enough, and irritants crop up like weeds in the sidewalk cracks. I have been mightily irritated by a neighbor who decided to put up a chain link fence around the entire perimeter of his property. Among other reasons, he said he was fed up with people letting their dogs use his yard as a toilet. I guess this has irritated him for years.

Even under ordinary circumstances, “The Dark Knight” would have been one of the most hotly awaited movies of the summer blockbuster season. The loss of Heath Ledger to an accidental prescription-drug overdose in January has amplified the buzz around the film – and his crazed performance as the Joker – to extraordinary levels. Nothing could possibly satisfy that kind of expectation. “The Dark Knight” comes pretty close.

ID: For the last decade Palms co-founder and elder statesman of the local scene “Downtown” Tony Brown has played in local bands The Meadowbrook Oval, Coburg and Fife, Raccoon, Hurt Laverne and Bastard Noise Style: Experimental bluegrass