Orange Canyon Mind
Orange Canyon Mind Label: Crucial Blast Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Orange Canyon Mind Heavy metal has lost its fucking mind. This new album from Skullflower is all churning, swirling psychedelia; overdriven guitars, squalling noise, brutally muffled percussion. It’s riffs on top of drones on top of collapsing buildings. But that’s no surprise, since Skullflower’s been at…
WINGS OVER AMERICA
Batman Begins Studio: Warner Bros. Rated: PG-13 Website: http://www2.warnerbros.com/batmanbegins/index.html Release Date: 2005-06-15 Cast: Christian Bale, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine Director: Christopher Nolan Screenwriter: David S. Goyer, Christopher Nolan Music Score: Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard WorkNameSort: Batman Begins Our Rating: 4.50 In nearly its every frame, Batman Begins is modern-day mythmaking…
Palindromes
Palindromes Studio: Wellspring Rated: NOT RATED Website: http://www.wellspring.com/movies/movie.html?movie_id=62 Release Date: 2005-06-17 Cast: Ellen Barkin, Sharon Wilkins, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Richard Masur, Debra Monk Director: Todd Solondz Screenwriter: Todd Solondz Music Score: Nathan Larson WorkNameSort: Palindromes Our Rating: 5.00 Pointing filmmaker Todd Solondz back toward the salad days of his Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness,…
The Animation Show
The Animation Show Rated: NOT RATED Website: http://www.animationshow.com/ Release Date: 2005-06-17 Director: Mike Judge, Don Hertzfeldt WorkNameSort: Animation Show, The Our Rating: 2.50 Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt’s second annual roundup of accomplishments in the animated arts exhibits a weakness that’s typical of such outings: Its eager young contributors don’t have nearly enough ideas of…
Dream on Silly Dreamer
Dream on Silly Dreamer Studio: West Lund Productions, Inc. Rated: NONE Website: http://www.dreamonsillydreamer.com Release Date: 2005-06-17 Director: Dan Lund Music Score: Mike Brassell WorkNameSort: Dream on Silly Dreamer Our Rating: 3.50 Another Florida Film Festival encore, this short-form documentary decries the gutting of the Walt Disney Company’s hand-drawn animation division. The movie’s smartest conceit is…
THE CHILDREN’S HOUR
Nobody Knows Studio: IFC Films Rated: PG-13 Website: http://www.lhp.com.sg/nobodyknows/ Release Date: 2005-06-17 Cast: Yagira Yuya, Kitaura Ayu, Kimura Hiei, Kitauru Ayu, Shimizu Momoko Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda Screenwriter: Hirokazu Kore-eda Music Score: Gontiti WorkNameSort: Nobody Knows Our Rating: 3.50 Hirokazu Koreeda is a director preoccupied with limbo. His After Life (1998) had a bunch of recently…
BIRD BRAINED
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill Studio: Shadow Distribution Rated: G Website: http://www.wildparrotsfilm.com/ Release Date: 2005-06-17 Cast: Mark Bittner Director: Judy Irving Music Score: Chris Michie WorkNameSort: Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, The The San Francisco way of life seems righteous and wonderful while you’re there, and completely divorced from reality as soon as you…
WE’VE MET
Endtroducing … Deluxe Edition Label: Island/UME Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Endtroducing … Deluxe Edition Nine years ago, Josh Davis had been calling himself DJ Shadow for a while, but he probably had no idea how many people would know him by that name after Endtroducing…, his first album, was released in 1996. James Lavelle, owner of…
You Ain’t Talkin’ to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music
You Ain’t Talkin’ to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music Label: Columbia/Legacy Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: You Ain’t Talkin’ to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music Charlie Poole was a heavy-drinking, banjo-picking motherfucker, prone to mercurial temper flares and sublime music-making. Though his hardscrabble roots in the North Carolina Piedmont…
Take London
Take London Label: Ninja Tune Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Take London The Herbaliser’s fifth album is a feast of flashy brass, soaring string samples, skip-hopping beats and cryptic London raps. U.K. hip-hop has always sounded rather off-kilter; their DJs and producers consistently spice up their arrangements with something more than the lowest-common-denominator thinking that permeates U.S.…
Happytown
“We, speaking in the most general possible sense, will sit and watch the most idiotic BS in the world,” says Richard D. Colvin, curator of the Maitland Art Center. “But how can you miss it … all that barrage? It’s like driving by a car wreck.” That an attraction to the lowbrow lurks within us…
STICKY SITUATION
In the ’80s, new wave played like a rebellious response to a robotic society, promoting lusty androgyny among the unfeeling androids. Many of its current practitioners resurrect the musical methodology without maintaining the forward-thinking feel. The Epoxies’ Stop the Future, an irresistible hybrid of glitzy keyboard melodies and serrated pop-punk hooks, sounds simultaneously retro-inspired and…
GET WHAT YOU NEED
JUNE 3, 3 A.M.: Makir R., a maintenance man for Country Place Apartments in the 2400 block of South Bumby Avenue, received a phone call from a tenant who said he couldn’t gain access to the laundry room. The caller had a hankering to clean some late-night laundry, but his dirtied duds would have to…
ONE WEDDING AND 67,000 FUNERALS
In the annals of human combat, World War I (or the Great War, as it was known at the time) must rank as one of history’s foremost widow makers. Millions of young men were cut down in their flower as their quaint notions of 19th-century romantic warfare – the cavalry charge, for example – ran…
SEX IS HELL FOR TEXAS TEENS
There is such a dire need to expose the utter failure of abstinence-only education that my hopes were high for the P.O.V. series documentary The Education of Shelby Knox, which airs twice this week on WMFE-TV (curiously, at times that are not conducive to capturing teen viewers). There simply can’t be enough discussion of the…
Carrot on a stick
It was a morning like any other. OK, that’s not exactly true. I had gotten up early to go running, so it couldn’t have been a morning like any other. A morning like every other morning, maybe. Or every third morning. It all depends on my Jenga-playing schedule and pasta intake. The point is, I…
ALLEY CLASH
There’s something about the sweaty sock of an Orlando summer that kicks me over the theoretical locker room bench and knocks the forward-thinking piss out of me. You can have your complex assessments of exponential intellectualism and your philosophies on chaos as it pertains to Scientology and the cagey romance of Katie Holmes and Tom…
Notable Noise
If it was the first Tuesday of the month, that must mean it was time for a meeting of the Mutual Admiration Society. Never heard of the MAS? Not familiar with the slogan “Bands Holding Hands Holding Bands”? Don’t feel bad. This society is a recently formed one. Spearheaded/hosted by Josie Fluri (New Roman Times),…
Letters
Emergency! Glad you picked up on the latest e-mail escapade of `Orlando city` commissioner `Vicki` Vargo `”Happytown,” June 9`, but your story had one omission and one error: You neglected to point out that she, yet again, instructed her loyal readers to use 911 to alert the police to suspicious behavior, despite having been corrected…
SPARE THE ROD
One day when I was shooting some hoop, this sports dad a few feet away was berating his son for a severe lack of defensive prowess. Hearing a so-called man who had no problem loudly denigrating his own spawn was almost as depressing as seeing the shame and disappointment on the kid’s fat face. As…
WHAT GOES ON IN WINE CLUB, STAYS IN WINE CLUB
Sewing circles are so last-century and book clubs have come and gone. These days, why not get the girls together for some sniff and snifter? The Wine Sisters’ fabulous home-study wine course poses the potential for educational recreation. Here’s how it works: Organize a group of people who want to learn more about wine. The…
DANCING IN KURDISTAN
Thousands of cars, trucks, tractors and donkeys crowd a winding mountain highway outside the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq, lurching and honking and weaving, careening within inches of precipitous slopes as drivers battle to make their way to mountaintop parks and resorts. There are no lanes, no traffic lights, and only a handful…
TRAIN MAN
John Mica has to be frustrated. Time and time again, the Republican Volusia County congressman has tried to push the region’s leaders into thinking about rail as a means of alleviating congestion on I-4. He’s even secured federal money to help out; but no one has jumped on board. Why? Because rail is expensive, so…
