DIRECTOR’S CHEAP LEASE
Rent Studio: Sony Pictures Releasing Rated: PG-13 Website: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/rent/ Release Date: 2005-11-23 Cast: Idina Menzel, Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Jesse L. Martin, Taye Diggs Director: Chris Columbus Screenwriter: Stephen Chbosky Music Score: Jonathan Larson WorkNameSort: Rent Our Rating: 2.00 It’s easy for the wistful film geek to imagine a dozen ways that Jonathan Larson’s rock…
Just Friends
Just Friends Studio: New Line Cinema Rated: PG-13 Website: http://www.justfriendsmovie.com/ Release Date: 2005-11-23 Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Amy Smart, Anna Faris, Chris Klein, Ty Olsson Director: Roger Kumble Screenwriter: Adam “Tex” Davis WorkNameSort: Just Friends Our Rating: 1.50 One day, Ryan Reynolds will land in a film that makes full use of his talent for conveying…
Ushpizin
Ushpizin Studio: Picturehouse Rated: PG Website: http://www.ushpizin.com/ Release Date: 2005-11-25 Cast: Shuli Rand, Michal Bat-Sheva Rand, Shaul Mizrahi, Ilan Gannai, Avraham Abutbul Director: Gidi Dar Screenwriter: Shuli Rand WorkNameSort: Ushpizin Our Rating: 4.50 A rare glimpse into Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox community, the morality drama Ushpizin sets forth the role of ritual in a strange and fascinating…
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution Rated: PG-13 Website: http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/ Release Date: 2005-11-18 Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith Director: Mike Newell Screenwriter: Steve Kloves Music Score: Patrick Doyle WorkNameSort: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Our Rating: 4.00 After three tries by…
China in College Park
I’ll admit it: I’m not thrilled by Chinese food, at least not the overly greasy and sodium-filled kind that dominates the American foodscape. If I’m going to eat Chinese, I want it to be from some back alley in Chinatown where the menu barely taps the English language. I’ve always said that you should dine…
A DEVIL PUT ASIDE
One Way Ticket to Hell … and Back Label: Atlantic Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: One Way Ticket to Hell … and Back What to do in an era of black-clad metal music merchants, money-hungry hip-hop clones and retro-country clowns? Face it, modern music is about as exciting as watching a detergent commercial. Everyone either smirks like…
DOWN SO LONG
Live in Philadelphia Label: Bright Midnight Archives/Rhino Handmade Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Live in Philadelphia The Doors recorded six studio albums with Jim Morrison. Two more followed after his death on July 3, 1971, but like Squeeze by the Velvet Underground and In Space by Big Star, no one considers them part of the legacy. The…
Alpha Males and Popular Girls
Alpha Males and Popular Girls Label: Crucial Blast Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Alpha Males and Popular Girls Everybody knows that girl, the one who’s the loudmouth in drama class, the black-clad bookworm who puts out, the one who’s not really “pretty” but is inescapably hot, the girl who can drink you and your friends under the…
The Budos Band
The Budos Band Label: Daptone Records Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Budos Band, The From the vintage-looking, low-budget album art to the vintage-sounding, low-budget grooves within, the modus operandi at Daptone has always been to evoke the thrill of finding ancient, obscure funk, without the messy waiting-around-for-30-years that the real thing requires. No, Daptone specializes in modern…
Before There Was …
Before There Was … Label: Shadoks Music Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Before There Was … The fine folks at Shadoks once again shine a light on a group that was obscure in the late ’60s psych scene and is completely unknown today. In fact, Before There Was … is so obscure, it wasn’t even an album;…
ALL BUZZ, NO BEAUTY
Bee Season Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures Rated: PG-13 Website: http://www2.foxsearchlight.com/beeseason/ Release Date: 2005-11-23 Cast: Juliette Binoche, Richard Gere, Max Minghella, Kate Bosworth, Flora Cross Director: David Siegel, Scott McGehee Screenwriter: Myla Goldberg WorkNameSort: Bee Season Our Rating: 1.00 When it comes to boutique films narrowcast to Indywood’s most prized demographic – affluent, 21-to-30-year-old art-house attendees…
Rob Brezny’s Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19) The English word “silly” comes from the German “selig,” meaning holy, blissful. In accordance with your current astrological omens, I invite you to seek out experiences that blend the ancient and modern senses of the word. For example, explore the possibility that goofy joy is not at all incompatible with a…
The Veronicas, Dolly Parton, Bauhaus, Tegan & Sara and more
Thursday •24 TALIB KWELI Though G-Unit sneakers and 50 Cent vitamin water have their place, we feel that there’s something a little more … authentic about the hip-hop coming through town on the “Breed Love Odyssey” tour. The Talib Kweli/Mos Def Black Star album still makes it into regular rotation here, and masterful MC Talib…
Notable Noise
As I’ve written before, every now and then – despite my best efforts – I’m simply unable to get all the CD releases of note jammed into our regular music coverage. Thus, the burden falls upon me to try and jam ’em into my column. This time I’m devoting not one, but two columns to…
Book Review
Told from the perspective of a young boy (Agu) coerced into militancy by an indiscriminately violent civil war that overtakes his never-named African country, Beasts of No Nation is far more than just a treatise on the far-reaching effects of war. Iweala manages a strikingly believable voice for Agu, which makes the brutality of the…
ASK ADRIAN!
How do you properly pronounce “bruschetta” and do you have any good recipes? When unpronounceables are listed on a menu, you’re almost sure to be corrected – even when you’re saying it right. Then you commit the item to memory and the next time you enunciate with newfound pride when ordering, say, Gewürztraminer, cassoulet, bacalao…
Book Review
Ever since N.W.A. emerged with their hit single “Fuck Tha Police,” gangsta rap has been part of mainstream American life, but it is Queens-born rappers Curtis Jackson (50 Cent) and Jeffrey Atkins (Ja Rule) who have taken the phenomenon to a worldwide level. In this fascinating book, Ethan Brown, a New York City music journalist,…
RELATIVE DANGER
Am I out of bounds if I try to have a dialogue with my nephew about masturbation? He’s 17 years old and I’m 52. I’m also a balanced bisexual male in a good marriage. I masturbate a lot and enjoy pornography sometimes. My nephew trusts me and brings up the topic constantly. Some of my…
Book Review
Ten years is a long time to wait, and 115 small pages is something of an insult to the patient few still hoping to find resonance and relevance in Marquez’s increasingly repetitive oeuvre. Unfortunately, there’s no caveat here, no hidden payoff, no “but those few pages are sturdily built and packed with interesting new perspectives…
‘DEVELOPMENT’ ARRESTED
If you’re a fan of Arrested Development, you’ve probably got blood squirting out of your nose over the recent decision to bench TV’s best comedy. I mean, C’MON!! What are these idiots at Fox thinking?! It’s like giving someone the most delicious sandwich in the world, and then saying, “You know, instead of giving you…
STRANGE FARAWAY PLACE
Toss the Mormon Church into a blender with a health-crazed matriarchal cult and you get something like the Aboriginal Fulfilled Apostles. Isolated in the hinterlands of Montana, this 147-year-old sect now finds itself devitalized. “We needed new blood,” explains Mason Plato LaVerle, the narrator of Walter Kirn’s intensely amusing, if overextended new novel, Mission to…
TICKET TO RIDE
William Inge’s 1955 play-turned-1956 movie (starring Marilyn Monroe) begins on a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a bus pulls into Gracie’s diner, disgorging a handful of helpless travelers stranded by a blizzard. The snow is deep, the phone lines down, and somewhere in the mathematically flat space between Kansas City and Topeka, the hours-old coffee…
NEW FRONTIERS
“Through the next couple of days, I got to know Jerry a little, finding myself in the slightly uncomfortable position of being treated in a grandfatherly way by an unabashed neo-Nazi and anti-Semite.” “Slightly uncomfortable” positions are what Louis Theroux specializes in, and the above passage is just one of many moments of awkward self-reflection…
ON THE TOWN
I’ve discovered another reason to dislike the Orlando Magic and the OPD. It seems they now block all the streets around the arena when the basketball game lets out. With Hughey Avenue closed, getting to a 10 p.m. SAK show is much more of a challenge than it ought to be, and a sound knowledge…
DO GIVE UP YOUR DAY JOB
Among the “10 Worst Jobs in Science” in Popular Science’s annual November listing: Harvard researchers in Borneo who catch orangutan urine (in plastic sheets, the way firefighters catch jumpers) for studying reproduction-hormone levels; gear-packing monitors who run toward (not away from) the gases and molten rock of erupting volcanoes (dozens have been killed or wounded);…
WE TOLD YOU SO
The year was 2003. Mayor Glenda Hood had recently announced her departure for Tallahassee, and Buddy Dyer was days away from succeeding her. Before Hood left, though, she gave the city one last present: an incentive package to Lou Pearlman’s Trans Continental Companies to renovate the shuttered Church Street Station, including $1.5 million in loans…
Letters
Ode to Shiki Adrian Hale: I could hardly believe that a client of our lost Shiki could even begin to call the current situation “happily ever after” [“Big fish stories,” Dining, Oct. 27]. I too remember the place that for 19 years gave Orlando/Winter Park a taste of what most of the country already had:…
GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE
According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Curtis Talley, 83, is a sex offender living in Seminole county. If you go to the FDLE’s sex-offender registry at www3.fdle.state.fl.us/sopu and type in Talley’s name, you’ll find his listing and photo. You’ll see that he committed sexual battery. You’ll see that his crime was against a…
SAVING SOULS AND TAKING NAMES
Dave Biehl, 60, wears a black leather vest with the seal of the Christian Motorcyclists Association sewn on the back as he thunders down Orange Blossom Trail on his ’99 Honda Valkyrie motorcycle. On his left handlebar is a tattered pink ribbon, a gift from the Chrome Angels, a group of female bikers raising money…
Happytown
And now it’s time for another installment of What’s Up With Ric?™, our attempt to keep you up to date on the comings and goings of Orlando’s favorite Republican, U.S. Rep. Ric Keller! This week’s episode finds Ric up in Washington, D.C., voting for budget cuts on non-necessities like health programs, education and Medicaid. Who…
CATFIGHT!
NOV. 16, 3:30 P.M.: A round of knocks on an apartment door in the 3900 block of W.D. Judge Drive portended extremely bad fortune for one unlucky lady, 23, and her scalp. A resident of the apartment answered the door. On the other side was neither a Girl Scout peddling Thin Mints nor a Jehovah’s…
ROOTS AND WIGS
Something’s missing. It’s not just that typical Orlando left its house with its toupee kind of missing, but something else. Downtown in Thornton Park, scattered folk of the upwardly mobile variety are buzz-buzz-buzzing in some sort of third Thursday fashion, politely brushing spaghetti strap to padded blazer shoulder in inconsequential interaction, speaking mutedly of mergers…
RISKY BUSINESS
When you’re just back from a week’s vacation, the last thing you want is a reminder that your city is still a rank underachiever. But Monday’s news brought fresh evidence that we’re a minor-league metropolis at best. I’m talking concrete, damning data, more injurious to our national reputation than Bill McCollum’s haircut or four seasons…
