Movie: Winter Solstice
Our Rating: 1.50 The cinema of rural tedium claims another victim – you – as a widowed gardener (Anthony LaPaglia) mopes around his New Jersey neighborhood, exploring new depths of uncommunicative dysfunction with his two sons while oh-so-slowly warming to the prospect of midlife intimacy with an innocuous temporary neighbor (Allison Janney). Only the terminally…
Movie: XXX: State of the Union
Our Rating: 2.00 Few people will probably care that the words of Tupac Shakur are compromised to suit the needs of this Ice Cube vehicle, which takes its spy-vs.-fly-spy action from the James Bond school of high-tech adventures. The supposed quote, “Wars come and go, but my soldiers stay eternal,” grabs a laugh several times…
Review – The Art of Rolling
Artist: The Blue Van
Review – Waiting for the Sirens’ Call
Artist: New Order
MUTE POINT
Movie: Hukkle
Review – Saggin’ the Bargins
Artist: The Band of the Name
Review – The Art of Rolling
Artist: The Blue Van
MUTE POINT
Movie: Hukkle
LIQUID ASSETS
Movie: Walk on Water
Movie: Winter Solstice
Winter Solstice Length: 1 hour, 33 minutes Studio: Paramount Classics Website: http://www.paramountclassics.com/winter/index2.html Release Date: 2005-04-29 Cast: Allison Janney, Anthony LaPaglia, Aaron Stanford, Mark Webber, Ron Livingston Director: Josh Sternfeld Screenwriter: Josh Sternfeld WorkNameSort: Winter Solstice Our Rating: 1.50 The cinema of rural tedium claims another victim – you – as a widowed gardener (Anthony LaPaglia)…
Movie: XXX: State of the Union
XXX: State of the Union Length: 1 hour, 34 minutes Studio: Columbia Pictures Website: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/triplex2/ Release Date: 2005-04-29 Cast: Ice Cube, Samuel L. Jackson, Scott Speedman, Peter Strauss, Sunny Mabrey Director: Lee Tamahori Screenwriter: Simon Kinberg WorkNameSort: XXX: State of the Union Our Rating: 2.00 Few people will probably care that the words of Tupac…
Review – Waiting for the Sirens’ Call
Artist: New Order
Review – Saggin’ the Bargins
Artist: The Band of the Name
Review – The Art of Rolling
Artist: The Blue Van
MUTE POINT
Movie: Hukkle
Review – Waiting for the Sirens’ Call
Artist: New Order
LIQUID ASSETS
Movie: Walk on Water
Review – Saggin’ the Bargins
Artist: The Band of the Name
Buddy blunders his way back to City Hall and tricks are for Dix
To: Mayor Buddy Dyer From: Your friends at Happytown™ Re: The second coming A few weeks ago, we celebrated the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And now it’s your turn, Buddy. Six weeks ago, you were the scorn of the city, shamefully indicted and suspended from office for hiring a…
JOIE DE VIVRE AND THE DIETING REVOLUTION
I’m usually not attracted to diet books or anything that refers to fat in its title, but this one caught my eye – perhaps because it promised to unlock secrets of pleasurable eating, rather than promoting a dry set of instructions on how to turn mealtime into a calculus course. Author Mireille Guiliano, a French…
Buddy blunders his way back to City Hall and tricks are for Dix
To: Mayor Buddy Dyer From: Your friends at Happytown™ Re: The second coming A few weeks ago, we celebrated the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And now it’s your turn, Buddy. Six weeks ago, you were the scorn of the city, shamefully indicted and suspended from office for hiring a…
LADIES OF A CERTAIN AGE
The last decade has been a strange one for those unfortunate enough to be cast as “women in rock.” On one hand, artists are routinely ghettoized into packaged stories (like this one) that draw tenuous connections where there should be none. Yet the best of these “women in rock” have pushed their music into an…
“Berlitz-krieg bop”
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dodged a public-relations bullet last week, when he blamed his poor English for his controversial statement that his state’s border with Mexico should be closed in order to combat illegal immigration. Schwarzenegger subsequently clarified that he had meant to say the border should be secured, not closed. “Yesterday was a total…
CURIOSITY DOESN’T KILL THIS CRAFT
When I was 8 years old, my brother and I and two buddies liberated a flea-infested doghouse from approaching garbagemen who were doing their morning rounds. The four of us needlessly hurried our find into my garage, never looking back at the no doubt thankful workers. Adrenaline shot through me as I contemplated the explanation…
CITIZEN MANES
Editor’s note: Candidate (and columnist) Billy Manes entered the political fray for the first time recently in the special election to replace Mayor Buddy Dyer. In so doing he became the first openly gay mayoral candidate in Orlando history. He wrote this (incredibly long) journal of the experience to chronicle the effort, and help defray…
Shearwater, Prefuse 73, Iron & Wine, Les Mis and more
Thursday • 28 SHEARWATER We’ve always thought of Shearwater as Okkervil River’s clearly competent yet less compelling sibling. For years, these Austin-based bands have shared Will Sheff and Jonathan Meiburg, with Sheff dominating Okkervil’s delicately despondent output and Meiburg helming most of Shearwater’s sparse material. However, the two part ways on current tours – while…
OUTSIDE DEEP THROAT
Here is a story that I can never tell my grandchildren: Once upon a time, long ago, when I was a freshman at Seminole Community College, I went with my film class to see the popular movie Deep Throat. The movie, for those of you too young or too senile to remember, was hailed as…
WELCOME BACK
Welcome back to my column. It’s a little different than it’s been before, mainly as the result of its source material: All the stuff here is selected and plucked from my blog, edited down and slapped on the page. Like most people, I keep my blog as an online journal, and therefore it documents the…
AS EASY AS PIE
Sometimes it feels like you go out just to clumsily trip over your own lower lip. You throw on some sort of outfit different than the one that’s been chafing your moist armpits all day, throw back a bit of social lubrication, and then release yourself into the barely audible cackle of outside voices percolating…
IVY LEAGUE CRAPSHOOT
In March, a Princeton University graduate student in applied mathematics, Michael Lohman, was arrested, suspected by police of being the guy who has been assaulting Asian women on campus for weeks by snipping locks of their hair or by furtively doctoring their drinks with unspecified “bodily fluids” in the dining hall. And a week after…
Culture to go
A Midsummer Night’s Dream The Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival is getting its money’s worth out of the Bard’s timeless comedy – this production is the troupe’s third rendering. The play’s delirious plot, its fantastical characters, its themes of romance and friendship, and its spectacular settings lend welcome warmth to the recently chilly nights at Lake Eola.…
