Local radio host trademarks “Let’s Get to Work,” challenges Gov. Scott to jobs contest
Throughout his gubernatorial campaign and into the beginning months of his administration, Florida Governor Rick Scott has employed the phrase “Let’s Get to Work” as his mantra, attaching it to a promise to create 700,000 jobs over the next seven years. It’s a powerful little cluster of words, according to Republican strategist Frank Luntz, one…
What Ever Happened to David Gordon Green?
David Gordon Green was a breath of fresh air in the dwindling indie film scene when he broke through in 2000 with George Washington, a slow churning tragedy about a group of poor kids in rural North Carolina who have to clutch at the seams of their lives as it slowly rips apart after a…
Prote-J: New music & FMF tonight!
One of our favorite local rappers (as we’ve spelled out here and here), Prote-J, just keeps cranking out the good. In addition to his appearance TONIGHT at FMF (Wall St. Plaza Main Stage – 6:45 p.m.), he’s just released a couple of free downloads that look to be included on his upcoming mixtape, Dope Raps…
Olmos? Oh, yes
After Alan Arkin’s auto accident, the Florida Film Festival scrambled to replace him with an equally prestigious guest, and I’d say they found a fine one. Edward James Olmos will be coming into town for a screening of Stand and Deliver, after which he will sit and share stories about the role that garnered him…
Area man gets hammered on camera … for the kids!
It’s OK, you can admit it: Up until now, you’ve considered “ABC Family” one of the scariest two-word phrases in the English language right up there with “genital mutilation.” And “praise band.” But that all ends this Sunday night at 8 p.m., when the channel plays host to delightful local actor A. Ali Flores, who’ll…
Chi Pan-Asian diversifies its portfolio
Handsome Baldwin Park resto adds Turkish to its Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai offerings
FFF: Wednesday, April 13
1:15 at Enzian Theater – Dog Sweat (4 Stars) The Western media generally fails to paint a human portrait of young Middle Easterners living under Islamist regimes. Usually, they’re portrayed only in terms of conflict. The beauty of this movie, filmed secretly in Iran in 2009, is that it simply treats its characters as people.…
DVDs Nuts!
Lesser-seen OW approved titles
This Little Underground
Bao Le-Huu takes on Sebadoh, Surf City, Jacuzzi Boys, Young Brother, Bare Wires and more
FFF: Sunday, April 10
Noon at Regal Winter Park – Chekhov for Children (3 Stars) There is no knowledge of Anton Chekhov required for this touching documentary about a group of New York City junior high schoolers putting on Uncle Vanya in the late 1970s. The play, which should have been impossible for a group of 12-year-olds to put…
FFF: Friday, April 8
7 p.m. at Regal Winter Park – Project Nim (4 Stars) A story both infuriating and complex as revealed by director James Marsh, who won an Oscar for his last film, the brilliant Man On Wire, employs real footage and reenactments to tell the story of Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee commandeered by a group of Columbia…
Win Win
Tom McCarthy’s indie sports drama clashes with itself
Sumsun’s psychedelicized memoryscapes
The electronic duo draw on Floridian yearnings
FFF: Tuesday, April 12
4:30 p.m. at Regal Winter Park – The Colors of the Mountain (4 Stars) Expertly placing life-and-death tension where you least want it to exist – an elementary school – Colombian director Carlos César Arbeláez boldly takes responsibility for his film’s stakes, deftly avoiding audience manipulation by staying true to his characters. That goes especially for 9-year-old Manuel…
FFF: Saturday, April 9
12 p.m. at Regal Winter Park – Snowmen (2 Stars) This hammy, amateurish production co-stars Ray Liotta and Christopher Lloyd, but mostly focuses on a group of kids, one of whom is dying of cancer (natch), and their effort to make their lives matter by getting in the Guinness Book of World Records for constructing the…
FFF: 20th Florida Film Festival
Onscreen outcasts and misfits dominate the 10-day fest
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19) When he was three years old, actor Charlie Sheen got a hernia from yelling too much and too loud. I definitely don’t encourage you to be like that. However, I do think it’s an excellent time to tune in to the extravagant emotions that first made an appearance when you were…
Culture 2 Go
“Everybody doesn’t have to like the opera, everybody doesn’t have to like classical music,” says Louis Supowitz, chairman of the board of the Festival of Orchestras. “But the point is, it’s there to sample.” Only now it’s not – last week the festival announced that it was calling it quits after 27 years of bringing…
Layoffs at IADT
For-profit colleges eliminate positions in response to increased government regulation
2011 Florida Music Festival
We decide who you should see
FFF: Sunday, April 17
Noon at Regal Winter Park – Bots High (4 Stars) I’d forgotten about Battle Bots until seeing this absorbing documentary about a group of high schoolers from Miami designing and eventually pitting their bots against one another. The film follows three sets of kids as they ready for nationals. The girls have a chip on…
Happytown
While those of us living in Happytown™ were hunkered down in our bathtubs last week, trying to hide from the funnel clouds and monsoon rains raging outside, it was business as usual in Tallahassee. And by business as usual we mean Republicans finding innovative new ways to clamp down on women’s reproductive organs. Last week,…
FFF: Saturday, April 16
12:30 p.m. at Enzian Theater – Ruby in Paradise A showing of the 1993 film set in Florida starring Ashley Judd. Following the screening, director Victor Nunez will do a Q&A with the audience, moderated by “Florida Films” program curator Scott Foundas. 4 p.m. at Enzian Theater – A Beautiful Belly (1 Star) Aspiring Wiggle -…
FFF: Thursday, April 14
6:45 p.m. at Enzian Theater – Square Grouper: The Godfathers of Ganja (4 Stars) Finally, a documentary that’s supposed to be better when you’re high. (As opposed to the accidental brilliance of toking during Spellbound.) Jumping off of the premise that South Florida was a hotbed of marijuana smuggling in the 1970s and ’80s, the film…
Live Active Cultures
Seth Kubersky gets down with USA Dance
Heroine chic
Playfest’s centerpiece performance is a comic, yet compelling, look at a historical figure
Rotation: What local artists are listening to
This week: Phat-N-Jazzy’s DJ BMF
FFF: Friday, April 15
3:30 p.m. at Regal Winter Park – Red Chapel (3 Stars) The most interesting part of Red Chapel is the fact that it fails. It fails in interesting ways, but it still fails. Its stated mission was to undermine the North Korean state with a (tremendously unfunny) comedy show featuring two Danish-Koreans (one who is…
Savage Love
I came out as trans-something/genderqueer three years ago
Hanna
Saoirse Ronan gives the year’s best female performance so far
Playfest: The Harriett Lake Festival of New Plays
Playfest: The Harriett Lake Festival of New Plays Through April 17 Orlando Shakespeare Theater 512 E. Rollins St. orlandoshakes.org ticket prices vary, see website for complete details For some people, the thrill of the theater is all the pomp and circumstance – big, shiny productions with big names everyone knows and loves. For those people, there’s Broadway. But for…
FFF: Monday, April 11
6:30 p.m. at Enzian Theater – La Pivellina (2 Stars) A middle-aged carny with candy-apple hair (Patrizia Gerardi) finds a baby abandoned in sketchy suburban Rome. Rather than call the cops, she takes the toddler to her caravan, home of Europe’s least-cheerful circus, insisting to her extended family that the girl’s mother will return soon. Flatly naturalistic…
Author of pedophile book takes plea deal from Polk County
The Ledger reports that Phillip Greaves, the man arrested last December by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office over his book The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover’s Code of Conduct, was sentenced today to two years probation after pleading no contest to charges of “distributing obscene material depicting minors engaged in conduct harmful…
Come See Akira at Urban ReThink on 4/12
Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1989 epic Akira is probably the most well known and widely seen anime film in America, and is one of the few to have actually been shown theatrically in North America. Well, it’s not up on the big screen again, but you can see the next best thing as Orlando’s own Japanese culture…
Local Indie Calendar for April
Dates are subject to change. 4/1 – the latest adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (Winter Park), nature documentary The Last Lions (Enzian) 4/8 – underdog dramedy Win Win (Winter Park), historical drama Of Gods and Men (Winter Park), controversial drama Miral (Winter Park), the 20th annual Florida Film Festival (Enzian, through the 17th) 4/15 – true-life…
