Valiant
Valiant Studio: Disney Rated: G Website: http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/valiant/ Release Date: 2005-08-19 Cast: Ewan McGregor, Jim Broadbent, John Cleese, Tim Curry, Rupert Everett Director: Gary Chapman, John H. Williams Screenwriter: George Webster, Jordan Katz, George Melrod WorkNameSort: Valiant Our Rating: 2.00 How’s the future of Disney animation looking these days? None too good, on the basis of…
The Skeleton Key
The Skeleton Key Studio: Universal Rated: PG-13 Website: http://www.theskeletonkeymovie.com/ Release Date: 2005-08-12 Cast: Kate Hudson, Gena Rowlands, Peter Sarsgaard, John Hurt, Joy Bryant Director: Iain Softley, Daniel Bobker, Stacey Sher Screenwriter: Ehren Kruger WorkNameSort: Skeleton Key, The Our Rating: 3.00 I liked it when it was called Burnt Offerings, and by God, there’s no reason…
Clip Off the Old Block
Tell Them Who You Are Studio: ThinkFilm Rated: R Website: http://www.tellthemwhoyouare.com/intro.htm Release Date: 2005-04-15 Cast: Conrad L. Hall, Dennis Hopper, George Lucas, Haskell Wexler, Jane Fonda Director: Mark Wexler Screenwriter: Robert DeMaio, Mark Wexler WorkNameSort: Tell Them Who You Are Our Rating: 4.00 Cinematographer Haskell Wexler has shot some of the most important films in…
Not Like Before
The Flaming Lips – VOID (Video Overview in Deceleration) Rated: NONE Format: Compilation WorkNameSort: Flaming Lips – VOID (Video Overview in Deceleration), The You would be forgiven for assuming that the Flaming Lips would be a great video band. Years of semipsychedelic records – punctuated by bizarrely vivid lyrics and swooning noise – have garnered…
The Motown Box
The Motown Box Label: Motown Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Motown Box , The There are currently 41 Motown compilations in print, including this four-CD box set, another four-CD box set, a three-CD box set and two two-CD compilations. Why on earth someone saw the need for another set featuring these played-to-death numbers is perplexing … until…
The Edge
The Edge Label: Capitol Jazz Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Edge, The The effect that David Axelrod had on jazz was profound and not entirely excellent. His solo material and production work at Capitol during the late ’60s and early ’70s for the likes of Lou Rawls and Cannonball Adderley was marked by luscious arrangements, limpid Afrocentricity…
Penitentiary Blues
Penitentiary Blues Label: Shout Factory Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Penitentiary Blues For a guy whose inflated reputation as a racist redneck has helped to mischaracterize his work over the past 35 years, the long-overdue reissue of Penitentiary Bluesmay help David Allan Coe slough off some the more cartoonish preconceptions about his musicianship. Sure, anyone who writes…
Letters
Achieving mediocrity      I applaud your writer for defending public education [“Defending public schools,” Aug. 11]. As a father of three who are enrolled in a public school in downtown Orlando, I am keenly interested.      I sympathize, too, with the plight of the school system in dealing with the largely underfunded mandates of the…
DOODY HUMOR
When an evening starts with yours truly referring to his own aching posterior as a Weekend at Bernie’s, aloud and proud at a 4 p.m. happy hour, you could be forgiven for thinking that the rest of the dirty exploits of this particular Tuesday, and therefore this particular column, may be composed of little more…
Notable Noise
The other morning on the way to work, I seriously began to doubt the existence of a fair, just and mindful God. You see, there was this ginormous Hummer hauling ass down the road, taking curves like a maniac and generally acting like Hummers do on city streets: obnoxious. I caught a glimpse of it…
QUEEN FOR A DAY
Adam & Steve Four Stars (NR) Writer/director Craig Chester knows that it isn’t enough for a gay comedy to be really, really gay … it has to be really funny, too. There are as many honest laughs in Chester’s wild, queer romcom as there are in Wedding Crashers, and in a sane world, Adam &…
TRICKED OUT
Except for two times when I lived close to busy pickup spots, I have never spent much time listening to prostitutes talk. Clearly, neither has Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel, who wrote an unwieldy and thoroughly unconvincing script for her five-character play The Oldest Profession – a work that purports to be the tragicomic saga…
SCORE TACTICS
A number of improv musicals have floated though this town over the years – most of them associated with Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival – but SAK Comedy Lab’s FourPlay is one of the funniest and most coherent I’ve seen. And it’s running for much longer than one week. Though the title appears to indicate…
GOD’S CONSOLATION PRIZE
The first thing you’ll notice is how it jumps out of the speakers. “1969” has always been a worthy anthem, a manifesto to nothingness that, over 35 years later, sounds as fresh as the day it was recorded. Punk rock and its ilk may have had an ephemeral ambition, a live-fast, die-young credo in its…
RIPE DOWN TO THE RIND
Try this. When you find that perfect, sweet, fragrant cantaloupe – the summer that passes without one is a failure – seed it, cut or scoop out the uniformly orange flesh and drop it in a blender or food processor. Add a pinch of salt and whirr until it’s a thick puree. Â Â Â Â Â Now either…
THE TONGUE OF ROCK
And here’s another thing I don’t like about kids! `If you’re just joining us, Wm.™ Steven Humphrey has been ranting about children for the past two and a half days. We join his rant, already in progress. –Editor` Since when did KIDS start dictating how adults should behave? When I was growing up, I was…
THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE GALAXY TALL TEE
Oversized white T-shirts don’t get a lot of love these days. Â A South Los Angeles high school banned them on campus last spring, believing they contributed to brawls between black and Latino students. The Texas Youth Commission cautions parents against buying or allowing children to wear them, warning they put kids in “extreme danger”…
Happytown
     My mother-in-law is an 80-year-old widow, has one eye and lives by herself. Her church is constantly begging her for money, in her own living room. It’s typical of the way churches generate maximum funds these days. Now, Mayor Dyer will match funds to church-based programs using tax money during a budget crunch. Not…
Happytown
That Charlie Crist sure is a hoot. The tanned, coiffed, gaunt Republican has been on the campaign trail since about forever now, doing anything possible to get his name and mug in front of the cameras. Has anyone in Florida been wronged? Attorney General Crist to the rescue! (“Oh, did I mention I’m running for…
CRIME CREATES CRAVINGS
AUG. 7, 10 P.M.: A 71-year-old woman was sound asleep in her bed in the 1100 block of Overbrook Drive when a stranger crept toward her residence. The locked, chain-linked fence surrounding the home-sweet-home was found in pristine shape the following day, suggesting our suspect possessed spider-like climbing skills. Luckily for the elderly woman, this…
TALK WORDY TO ME
According to Reuters, the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English contains a host of newly included words. Among the fresh additions are “scopophilia” (sexual pleasure derived chiefly from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity); “phishing” (fraudulently sending e-mails purporting to be from reputable firms to get individuals to…
Rob Brezny’s Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19) It’s time to play a game called Do-It-Yourself Horoscope! This exercise is designed to boost your self-reliance and compel you to seek answers from your inner teacher – skills that are especially important for you to develop right now. Ready? Weave the following threads together to create your oracle. 1) The…
News of the Weird
She’s a fighter, not a lover      In July, after word got out that the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas could be fitted with an online update to make some of its scenes explicitly sexual, an 85-year-old grandmother in New York sued the company, Rockstar Games, for having failed to rate the game…
