The Battle of Sealand
The Battle of Sealand Label: Highwheel Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Battle of Sealand, The The pronounced, thumping bass line of album opener ‘Introductionâ?� is instantly reminiscent of the similarly distinct four-string introduction of Ride’s ‘Leave Them All Behindâ?� (the opening track on that shoegazer band’s 1992 album). That gleaming mark of clarity,…
None Shall Pass
None Shall Pass Label: Definitive Jux Length: LP Rated: NONE Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: None Shall Pass Just as Fast Cars, Danger, Fire and Knives pinned MC Aesop Rock against a slew of acid-washed beats in 2005, furthering the ornamental productions he and his contributors explored on Bazooka Tooth, None Shall Pass boasts an…
Pseudosix
Pseudosix Label: Sonic Boom Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Pseudosix It’s telling that the liner notes to Pseudosix offer up a shout-out to the basements ‘in which so much music is invented,â?� because this Portland, Ore.-based group radiates an organic reclusivity that suggests Built to Spill if they were bingeing on ’70s country…
TWISTING IN THE WIND
David Lynch’s Inland Empire makes it to DVD
Cicatrix
Cicatrix Label: Feed the Hungry Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Cicatrix The loping, ska-based groove of Monte Negro’s first single, ‘Give Me Love (No Llores),â?� is a bit of deceptive marketing. While its lightly blunted vibe may be appealing to the Lost Tribe of Brad Nowell, it’s in no way indicative of the…
Resurrecting the Champ
Resurrecting the Champ Studio: Yari Film Group Rated: PG-13 Cast: Josh Hartnett, Sameul L. Jackson Director: Rod Lurie WorkNameSort: Resurrecting the Champ Our Rating: 4.00 How refreshing to find that, despite its title, Resurrecting the Champ is not another Rocky Balboa but a fine journalism picture along the lines of Shattered Glass. This is the…
Eye of the Dolphin
Eye of the Dolphin Studio: Monterey Movie Company Rated: PG-13 Cast: Carly Schroder, Adrian Dunbar Director: Michael Sellers WorkNameSort: Eye of the Dolphin Our Rating: 1.00 A bummed-out teenager (Carly Schroeder) goes to the Bahamas to live with her estranged dad. There, she discovers she can, uh, talk to dolphins. This, of course, winds up…
Goya’s Ghosts
Goya’s Ghosts Studio: Samuel Goldwyn Films Rated: R Cast: Javier Bardem, Natalie Portman Director: Milos Forman WorkNameSort: Goya’s Ghosts Our Rating: 4.50 About 70 percent of American critics have leveled such contempt at this film’s core competency that you’d think they were reviewing the latest Uwe Boll picture, not the first film in eight years…
Mr. Bean’s Holiday
Mr. Bean’s Holiday Studio: Universal Rated: PG Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Willem Dafoe Director: Steve Bendelack WorkNameSort: Mr. Bean’s Holiday A laugh-out-loud comedy â?¦ for that small subset of the population unfortunate enough to be as socially inept and moronic as Mr. Bean himself. A painfully unfunny series of redundant and half-measured physical gags are strung…
The Nanny Diaries
The Nanny Diaries Studio: The Weinstein Company Rated: PG-13 Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans Director: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini WorkNameSort: Nanny Diaries, The Our Rating: 2.00 An adaptation of the best-selling novel about a directionless recent college grad who spends a summer nannying for a Manhattan couple, The Nanny Diaries is ultimately undone by…
September Dawn
September Dawn Studio: Slowhand Cinema Rated: R Cast: Jon Voight, Trent Ford Director: Christopher Cain WorkNameSort: September Dawn Our Rating: 1.00 September Dawn tells the story of the events leading up to the morning of Sept. 11, 1857, when Brigham Young allegedly ordered a group of Mormons to savagely butcher a Gentile wagon train, an…
Snow Cake
Snow Cake Studio: IFC Films Rated: NOT RATED Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman Director: Marc Evans WorkNameSort: Snow Cake Our Rating: 3.00 Sigourney Weaver portrays a ‘high-functioningâ?� and ‘very verbalâ?� autistic mom who’s confronted with the news that her daughter has died in an automobile accident. Carrie-Anne Moss is the ‘selfishâ?� (and slutty) next-door neighbor.…
The Ten
The Ten Studio: Thinkfilm Rated: R Cast: Paul Rudd, Winona Ryder Director: David Wain WorkNameSort: Ten, The Our Rating: 3.50 If Mel Brooks had taken that ‘Fifteen â?¦ Ten! Ten Commandments!â?� scene and expanded it into a batch of contemporary comedy sketches ‘ and added even more raunchy obscenity ‘ he might have come up…
Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider
Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider Studio: First Run Features WorkNameSort: Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider Originally released in 1995 (four years before its subject’s death), The Complete Outsider is an astounding look at one of this century’s greatest polymath artists. A novelist, poet and composer, Paul Bowles is most known as the author of The…
Taxi Driver: Two-Disc Collectors Edition
Taxi Driver: Two-Disc Collectors Edition Studio: Sony WorkNameSort: Taxi Driver: Two-Disc Collectors Edition ‘God’s lonely manâ?� sure has a lot of company on this definitive two-disc set. As if a pristine transfer of Scorsese’s urban purgatory masterpiece weren’t enough, there’s also enough meaty bonus material to rival any university archive. Included are commentary tracks by…
The Beautiful Washing Machine
The Beautiful Washing Machine Studio: Facets Multimedia WorkNameSort: Beautiful Washing Machine , The Slow, surreal and spooky, this Malaysian film from 2004 is deftly crafted and rich with symbolism. Teoh is a bummed-out bachelor whose girlfriend has just moved out; the film opens with him in a brightly lit megastore, attempting to replace the washing…
Boy Culture
Boy Culture Studio: TLA Releasing WorkNameSort: Boy Culture ‘If you’re smart,â?� snarls the acid-tongued X (Derek Magyar), ‘you’ve guessed I’m a hustler. If you haven’t, here are two clues: I’m gay, and they made a movie about me.â?� When X’s tongue isn’t so acid he makes a living from its contortions, but secretly he’s saving…
THE FAMES (AND SHAMES) OF MR. WEST
;Kanye West is the most important figure in popular music today. That’s not hyperbole, either. Since his debut in 2004 with The College Dropout, an album that by all accounts never should have happened, the producer-turned-rapper-turned-whipping boy has endured doubts over his sexuality (from his own labelmates, no less), the embrace of right-wingers over his…
CRACKS IN THE PAVEMENT
;”It’s martini night!” beams the bartender in the bay of Wally’s Mills Avenue Liquors’ wraparound serving station. ;It’s an odd juxtaposition for the traditionally dimly lit watering hole, one that over its 53 years has served as a neighborhood bar to whomever the neighbors might be. Tonight, beneath the television screens that alternate between blue-collar…
MIDNIGHT SNACK WITH LIZA MONROY
Note: The following is a dramatic reading of a one-act play based on the transcripts of an interview I conducted with Liza Monroy via e-mail. Liza and I read our respective lines with me reading the descriptive parts. This was based on the second practice run. I screwed up the intro the first time. —…
COUNTER INTELLIGENCE
Ever get the urge to tell a chef how you really feel about a dish you sampled — or just wonder how it got on your plate? Well, Hollerbach’s Willow Tree Café in Sanford, widely considered to serve the finest German fare in the area, is offering patrons a chance to play food critic. At…
BLISTER
;There exists a certain alchemy betwixt my ears that, when splashed into a spinning pink centrifuge, would likely reveal elements of midshelf alcohol, a squawking rasp of unintentionally annoying vocal affectations, a shoe, a backup drink and just a smidge of noxious co-dependence. It would be enough, perhaps, to empirically ascertain that I am indeed…
SAVAGE LOVE
Hear me out. You’ve pushed the idea that everyone must be GGG, or “good, giving and game,” and that people in relationships must be sluts for each other, and that women must perform oral sex. I agree that sexual satisfaction for both parties in a relationship is important. I think that is what you are…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
;ARIES (March 21-April 19) You’ve been putting out and putting out and putting out. Good work! I’m impressed with your blend of high-minded generosity and ego-boosting self-expression. Now, however, it’s time to make a transition. You need to start taking in and taking in and taking in. Your radiance needs to be fed by other…
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROND
Too much went down ’round town this week to waste time chatting. So let’s get busy … The beat So the latest edition of The Bao Show was fun. Some already know the deal but I’ve never officially explained it. It’s a mostly local music showcase I put together every so often. Face it, suckers,…
I LOVE TELEVISION
Note from Wm.™ Steven Humphrey: Remember that one time when I said there was nothing good on TV for the week, and that I was going on vacation, and that you should enjoy this classic column from the I Love Television™ archives? Ditto. You know, there’s been a lot of YAP, YAP, YAP lately about…
CULTURE TO GO
;Hot – but no flashes; ;The Plaza Theatre;425 N. Bumby Ave.;1-888-243-8849;www.theplazatheatre.com; ;There’s more than fresh paint that’s new at the long-standing Plaza Theatre tucked into the back of Colonial Plaza, where the marquee read Menopause the Musical for most of the last year. The recent paint job and installation of a new A/C system marks…
COUNCIL WATCH
Like a wake that nobody showed up to, an empty, roped-off media area in the City Hall rotunda (there would be a ceremonious, superfluous sign-off on the venues deal, post-dais) seemed to say it all about this week’s meeting: pretty vacant. Interestingly enough, District 2 commissioner Betty Wyman was absent again (was this her wake?),…
HAPPYTOWN
;Perhaps we wrote off Lawson the Avenger too soon (see Happytown™, Aug. 9). Could you blame us? After lots of chest-thumping, Orange-Osceola State Attorney Lawson Lamar watched his Government Accountability Unit’s two biggest fish – Ron Pecora and Doug Guetzloe – wiggle off the hook. ;;How wrong we were. On Aug. 16, Lamar’s corruption busters…
POLICE BEAT
AUG. 7, 6:52 P.M.: On Tuesday afternoon, just hours after a slew of whiny brats boarded school buses and headed home for an afternoon snack, an unknown suspect or suspects deemed it a good time to pay an elementary school in the 800 block of Grand Street a visit. They broke into portables No. 9…
MAIL SACK
;RAISE YOUR IQ ; ;To Jon from Windermere [see Letters, ;Aug. 9], about your comment on “Dumbville USA”: I recall that Will Rogers once said, “I’ve always believed all those people who moved from Oklahoma to California raised the average IQ of two states.” ;;Tom Geis, Orlando; ;;THE KIDS WILL LOVE IT ; ;All right,…
