Labor Day checkpoints
The Sentinel posted a thing earlier today about Orange County putting up DUI checkpoints around Central Florida over the weekend. “Law enforcement agencies from across Central Florida will be on the look out for unsafe and impaired drivers, open alcohol containers and other violations this Labor Day weekend.” The story has since been pulled from…
Michael Jackson is dead.
Yes, it’s true, I’m sad to say. No, not the King of Pop, rather the far more interesting King of Beers. “Top beer expert Michael Jackson died this morning. Jackson dedicated more than three decades to the pursuit and documentation of the world�s finest beers, and wrote many books on the subject. He became known…
THE DEFIANT ONE
Venerable diner flaunts old-school charm in the face of change
TRAILER MASH
For some, the thought of purchasing a meal from a trailer parked behind a dingy gas station on a busy intersection might conjure up visions of dysentery. But for others, particularly the city’s Puerto Rican populace, that trailer equates to nothing short of street-food heaven. Named after a picturesque seaside hang east of San Juan,…
Ladron Que Roba A Ladron
Ladron Que Roba A Ladron Studio: Lions Gate Rated: NOT RATED Cast: Fernando Colunga, Jojo Henrickson Director: Joe Menendez WorkNameSort: Ladron Que Roba A Ladron Our Rating: 3.00 This Spanish-language heist film holds its own when compared to the standard metrics of the genre. A motley crew of likable, fallible crooks? Check. A too-rich-for-his-own-good mark?…
My Best Friend
My Best Friend Studio: IFC Films Rated: PG-13 Cast: Daniel Auteuil Director: Patrice Leconte WorkNameSort: My Best Friend Our Rating: 3.00 My Best Friend starts by meandering through the tedium of things like paying cab fare (and waiting for change), the dragged-out motion of auction bidding and even the simple act of walking up stairs…
Horrors of Malformed Men
Horrors of Malformed Men Studio: Synapse Films WorkNameSort: Horrors of Malformed Men What was it about Teruo Ishii’s Horrors of Malformed Men that appalled Japanese audiences and compelled distributors to pull all prints from circulation for decades? Was it the rampant female nudity? The avant-garde bizarreness? The themes of deformity and mutilation? The hints of…
Reel Talent: First Films By Legendary Directors
Reel Talent: First Films By Legendary Directors Studio: Fox Home Entertainment WorkNameSort: Reel Talent: First Films By Legendary Directors The good news about this DVD? You get to see the early, New Wave’inspired shorts of George Lucas, a bright young prodigy then uncorrupted by Hollywood megalomania. The bad news? Almost everything else on it. Culled…
Skin For Sale
Skin For Sale Studio: TLA Releasing WorkNameSort: Skin For Sale The average female porn star makes 200 films in three to five years before calling it quits. Judging from Skin for Sale’s conversations with actors, directors and producers of the Barcelona porn industry (the Silicone Valley of Europe), the high burnout rate isn’t because of…
Breathing Under Water / Beat Konducta Vol. 3-4: In India
Breathing Under Water / Beat Konducta Vol. 3-4: In India Label: Manhattan / Stones Throw Rated: NONE Media: CD WorkNameSort: Breathing Under Water / Beat Konducta Vol. 3-4: In India Whether on the inside looking out ‘ as Anoushka Shankar and Karsh Kale are ‘ or on the outside looking in ‘ as Madlib is…
Level Live Wires
Level Live Wires Label: Anticon Length: EP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Level Live Wires Beats knock hesitantly on Odd Nosdam’s Level Live Wires in tandem with gratuitous tape loops and field recordings; this could almost pass for a grimier Boards of Canada release, heavy on processed guitar tones. Soft, distorted majesty tempers more than…
Weirdo Rippers
Weirdo Rippers Label: FatCat Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Weirdo Rippers This video, performance and visual art duo surfaces from the L.A. art and punk underground with a debut album of noise pop that truly delivers the noise. The shoegaze haze throughout can float for minutes before a salient rhythm or melody punches…
A GIFT FROM BEYOND
They say the world is flat now, that globalization and the Internet have closed the culture gap once and for all. Or that xenophobia and exploitation are ancient relics from a more naive time when people thought Commies were hiding in their kitchen cupboards. Of course, these eternal optimists are half-wrong — at least until…
I LOVE TELEVISION
Note from Wm.™ Steven Humphrey: There’s nothing on TV this week. That’s why I’m still on vacation! Until I return, please enjoy the following I § Television™ rerun.™ OK, listen up! This week marks the debut of Survivor: All Stars, wherein past Survivor contestants reunite on a secluded island and screw each other out of…
DON’T GET SICK
Jennifer Wilson is exactly like a lot of people in Orange County. At 26 years old — with a 2-and-a-half—year-old son — she’s a single mother surviving paycheck to paycheck. She has an associate’s degree in film production technology from Valencia Community College, where she minored in theater, and works as a freelance lighting technician.…
TOSSING A ONE-SIDED COIN
;”An ineluctable part of the collective cinema consciousness.” “One of the most influential films of all time.” “Film of the millennium.” ;;This is just a small sampling of the intense praise given over the years to the 1975 Indian film Sholay. By description alone it would seem unremarkable: Two likable rogues (Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra)…
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO FLORIDA
This is not good. Not good at all. Lots could go wrong on this one. Cops. Beaten and robbed. Stranded. Definitely the worst ride yet. Shouldn’t have gotten in this van. I glance over at Ethan. He’s looking straight ahead. Even his pet rat, Echinacea, is still. I roll another cigarette and inhale deeply. We’re…
CRESCENT CITY SOLDIERS
;The two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is upon us and the broadcast media is once again spotlighting the city of New Orleans by airing dismal reports of sluggish restoration and treacly profiles of victims’ salvation. There’s no effective way for the ravages of New Orleans to be captured with canned words and digital imagery; one…
BUST TOWN
If you read the Orlando Sentinel Sunday, Aug. 26, you know that the condo market is dead. If you’re sentient, you already knew it was dead, but the Sentinel is nothing if not oblivious and slow. Anyway, the biggest groaner in the article by Jason Garcia wasn’t the stunningly obvious conclusion; it was the twisted…
HAPPYTOWN
;You liked him as a convicted felon; you loved him as the outspoken, media-hungry head of the ACLU Central Chapter; now get ready for George Crossley, on-air personality! ;;Beginning Sept. 1, Crossley will host the People-Power Hour every Saturday from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. on NewsTalk WAMT 1190-AM, the local Fox affiliate. You know…
POLICE BEAT
AUG. 14, 10:23 P.M.: A 34-year-old man was hangin’ near a local fast food restaurant in the 500 block of North John Young Parkway near Colonial Drive that reminds people, “You gotta eat,” when trouble neared. On this day trouble took the shape of a money-demanding male in his 40s wearing a white-collared shirt and…
MAIL SACK
;Brad Will: Hero ;Thank you for the in-depth article [“Who killed Brad Will?” Aug. 9]. As a Mexican who has lived in the United States “legally” (as they call it) for the last 21 years, it saddens me to constantly know that the hunger for oil, just like in the case of the Iraq invasion,…
TRAILER MASH
For some, the thought of purchasing a meal from a trailer parked behind a dingy Marathon gas station on a busy intersection might conjure up visions of dysentery. But for others, particularly the city’s Puerto Rican populace, that trailer equates to nothing short of street-food heaven. Named after a picturesque seaside hang east of San…
BLISTER
;As someone who spends a ;good portion of his waking hours trying to spin around in various vacuums fast enough to force the pigment, marrow and drink mixers from my body and onto the walls in a spontaneous cocked-brow installation of “something happening,” I hold a certain esteem for the vanity exercises of artists and…
SAVAGE LOVE
I’m a high-school girl with big problems. All my life I’ve worn boy clothes and had male friends, mainly because I’m into “male” things like video games and geek stuff. As high school approached, Mother Nature flipped me off with DD breasts and hips that would make Shakira jealous. I don’t even identify as female.…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
;ARIES (March 21-April 19) “Here’s how you can tell if you have a bad psychotherapist or counselor,” says my friend Laura. “She or he buys into all your BS, never questions your delusions and builds your self-esteem even if that makes you into an a**hole.” I agree with Laura’s assessment, so I’m going to spend…
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
Summer is not a time of thinking or contemplation. It’s too hot to mess with all that, so please, just give us cold beer and dumb fun. And there’s nothing musically that fulfills both “dumb” and “fun” quite like cover versions. In fact, my mentioning them just now caused thousands of lighters across the city…
END OF THE ROAD
What can be said about the much-ballyhooed Von Ray reunion/final show that hasn’t been said already in Who Cares magazine? OK, that was harsh. Lots of us — including myself — paid way too much attention to the soap opera that was Von Ray back in the day. And why not? Vaughan Rhea (real spelling;…
