REDUCED SACCHARIN CONTENT
The Pursuit of Happyness Length: Single Studio: Sony Pictures Releasing Rated: PG-13 Website: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/thepursuitofhappyness/ Release Date: 2006-12-15 Cast: Will Smith, Thandie Newton, Jaden Smith, Dan Castellaneta, Zuhair Haddad Director: Gabriele Muccino Screenwriter: Steve Conrad Music Score: Andrea Guerra WorkNameSort: Pursuit of Happyness, The Our Rating: 3.00 Admit it, you already hate this movie. If you…
Charlotte’s Web
Charlotte’s Web Length: Single Studio: Paramount Pictures Rated: G Website: http://www.charlotteswebmovie.com/site/index.php Release Date: 2006-12-15 Cast: Dakota Fanning, Julia Roberts, Oprah Winfrey, Dominic Scott Kay, John Cleese Director: Gary Winick Screenwriter: Susannah Grant, Karey Kirkpatrick, E. B. White WorkNameSort: Charlotte’s Web Our Rating: 4.00 All the digital tricks and celebrity voices utilized to make this live-action…
Eragon
Eragon Length: Single Studio: 20th Century Fox Distribution Rated: PG Website: http://www.eragonmovie.com/ Release Date: 2006-12-15 Cast: Edward Speleers, Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Djimon Hounsou, Sienna Guillory Director: Stefan Fangmeier Screenwriter: Lawrence Konner, Mark D. Rosenthal, Jesse Wigutow, Peter Buchman, Christopher Paolini Music Score: Patrick Doyle WorkNameSort: Eragon Our Rating: 2.50 My preteen son used to…
TCM Archives: Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 1
TCM Archives: Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 1 Studio: Warner Home Video Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: TCM Archives: Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 1 The notion of ‘pre-Code Hollywoodâ?� has always been an enticing one. The notion that, before the prim censors got their hands on motion pictures, the studios were busy crafting degenerate and debauched fare in…
To the Left of the Father
To the Left of the Father Studio: Kino Video Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: To the Left of the Father A young man escapes a strict pious upbringing by fornicating with his sister and fleeing his residence, only to return to his farm home years later for a turbulent reunion in this first feature from Brazilian television…
WINTER PARK GETS THE BOOT
Range of regional offerings from Italy is sure to delight discriminating diners
The Destroyed Room – B-Sides and Rarities
The Destroyed Room – B-Sides and Rarities Label: Geffen Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Destroyed Room – B-Sides and Rarities , The Anyone who’s checked out Sonic Youth’s many side projects over the years ‘ Free Kitten, Ciccone Youth, Mirror/Dash ‘ knows to approach anything but the main event with caution. The chance…
Bonfires of São João
Bonfires of São João Label: Nublu Length: LP Rated: NONE Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Bonfires of São João What do you get when the festive country music of northeastern Brazil’s interior ‘backlandsâ?� is transplanted in New York City’s Lower East Side? The answer is Forro in the Dark, a cross between Luiz Gonzaga, the…
Plague of Years
Plague of Years Label: Sub Rosa Length: LP Rated: NONE Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Plague of Years The music of English duo Eyeless in Gaza has been compiled before. This is at least the sixth collection of the ‘bestâ?� of Martyn Bates and Peter Becker’s dark, atmospheric pop and Plague of Years, like every…
Wishbone, Deliver Me From My Enemies
Jackie Mittoo Wishbone (Light in the Attic) Yabby You Deliver Me From My Enemies (Blood & Fire) Contrary to the natterings of rock-centric audiophiles and wax-loving jazzbos, the CD era has been a godsend for some discerning music lovers. While all genres benefit sonically from playback on wax, the underlying rule is that said wax…
BASS ON TOP OF BASS
Dubstep’s mammoth, often wordless productions rest on bass that drifts about in a shuddersome low range, but the word “range” is better left entirely out of discussions of this maturing genre. Although commonalities in dubstep exist, producers in this still-burgeoning scene are perfecting distinctive flourishes and influences and prompting an overhaul of existing boundaries, just…
WELCOME TO PARADISE
It’s past midnight and Lynette, a 29-year-old, motor-mouthed prostitute, is knocking at my door. “I don’t like to share crack when I get high,” she says. “Is it OK if I come inside your trailer?” I’m living at the Palms Trailer Park, 1610 S. Orange Blossom Trail, for a week, reporting a story about one…
CONSOLES WE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH
These days, the Christmas carol on every gamer’s lips has a simple refrain: Wii or PlayStation 3? Frankly, the more appropriate tune might be: Xbox 360 or raincheck? The special holiday edition of System Shortages 2006 isn’t quite as brutal as last year’s Xbox 360 debacle, but most of the gamers down in Whoville are…
MISERABLE? GREAT!
;With The Pursuit of ;Happyness opening this week (review below), the thought occurred that sometimes it’s not the “happy” films that bring us joy. Sometimes it’s those films that allow us to revel in what the Germans call schadenfreude: deriving pleasure from someone else’s misfortune. When the good guys don’t win … well, that’s often…
BLISTER
“Hello death, goodbye Avenue A,” Ann Magnuson, of early-’90s Bongwater, spits her performance art out of my sunroof and into the night sky. “Oh, how ’90s,” Jessica vintages. “Hetero-AIDS paranoia.” Fitting, then, that we’re traversing the cobblestones of Church Street in our boutique best, aiming our fashion toes in the direction of a Jim Faherty—promoted…
The Conformist, 1900
The Conformist 1900 (Paramount Home Video) There’s good reason for 1970’s The Conformist to be the No. 1 recommended DVD in the current issue of Film Comment. A dynamic adaptation of Italian novelist Alberto Moravia’s novel about a fascist spy sent to assassinate a subversive who happens to be his most influential college professor,…
SAVAGE LOVE
;I’m a 20-year-old straight girl. For six months, I was dating a guy I thought was nice and normal. One way my boyfriend showed he cared, or so I thought, was by massaging my feet after work (I wait tables). Then he confessed that he has a foot fetish. He wasn’t rubbing my feet to…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES “Listen! I will be honest with you. I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.” Walt Whitman wrote that in his poem “Song of the Open Road,” and now I’m saying it to you. If you expect the events of 2007 to bring you old smooth prizes, you’ll be…
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
;Taste is a thing that’s valued highly in this particular space. By definition, it’s something I live and die by. But there are times, like this past week, when I see things that remind me that taste is sometimes totally relative or way overrated. ;Florida’s not on fire; ;;The mini-apocalypse of the annual Floridas Dying…
I LOVE TELEVISION
Hooray! I love letters from readers, and here’s an actual e-mail (as opposed to those ones I occasionally make up) from Leslie Hart of Florida. (Oh, and I’ve annotated her letter so I can appropriately address each of her concerns after she finishes ripping me a new one. And, just so you know, Rachael Ray…
ARTS & CULTURE TO GO
Every Christmas Story Ever Told I’d rather have a stake of holly drilled through my eye than sit through another well-worn seasonal show, which makes me the target demographic for the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival’s Every Christmas Story Ever Told. The show (penned by Michael Carleton, John Alvarez and Jim Fitzgerald) is a rambling and irreverent…
COUNCIL WATCH
Outside City Hall, the winds of commerce blew development dust into the faces of the ever-present Stop the Ordinance Partnership, or STOP, this time spruced up by Ben Markeson in a Santa suit proffering “Santa’s City Christmas List.” Commissioner Patty Sheehan, the architect of a law that restricts homeless feedings in public parks, has been…
HAPPYTOWN
Strippers 1, vice cops 0. On a 4-2 vote Dec. 6, Orlando’s Citizens Police Review Board asked Police Chief Michael McCoy to reopen the department’s internal-affairs investigation of two Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation agents whom Cleo’s Gentlemen’s Club accused of exposing themselves and fondling Cleo’s dancers during an undercover 2004 sting `see “Operation Overexposed,” Sept.…
POLICE BEAT
NOV. 27, 7:35 A.M.: Couldn’t the bad guys at least wait until Christmas break to burglarize Central Florida’s schools? Officer Mike Ross reports that 15 portable classrooms at an elementary school in the 5600 block of Harcourt Avenue were broken into by an unknown person or persons. The hooligan(s) gained entry by “knocking the outside…
LETTERS
Oh, please Spare me the drama `”Things that frighten us,” Nov. 30`. Petula Caesar, take the green pill instead of that scary left turn and maybe fate will lock the bathroom door as you shit out all of your crippling what-ifs. Troy Eggleston, via the Internet Petty tyrants Regarding your story on homeowner’s associations `”Home…
SELECTIONS
;Thursday•14 ;;The Nutcracker Frolicking to Tchaikovsky’s chestnut as it always does this time of year, Orlando Ballet does have a twist to its 2006 performance: They’re doing it at the Osceola County Performing Arts Center. Why? Because The Lion King has displaced it from its usual holiday home, the Carr Performing Arts Centre. Still, this…
