Absolute Garbage
Absolute Garbage Label: Almo Sounds/Geffen/UME Length: LP Media: CD Format: Compilation WorkNameSort: Absolute Garbage Pop in this best-of and dance around in your underwear. Then, after the novelty of hearing songs from your tortured adolescence wears off, the need to search your car/home for another CD won’t be far behind. While Garbage’s habit of mixing…
Now-Again Re:Sounds
Now-Again Re:Sounds Label: Now-Again Length: LP Format: Compilation WorkNameSort: Now-Again Re:Sounds As an impressively functioning shorter leg of California’s Stones Throw label, Now-Again Records began issuing (and reissuing) vinyl in 2003, carving out a niche market in funk ‘ new and old. Cratediggin’ DJs like Cut Chemist and J. Rocc chimed in over the years…
War Stories
War Stories Label: Surrender All Length: LP Rated: NONE Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: War Stories Almost a decade since their debut, UNKLE finally strolls along with this third album. In only a triad of LPs, though, James Lavelle’s project has spanned the spectrum. Known for breaking ground in trip-hop, the mood-rich U.K. act now…
BIG DADDY’S ROLLHOUSE
You get the feeling that Takashi Hayakawa is a man who likes flying under the radar. The master chef has operated his humble little restaurant off I-Drive’s beaten path for the better part of a decade (a veritable lifetime here in Orlando) yet the place has gone largely unnoticed among the city’s sushi enthusiasts. Then…
LOSERS IN LOVE
Eagle vs. Shark rescues the nerd movie from its own meanness
The Simpsons Movie
The Simpsons Movie Studio: 20th Century Fox Rated: PG-13 Cast: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner Director: David Silverman WorkNameSort: Simpsons Movie, The Our Rating: 5.00 There’s a ridiculous idea out there that The Simpsons Movie has to equal the greatest moments of its TV parent, when it only needs to be as necessary to society as…
Introducing the Dwights
Introducing the Dwights Studio: Warner Independent Rated: R Cast: Brenda Blethyn, Richard Wilson Director: Cherie Nowlan WorkNameSort: Introducing the Dwights Our Rating: 4.00 Introducing the Dwights isn’t a much better title than its native Australian one, Clubland. But don’t let that cable sitcom-like christening dissuade you from seeing this moving dramedy. The only thing more…
No Reservations
No Reservations Studio: Warner Bros. Rated: PG Cast: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart Director: Scott Hicks WorkNameSort: No Reservations Our Rating: 3.50 A charming cast and an elegantly restrained Philip Glass score elevate the middling to the fairly sublime in this remake of the successful German film Mostly Martha. In fact, the tried-and-true formula of No…
Rescue Dawn
Rescue Dawn Studio: MGM Rated: PG-13 Cast: Christian Bale, Steve Zahn Director: Werner Herzog WorkNameSort: Rescue Dawn Our Rating: 3.00 So here we are, mired in a stupid, loathsome war, and what does Werner Herzog do? He creates an absolutely riveting sort-of love letter to America that takes place during that last stupid, loathsome U.S.…
Sunshine
Sunshine Studio: Fox Searchlight Rated: R Cast: Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh Director: Danny Boyle WorkNameSort: Sunshine Our Rating: 3.50 Sunshine tells the story of eight astronauts sent to reignite our dying sun with a nuclear device. Director Danny Boyle avoids the clichés and instead embraces the sort of psychological drama and suspense that would’ve pleased…
Talk to Me
Talk to Me Studio: Focus Features Rated: R Cast: Don Cheadle, Chiwetel Ejiofor Director: Kasi Lemmons WorkNameSort: Talk to Me Our Rating: 3.00 In Talk to Me, director Kasi Lemmons has expertly crafted an uplifting civil rights’era biopic free of false hope and cloying nostalgia. Gently exploring the symbiotic relationship between Ralph ‘Peteyâ?� Greene (Don…
Five Dedicated to Ozu
Five Dedicated to Ozu Studio: Kino WorkNameSort: Five Dedicated to Ozu Abbas Kiarostami should be considered an Iranian filmmaker no longer. Instead, he is now an auteur of the globe. After establishing himself as an arthouse darling with existentialist powerhouse films such as Taste of Cherry and The Wind Will Carry Us in his native…
Raise the Red Lantern
Raise the Red Lantern Studio: MGM Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Raise the Red Lantern Not many directors can go from touching humanist dramas to dazzling swordplay adventures and then back again, but China’s Zhang Yimou pulls it off without a hitch. Before impressing action buffs with Hero and House of Flying Daggers, Zhang made (among other…
Ivan’s Childhood
Ivan’s Childhood Studio: Criterion Collection WorkNameSort: Ivan’s Childhood Ivan’s Childhood may be one of the lesser works in the titanic canon of Andrei Tarkovsky, only because we know the genius he would aspire to later in his short life. For most other directors, this humanist anti-war parable would be the zenith of their careers. Fans…
Dr. No’s Oxperiment
Dr. No’s Oxperiment Label: Stones Throw Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Dr. No’s Oxperiment It seems that producer/rapper Oh No, last year’s best hip-hop discovery, keeps getting bigger. This isn’t to say his third album will sell any more than his others did, which is next to none, but his influences and technique…
REEFER MADNESS REDUX
Heard the latest buzz about cannabis? Word on the street is that today’s pot is exponentially more powerful, and thus more dangerous, than the marijuana available some 20, or even 10, years ago. The nation’s drug czar says so. (“We’re no longer talking about the drug of the 1960s and 1970s,” John P. Walters recently…
A RAY OF LIGHT
;If there is a director working today who could save Hollywood from itself, that person is Danny Boyle. Probably best known for Trainspotting, his ode to heroin which, in 1996, became the British answer to Pulp Fiction, he’s also done quite a bit more. Boyle helmed the best Hitchcock thriller not directed by Hitchcock (Shallow…
THE LEAST OF US
Stephanie Stewart’s tiny windowless office is nearly consumed by a large wooden desk. Her computer sits on a small, cheap stand on her left, while a tall bookshelf littered with more than a dozen black binders and file folders occupies a corner on her right. A handful of photographs of the 31-year-old attorney with her…
ON THE COMEBACK AT WMFE: LOCAL PROGRAMMING
;As part of its growth plan, local PBS-affiliate television and radio station WMFE made a series of draconian changes several years ago. In order to afford the FCC-mandated digital conversion, then president/CEO Stephen McKenney Steck essentially pulled the plug on local programming, save The Arts Connection, the Friday-night radio special reported, produced and hosted by…
ONE LITTLE INDIAN
Finally, when that aloo gobi craving hits, the connection is closer to home. Lotus Café, formerly a vegetarian lunch spot, has been transformed into an Indian restaurant. The tiny café is still owned and operated by the Naraine family, but apparently there’s a bigger market for Indian than for vegetarian fare on Park Avenue. On…
BLISTER
Somebody punch me. This can’t be real. “Congratulations!” Savannah piles over my dogs and into my breakdown bungalow. “You’re the best!” Ah, it’s that time of the year again, when egos and organizations bloat in the wake of near-illegible scribblings and careless mouse-clicks, all culminating in some kind of superlative bombast destined to manifest in…
SAVAGE LOVE
;I’m a 31-year-old attractive single woman, and I recently went on Match.com and found a guy. Our e-mails and one phone conversation went well and he seemed kind and was OK-looking in his picture, so I met him for drinks. It was disappointing, to say the least. He looked 15 years older than his picture…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES (March 21-April 19) Writing in Poetry Flash, critic Rusty Morrison speculates that “the sublime can only be glimpsed by pressing through fear’s boundary, beyond one’s previous conceptions of the beautiful.” That’s a good theme for you to experiment with now. You’re very close to making contact with splendor you’ll remember all your life. (And…
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
;It’s quite possible that not all followers of this impossibly hip column are young. Well, those readers, along with my chronically nostalgic New Yorker buddies, will dig the Sound of the City box set that was released this week. The crypt keepers over at Time Life have dug into the repository and come up with…
CULTURE TO GO
Hide the dog VarieTEASE: SHEE-HAW Through Aug. 15 Footlight Theater, the Parliament House $10; 407-454-8478 www.WANZIE.com VarieTEASE: Carnivale was the runaway hit of the 2007 Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival, earning the Patrons Pick award and an encore run at the Parliament House. So how do you top an avant-garde fable set to a blistering…
COUNCIL WATCH
;Perhaps the rolling thunder ;and skies of doom weren’t a good omen for what was to be the most “historically significant” city council meeting EVER, but given the balloon-headed sentiments of the Project Hometown brigade – inflated to bursting capacity – a little humility would have been some relief. ; ;”Would you like a sticker…
POLICE BEAT
;JULY 10, 7:59 A.M.: What do Orlando burglars do to beat the heat? Steal air conditioning equipment, of course.; ;On this Tuesday morning, before the scorching summer sun induced sweat in Central Florida, a suspect or suspects set to work breaking into a business workshop in the 1730 block of Gurtler Court. Inside, the following…
MAIL SACK
Just doing our job I didn’t get a chance to say this sooner, but I liked the article `”Love me two (or more) times,” July 5`. I thought it was well-written and I’m pleased with the overall attitude of the article. Thank you for writing this! Oh, and on a more personal note, I thought…
SOUND AND VISION
On a recent airing of LATV Live, hosts Guad Venegas and Alexis De La Rocha introduce the newest member of the crew, a lanky kid named Mando who is clad in baggy jeans, sneakers, a green hooded sweatshirt and gray blazer. The unassuming 22-year-old is the youngest on-air personality at a local hip-hop radio station…
NOT THEIR MONEY
News that public school districts are facing cuts and gaps in funding has become commonplace. One way to deal with the issue is to simply give schools more money. Another is to scrutinize exactly how districts spend the dollars they get. The former isn’t likely in the new reality of governmental budget cuts brought on…
OZONE Awards on MTV Jams
OZONE Magazine, of Orlando, Atlanta, and parts beyond, are putting on their second annual Ozone awards show in Miami on August 13, and MTV Jams will be airing it on Labor Day weekend. Good news for these guys. And they’ve put together a pretty big name (if somewhat, um, mainstream) line-up for their event. The…
