BREAKING: Sentinel reporter becomes crime victim!
In a shocking example of just how out of control crime is in Orange County, Orlando Sentinel reporter Walter Pacheco has filed a harrowing report about a broken iPod and a pack of gum being stolen from his unlocked car. He feels violated. He feels that his car has been violated. Hell, he feels that…
INTERNATIONAL HOUSE OF PAN-LATIN
I’m always wary of restaurants purporting to offer dishes representative of more than one country. I’m not talking about highfalutin joints where Norman Van Aken and Roy Yamaguchi whip up fare fusing cooking traditions and ingredients from more than one world region; I’m talking about restaurants whose menus globe-trek from bouillabaisse to tandoori, often getting…
The Naked City
The Naked City Studio: Criterion Collection WorkNameSort: Naked City, The There’s an anecdote about Martin Scorsese delaying the shooting of the lunch-date scene between Travis Bickle and Betsy the campaign aide in Taxi Driver because the weather was too blustery to get a good street exterior behind his actors through the coffee shop’s picture window.…
The Burmese Harp
The Burmese Harp Studio: Criterion Collection WorkNameSort: Burmese Harp, The Criterion released Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp (1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959) on the same day, and watching these two anti-war movies in succession, it’s hard to believe they were made by the same man. Ichikawa’s lack of a signature style has always…
Shogun Assassin 2: Lightning Swords of Death
Shogun Assassin 2: Lightning Swords of Death Studio: Animeigo WorkNameSort: Shogun Assassin 2: Lightning Swords of Death A renamed (and dubbed) version of the rogue samurai classic Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades (the third in the ’70s ‘Lone Wolfâ?� series of films), Shogun Assassin 2 is, like the rest of the early…
A Strange Education
A Strange Education Label: TVT Length: LP Rated: NONE Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Strange Education, A The Scots may be known for their love of drink, but in the case of the Cinematics, their affections can also stray toward dark pop (and most likely, being good Scots, a few rounds to go alongside it).…
Ghost
Ghost Label: Morr Music Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Ghost Ben Cooper won some hearts last year in a lo-fi pop project called Electric President. The self-titled no-frills debut was an agreeable listen, dressed in inoffensive laptop-sourced beats and Cooper’s slow, winding vocal. As Radical Face, Cooper’s compositions have flourished into cheerful portraits,…
Pressure the Hinges
Pressure the Hinges Label: Solid State Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Pressure the Hinges Haste the Day plays metalcore with such unwavering competence that listeners’ feelings about the subgenre as a whole should be synonymous with their reaction to this group. Granted, this is a Christian band, named after a hymn and prone…
Let Me Introduce My Friends
Let Me Introduce My Friends Label: Mute Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Let Me Introduce My Friends Let Me Introduce My Friends is not the work of Barcelonians, but Swedish songwriter Emanuel Lundgren did indeed ask 28 ‘friendsâ?� to contribute to his full-length debut as I’m From Barcelona. It’s straight Tommy James’like fluff,…
The Last Mimzy
The Last Mimzy Studio: New Line Cinema Rated: PG Cast: Chris O’Neil, Rhiannon Leigh Wryn, Joely Richardson, Timothy Hutton, Megan McKinnon Director: Robert Shaye WorkNameSort: Last Mimzy, The Our Rating: 3.50 Sedate, subtle and psychedelic, The Last Mimzy is less a kid-friendly fantasy flick than it is a secret stoner movie waiting to be discovered…
Reign Over Me
Reign Over Me Studio: Sony Pictures Releasing Rated: R Cast: Don Cheadle, Adam Sandler, Saffron Burrows, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Liv Tyler Director: Mike Binder WorkNameSort: Reign Over Me Our Rating: 3.50 Unlike last year’s United 93 or World Trade Center, which focused entirely on the events of Sept. 11, director/screenwriter Mike Binder’s Reign Over Me tackles…
Shooter
Shooter Studio: Paramount Pictures Rated: R Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Michael Pena, Rhona Mitra, Kate Mara, Danny Glover Director: Antoine Fuqua WorkNameSort: Shooter Our Rating: 2.00 A silly blockbuster disguised as ferocious political commentary, Shooter fires away with ample success during some expertly staged and convincing action scenes â?¦ until it tries to be About Something.…
TMNT
TMNT Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution Rated: PG Cast: Patrick Stewart, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ziyi Zhang, Chris Evans, Mako Director: Kevin Munroe WorkNameSort: TMNT An opening act for the upcoming Transformers, here we have another childhood favorite renewed for a younger decade, this time in computer-animated format. The pizza-chomping sewer-dwellers are fairly consistent with the…
POLICE BEAT
MARCH 8, 7:01 A.M.: Sometime between when a construction crew headed home at night and arrived back on the McCoy Road job site the next day, an unknown suspect or suspects broke through the gate to the fenced-in area that housed valued construction goodies. Reports state that officers noted “400 gallons of diesel fuel missing…
LETTERS
;Shoot first ;We may never know what truly happened that night [“Unhappy New Year’s,” March 15]. Before we can come to any conclusion we need to know what caused these two men to take their gun out in the first place. Did they feel threatened? Were they just looking for trouble? Why weren’t they allowed…
FLORIDA FILM FESTIVAL 2007
Why be normal? So goes the bumper-sticker cliché that’s seen for a fleeting instant on a refrigerator in The Ballad of AJ Weberman. The phrase also works as a prevailing theme for many of the films that made their way into this year’s Florida Film Festival. For its Sweet Sixteen, the FFF programmed 170 movies…
SELECTIONS
Thursday•22 Six Parts Seven The minimalist architecture of the Six Parts Seven’s instrumental sound hits hardest when it’s taken out of context; a split CD with the Black Keys is a study in contrasting shades of a rusty color, while a fantastic disc of remixes (Lost Notes and Forgotten Songs) contains reconstructions courtesy of atypical…
BRAZIL OR BUST
;Bonde do Role is guilty of ;committing at least one subversive act in music. The trio from Curitiba, Brazil, did the unimaginable when they took funk carioca, an urban music native to Rio’s hillside favelas, out of the slums. ;;”In Brazil if you’re not from the favela, you can’t sing funk carioca; it’s something from…
BROTHERS IN ARMS
Virginia’s Clipse dwells in the dark recesses of hip-hop’s smoky and foreboding back alleys. Pusha-T and his younger brother Malice, both originally born in Brooklyn, weave intricate cartel fairy tales where starry-eyed women hold ulterior motives close to the chest and life in prison is tucked away in the freezer in the form of kilos.…
CHARACTER CHATTER
A March 4 article in the Orlando Sentinel examined the high rate of injuries suffered by Disney’s character performers, and gave Mouse management a platform to tout safety improvements made to their signature cartoon costumes. While largely well-researched, Beth Kassab’s piece missed the real story: After decades of development, Disney recently introduced new technology that…
THE SILLY SEASON
On March 6, Gov. Charlie Crist gave his first State of the State speech, and he sounded almost politically ecumenical. He’s down with tax cuts, and he wants to get tough on parole violators. But he also gave an Al Gore—friendly nod to global warming concerns and promised to fully fund the class-size amendment Jeb…
BLISTER
;Oh, so this is how it feels. Having spent the better part of my liquored life coercing fidgety straights into obnoxious gay bars, buttering them up with assurances that “Nobody will even notice you” and “You won’t have to worry about drunk guys/girls sticking their hands in places they shouldn’t” (a lie), tonight somebody’s holding…
SAVAGE LOVE
I was shocked to read your response to Not Giving Up last week. Dan, how could you? For years, you have been our go-to guy for uncommon sexual knowledge. So it made me want to cry when I read your column about Joan Sewell’s book I’d Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido.…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
;ARIES Hundreds of years ago, the Native American tribe known as the Seneca had a rule of thumb about when to sow seed corn. You had to wait until the weather was warm enough to lie naked in the dirt without discomfort. I believe a similar principle applies to your plans to start a certain…
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
Though not particularly known for it, this city knows hip-hop. Problem is, these knowledgeable circles have been small and only sporadically enterprising. Moreover, creative efforts by homegrown artists have been somewhat isolated. Considered in aggregate, it’s no wonder a sizable following has never been sustained. Currently, the true hip-hop scene doesn’t exist locally beyond the…
I LOVE TELEVISION
;I give the networks a lot of poop. Week after week I continually hurt their feelings with my mean-spirited jabs directed at any new show that has the misfortune of coming down the pike — although you do have to admit that watching that new Pussycat Dolls show is worse than having your eyeball dug…
ARTS & CULTURE TO GO
Italian Memorial Sculpture With all due respect to the deceased, it takes a morbid knack for photography to capture great pictures in cemeteries. Little metal plaques on stone slabs or cement half-ovals with the letters RIP don’t register as more than blips on the aesthetic radar regardless of how poetic the epitaph. Even the more…
HAPPYTOWN
;And now it’s time for another installment of What’s Up With Ric?™, our attempt to keep you up to date on the comings and goings of Orlando’s favorite Republican, U.S. Rep. Ric Keller! ;;This week’s episode finds Ric — recently heard denouncing President Bush’s Iraq “surge” via a weird lawnmower analogy — on the receiving…
Want to know how nefarious Pearlman’s enterprise was?
It’s buried – why I don’t know – inside a Sentinel story about people who might buy the property. Check it out: ” Green said many tenants aren’t paying their rent, including several defunct Pearlman companies. She also said Club Paris is behind in its rent, although owner Fred Khalilian said he had been refusing…
