The Back Room
The Back Room Label: Kitchenware/Fader Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Back Room, The At least they’re from England – Birmingham, to be exact. Editors are the latest group to cut a convincing swath through the ’80s post-punk revival that liberally quotes Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Smiths and so on. England’s newest hitmakers (the album…
Broken English
Defying the expectations of the “tablatronic” sound, the talented Kale puts a surprisingly heavy emphasis on the “-tronic” part of the equation on his third album. Sounding more like a tasteful and well-traveled pop album than his previous, more “exotic” excursions, Broken English is what the global jukebox should sound like. It seems that Kale’s…
Orkideur Hawai
Orkideur Hawai Label: Bubble Core Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Orkideur Hawai It is said that in the 1950s, a musician named Boris Karlov (not the Frankenstein guy) was the first to spice up Bulgarian folk music with some accordion. This obviously affected Kristin Anna Valtysdottir, founder of Iceland’s prized electronica outfit Múm and accordion player for…
First Daze Here Too
First Daze Here Too Label: Relapse Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: First Daze Here Too To go from misunderstood and unmarketable to legendary and name-dropped in just three decades takes only one thing: a great name. Washington, D.C., band Pentagram fused together the best elements of ’70s hard rock and proto-metal – Deep Purple, Blue Cheer, the…
The Big Question
The Big Question Studio: Ganga Films Rated: PG-13 Website: http://www.gangafilm.com/documentari/TheBigQuestion/TBQ_stampaE.html Release Date: 2006-03-23 Cast: Mel Gibson, Monica Bellucci, Toni Bertorelli, Giovanni Capalbo, James Caviezel Director: Francesco Cabras, Alberto Molinari Screenwriter: Francesco Cabras Music Score: Alessandro Molinari WorkNameSort: Big Question, The Our Rating: 1.50 Blithely unaware that James Toback did the whole thing better 17 years…
CAREER CRIMINAL
To your mom, John Waters is the man we have to thank for Hairspray; to you, he’ll always be the genius who got Divine to eat dog shit on camera. The 60-year-old filmmaker has attained an almost unique longevity by being all things to all maniacs. Or, to put it in the criminal-justice terms he…
Savage Love
My sister met a creepy old man (COM) when he snuck into a dorm party at my sister’s college. He proposed to her on their first date after the party. Our parents were immediately suspicious because of the large age difference – COM is older than they are and my sister is 18 years old.…
Police Beat
March 11, 12:24 p.m.: Last week, we reported on some baby-bag-filching-food-stamp-snatching-purse-pilfering sorts of soulless SOBs who robbed a mother and her kids. Well, they’ve returned for a repeat performance. Officer Harris reports: “`T`he `37-year-old` victim was standing with her two-year-old child, who was in a stroller, in the 5400 block of Timberleaf waiting for Lynx…
PROFANE EXISTENCE
Deadbird’s Phillip Schaaf saddles concepts he finds unsavory with the suffix “and shit,” providing curt punctuation to sentences spoken in his unhurried Arkansas drawl. Schaaf’s brother Chuck (the band’s lead vocalist) is trying to get him to “sing harmonies and shit.” He watched Chuck’s earlier band Rwake share bills with “Gothic synth-pop bands and shit.”…
BLAST TENSE
History is a band that, ironically enough, is attempting to escape its past. Although the quintet has only been playing together in their current formation for a little over a year, the vast majority of that time has been spent shedding the specter of the members’ former bands and avoiding the comfort zone of adolescent…
FAMILY BY THE GRACE OF GOD
When The Wynn Brothers Band, a family affair of epic proportions, proudly announce they are “Southern by the grace of God,” a fine line is made sharper by all the mind’s immediate reference points: Confederate flags, Wal-Marts and Republican rallies. It’s a side effect, sometimes merited, of a musical landscape at least three decades removed…
I Love Television
It’s a pretty ridiculous state of affairs when a show like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is still considered to be one of the most subversive shows on television. Christ in a bag of cats, people! The show’s not subversive if my grandma prefers Carson Kressley and his ugly belts to my twice-yearly visits…
Yakety yak â?¦ they don’t talk back
There’s something to be learned from that special breed of people known as “dog owners.” At least that’s what I hoped as I was on my way last Sunday to Downey Park — one of Orange County’s handful of parks that welcomes dogs — for a special event: the Orlando Dachshund Races, organized by Gary…
Sell, Trade or Bias
Last week, Amazon.com altered its search engine to eliminate a problem that had drawn the fire of pro-choice activists. According to several news outlets, users who searched for the term “abortion” had been met with the question, “Did you mean adoption?” followed by a book list heavily skewed toward pro-life tracts. Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith…
Javier Garcia, Centro-Matic, Spin City Classic, T&A Karaoke and more
Thursday • 23 CLEAR STATIC Zapped in from the outer realms of popped image and blaring overproduction previously orbited by Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Hollywood’s super-sweet Clear Static may initially curl the tongue in a diabetic reaction. In theory, their self-titled Maverick debut is a younger, gayer brother to the Killers’…
Letters
Overreactions Mr. Cole neatly sidesteps the issue of the reaction to an offense being worse than the offense itself `”Juan’s world,” March 16`. An editorial board would face public reprisals for printing caricatures of Martin Luther King as Stepin Fetchit. But no one would burn a building for it, or issue religious death threats. The…
Notable Noise
I’ve never been to an Amway meeting, but now I think I know what one must be like. I was invited to a “VIP event” for an online venture called BurnLounge, and though the invitation was in the most flattering terms – “We’d love to have someone of your stature in the local music scene…
Blister
“Angela. It’s Rayanne,” I twirl a DayGlo braid knot just outside of my cell phone. “We need to go now. I totally need to stop and get an abortion on our way to the Frozen Embryos concert. I kinda got knocked up last night.” “Omigod. Was it Jordan Catalano?” she whimpers. “Yeah. But we did…
Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology
ARIES Seventh grader Michael Kawa’s poem is about the official face he shows the world. “My mask helps me when I am scared and when I am embarrassed,” he writes. “My mask tells me to act like someone else when I want to act like myself. My mask tells me I should go on the…
FLORIDA FILM FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
FRIDAY, MARCH 24 7 p.m. Opening-night film: KINKY BOOTS Enzian, $75, 106 minutes (cocktails at 6:30 p.m.) Preceded by short “A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process (In Less Than 60 Seconds)” (1.5 minutes) 9 p.m. Opening-night party Enzian, $50 (party only) SATURDAY, MARCH 25 Noon Family Program: THE SASQUATCH DUMPLING GANG Regal, 85 minutes…
FLORIDA FILM FESTIVAL REVIEWS
Feeling overwhelmed by the vast cornucopia of independent features and documentaries on offer at the 15th annual Florida Film Festival? You won’t be after you devour the in-depth reviews on the following page. To plan your moviegoing to the split-second, see the full event schedule. And check back next issue for critical highlights of the…
A FAILURE TO DELIVER
The theory behind term limits goes like this: After eight years in office, Florida lawmakers are out of touch with their constituents. By then, they’re corrupted career politicians, enslaved to a system that favors special interests and screws the little guy. Getting rid of old, washed-up incumbents prevents abuses of power and encourages a more…
Happytown
Last week we reported on former public defender Joseph DuRocher returning his Navy medals to President Bush along with a scathing letter decrying Shrub’s gross ineptitude. After returning from England soon after his letter was published in the Orlando Sentinel and excerpted here, DuRocher says he received more than 900 e-mails, only 15 of which…
COMING UP SHORTS
The problem with a lot of movies these days is that they’re too damn long. King Kong, which clocks in at over three hours, would have been twice as good at half the length. Meanwhile, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe might have made a perfectly acceptable 15-minute featurette. And…
