The GOP’s ‘detailed road-to-recovery plan’ short on, um, details. Or recovery. Or anything else, really. Except tax cuts!
So long as John Boehner is the face and brains of the Republican Party, I can pretty much guarantee you that Nancy Pelosi will own the speaker’s gavel. Good God. The man is a dolt. To wit: Two days ago, Obama said that he hadn’t seen a Republican alternative to his budget. So, to prove…
Pan-Latin potpourri
Comfort-food staples for homesick expats
Home slice
The overwhelming smell of garlic, the barely-20-something staff and the fluorescent glow coming from Panino’s Pizza and Grill, on the corner of Orange Avenue and Pine Street, suggests just another pizza joint with faux’New York slices and soggy wings. Not so. With more than 14 by-the-slice variations and many others available in whole-pie form, it’s…
E.T. Go home
Dreamworksâ?? dizzying, hysterical creature flick a technical knockout
Sunshine girls
Crime scene comedy is bloody funny
FFF: Music Films
Anvil! The Story of Anvil (3 Stars) Now that VH1 has helpfully desensitized audiences to the heartbreak that is rock has-beens, the sight of (for a brief moment in history) metal gods Anvil working blue-collar jobs and jumping at the chance to play for 100 people in Romania doesn’t pack the wallop it might. Gathering…
Blister
This isn’t working out for me. Here I sit in the wreckage of dreams not quite deferred, a pale, fragile, digestive hazard of last night’s sleepy-time litany of drunk-driving Mack trucks off cliffs, one-eyed monsters of ill repute, baby-sitting adventures with cracked-out Elisabeth Shues and single-engine airplane thrill rides bumping off giant bouncing beach balls…
FFF: Narrative Features
(500) Days of Summer Not screened per studio request. Alien Trespass (1 Star) Former X-Files director R.W. Goodwin’s homage to sci-fi films of the ’50s like The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Earth vs. the Flying Saucers — the ones in which a vanilla small town is invaded and the citizens’ sensibilities are…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19) Don’t you think it’s time you toned down your manic aspirations? Aren’t you curious about the sweet, sensitive success that could be yours if only you got really calm and peaceful? Wouldn’t it be interesting to explore the more manageable opportunities that might become available by accepting your limitations with humble…
FFF: Opening Night
Western Spaghetti (2 Stars) Well, I guess there’s your theme in action. Somebody cooks spaghetti but the ingredients are non-food products like balls of yarn. It’s all in brilliant stop-motion animation, so it must be “creative” and not mildly chuckle-worthy. — Justin Strout Management (3 Stars) It’s a good thing Stephen Belber pipes in a…
Savage Love
The two things that I dig most on a woman are a nice big pair of … swim fins. Some of my earliest sexual fantasies revolve around Jacqueline Bisset in The Deep. It’s frustrating to have such a bizarre fetish. One day I’m heading somewhere tropical like Hawaii, where I hope to meet scuba divas.…
FFF: Documentary Features
American Swing (2 Star) It’s the uninhibited ’70s, coke flows freely, sex is up for grabs and disco bangs overhead until the ’80s come crashing down. No, it’s not Boogie Nights, 54 or Inside Deep Throat, but it could be; we’ve seen and heard it all before. American Swing struts and swaggers with the rise…
Live Active Cultures
I want to stop for a moment this week and talk not about my latest cultural find, but rather someone we’ve lost. On March 16, a tribute was held at Theatre Downtown honoring the life and works of John Goring, author, director and longtime president of Playwrights Round Table. Goring passed away at age 56…
FFF: Return of the X
An Evening With ; Ken Russell and ; Barry Sandler ;featuring Crimes of Passion;9 p.m. Saturday, March 28 ; Regal Winter Park Village 20; 407-629-1088, ext. 225;$20 ;; In a sense, the characters in the 1984 film Crimes of Passion are painted with broad strokes: the hooker with the heart of gold; the repressed suburban…
Happytown
Over the years, we’ve grown accustomed to our friends at the Liberty Counsel being on the case when it comes to denying gays equal rights and making sure Christians can erect monuments anywhere they please. They’re just doing their thing, which is trying to drag America back to some idealized version of society that never…
FFF: Shorts
Shorts No. 1 “Lost in Space” Flat Love (4 Stars) “Write what you know,” they say in their infinite wisdom, and Chilean short-film master Andrés Sanz heeds the advice. He writes magic because he knows magic; he directs living, breathing works of majesty because he knows life. In this, his latest flight of fancy, Sanz…
Council Watch
It was a particularly slow news week at the city’s giant wooden chopping board, one lit up by toothy smiles (hello, giggle fit from commissioner Tony Ortiz), greeting-card developments (commissioner Robert Stuart said he might have to “duck out early” due to the imminent birth of his first granddaughter) and seasonal wordplay (commissioner Sam Ings:…
Barely legal
Florida Film Festival 2009 March 27-April 5 at Enzian Theater and Regal Winter Park Village 20;$10 (individual screenings), $600 (Platinum Pass);407-629-1088, ext. 225;www.floridafilmfestival.com It feels like the first time. The Florida Film Festival’s yearly parade of independent and moderately budgeted mainstream cinema has entered its 18th year and, as one might expect at that age,…
Police Beat
March 12 (2009-117065) 9 a.m.: A guy broke into a maintenance shed at an apartment complex and stole tools. Original. (2009-117403) 1 p.m.: Open garage door, two missing bicycles. (2009-117404) 1:01 p.m.: Someone stole a range and a fridge from an empty apartment. (2009-117500) 1:42 p.m.: At the same complex, a washer-dryer combo vanished from…
Cat got your tongue
Temptation: Original Cinema & Forbidden Fruit Opening night film and party film 6:30 p.m., party 8:30 p.m. Friday, March 27 at Enzian Theater; $75-$100 The Flavors of Cat Cora: Discussion and Tasting 2 p.m. Saturday, March 28 at Enzian Theater; $40 Indulgence: Film Feasts The Godfather, chef Norman Van Aken, at Norman’s King Corn, chef…
In spring repertory at the Shakes: a light comedy and a dark one
The Merchant of Venice Through April 25 Much Ado About Nothing Through April 26 Orlando Shakespeare Theater 407-447-1700 www.orlandoshakes.org $22-$38 $22-$38 Orlando Shakespeare Theater director Jim Helsinger has been tasked to act as a virtual stitching master for the company’s production of The Merchant of Venice, a work he describes in the program as a…
Tight bros from way back
Bradford Cox and Lockett Pundt aren’t just Deerhunter bandmates; they’re also professed Best Friends Forever. “He’s like my muse — my second half, my other half,” Cox gushed to Pitchfork in an interview promoting Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel, his 2008 debut as Atlas Sound — which he dedicated…
Trick or tweet
Sweat hangs heavier in the air than the requisite hands. Los Angeles’ Cinespace is beyond hot, hovering somewhere near sauna, and the hype in the air is for hip-hop artist Kid Cudi. Rumors of M.I.A.’s presence in the overflowing crowd perks up, then dies down just as quickly as Noreaga’s impromptu set in support of…
‘Amadeus’ is really the Antonio Salieri show
Amadeus Through April 19 Mad Cow Theatre 407-297-8788 www.madcow theatre.com $15-$26 Music today is nothing but overindulged children emitting empty ornamentation, with indecent lyrics that glorify vulgarity and vice when they should be uplifting and ennobling. If that’s your inner monologue every time you scan the radio dial, you’re a kindred spirit of the character…
Jabbur’s magic number: 9
; Unstable Realities: ; Paintings by ; Rima Jabbur; Through May 30 ; Crealdé School of Art, ; Winter Park; 407-671-1886; www.crealde.org;Free; donations accepted ;; If the new exhibit at Crealdé School of Art sounds minor – after all, there are only nine pieces in Unstable Realities: Paintings by Rima Jabbur – it is anything…
The other performing arts center
The proposed $350 million downtown performing arts center may be on life support, stuck in negotiations with the First United Methodist Church of Orlando and hampered by the sputtering economy, but it isn’t dead yet. Meanwhile, however, the city has pledged to pay for more than $17.5 million for yet another performing arts center downtown,…
FFF: International Features
English Surgeon (4 Stars) British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, a contemplative, affable gentleman, spends his vacation time volunteering in Kiev, Ukraine, where the citizens are desperate and medical equipment is scarce and antiquated. Most doctors would feel pretty good about themselves for contributing this kind of pro bono work, but Marsh remains haunted by a former…
FFF: Midnight Movies: Short Films and Features
The Blindness of the Woods (3 Stars) Is it surprising that Swedish erotica is just as dark and cold as all other things Nordic? No, but the fact that it’s done with actors in body socks sure is. Also included with the film are several 15-second interstitials that just had to be shown on their…
Can you save Nickelback?
As the first round of voting in the Great North American Douche-Rock Tournament comes to a close, we thought we’d bring you an update… From Justin’s Beatdown post yesterday: Here’s a little update and it’s a juicy one: Metro Station is the Siena to Nickelback’s Louisville! Let’s see if they can do what Siena couldn’t…
