Having kids? Expensive. Not having kids? Also expensive.
One of the effects of the recently passed Deficit Reduction Act that has caught health centers across the country by surprise is the steep hike in the price of birth control medications â?? in some cases, prices have tripled. The act prevents health organizations, including Medicaid, from negotiating discounts on prescription medications. As a result,…
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
A pedophilic priest is the subject of a searing documentary
Air Guitar Nation
Air Guitar Nation Studio: Shadow Distribution Rated: R Cast: David S. Jung, Dan Crane Director: Alexandra Lipsitz WorkNameSort: Air Guitar Nation Our Rating: 3.50 Too many documentaries get their energy from uncovering misdeeds and shining a light on injustice. Rare is the doc that exposes a subculture whose members, though odd, appear to be having…
Black Book
Black Book Studio: Sony Pictures Classics Rated: R Cast: Carice Van Houten, Sebastian Koch Director: Paul Verhoeven WorkNameSort: Black Book Our Rating: 5.00 Paul Verhoeven’s first film in six years is definitely worth the wait. Arguably the most mature movie of the cult-action stylist’s career, Black Book is the inverse of a typical Verhoeven picture.…
Spider-Man 3
Spider-Man 3 Studio: Sony Rated: PG-13 Cast: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst Director: Sam Raimi WorkNameSort: Spider-Man 3 Our Rating: 3.00 Spider-Man 3 is effectively the third chapter in a trilogy begun by director Sam Raimi five years ago, but rather than ending the current series with a bang, or maybe even a ka-bang, worthy of…
Music for the Movies: The Hollywood Sound
Music for the Movies: The Hollywood Sound Studio: Kultur WorkNameSort: Music for the Movies: The Hollywood Sound This Emmy-winning 1995 television production is about movie music, but it’s not about such great movie songs as ‘Over the Rainbowâ?� and ‘Moon River.â?� It’s about the other kind of movie music, the musical score. Specifically, it’s about…
China Doll
China Doll Studio: MGM WorkNameSort: China Doll Many of director Frank Borzage’s films are critically revered, a couple of them won him Best Director Oscars, but few have been seen outside revival houses and the occasional TCM showing. 1958’s China Doll ‘ his second-to-last film and his first in 10 years after being blacklisted ‘…
The Panic in Needle Park
The Panic in Needle Park Studio: 20th Century Fox WorkNameSort: Panic in Needle Park, The There are scenes of drug injection in 1971’s Panic in Needle Park that rival Bad Lieutenant and Fearless Freaks in their raw explicitness, and needlephobes won’t be the only people who choose to look away. It isn’t a crime to…
New Moon
New Moon Label: Kill Rock Stars Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: New Moon His mysterious death in the fall of 2003 ‘ suicide or murder ‘ remains open with the L.A. police department and only adds to the artistic myth. Who knows? In 20 years, he could be the next Jim Morrison and…
Tall Tales and Small Tales
Tall Tales and Small Tales Label: Swim Slowly Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Tall Tales and Small Tales As one of the primary fulcrums of the local indie-rock collective Funbalaya, Lane Barrington was as much an artistic activist as a musician, generating the ideas and propounding the community-building philosophies that made the loose-knit…
Stars on the Wall
Stars on the Wall Label: Morr Music Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Stars on the Wall On his debut as the Go Find three years ago, Belgian songwriter Dieter Sermeus looked to Morr Music amigo Styrofoam when he needed help producing a collection of driving, lo-fi electropop called Miami. Sermeus’ arrangements have changed…
Burning Off Impurities
Burning Off Impurities Label: Temporary Residence Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Burning Off Impurities Doom Kraut-folk? Hipster almost-metal? Psych-strum? None of these hyphenated micro-genre slots seem to suit Grails, but the instrumental outfit exists at the intersection of all three classifications. A field-recorded breaking storm heralds modal harpsichords tickled by inky bass keyboard…
WHIRLY BIRDS
You’ll flap your feathers over Brazas’ rotisserie chicken
BLISTER
I am not myself today, having spent the day in shorts rednecking on a boat on the St. Johns River (not St. Joan Rivers) eating fried chicken while my own chicken fried and listening to satellite-fed renditions of the white middle class (Heart!). Whether there’s even any self left has been called into question. Did…
SAVAGE LOVE
;I’m a 42-year-old straight guy, married 15 years, no kids. I love my wife, and I have remained faithful. Recently, I opened a Second Life (SL) account and created an avatar/alter ego for myself. I created an SL account with a female avatar because, although I’m straight and comfortable with my gender and sexuality, I’ve…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES (March 21-April 19) To manufacture one penny, the U.S. Treasury spends 1.4 cents. To process petroleum for use in operating a car, the oil industry expends 20 percent more energy than the gasoline yields. These are the kinds of situations you’ve urgently got to avoid in the coming week. You need to get substantially…
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
;Ugh, there’s MORE fallout from the Don Imus scandal in the form of reactionary social posturing, this time from Russell Simmons. Getting swept up in the maelstrom of “growing public outrage” over the use of certain words, the venerated hip-hop dignitary has now forfeited both his foresight and his credibility in the grasp for a…
LICK YOUR CHOPS FOR CHEAP
; Loyalty is a good thing, yes. But laziness? Not so much. So tell the truth: Do you eat at your favorite restaurant three times a week because you love it, or because you’re stuck in a rut? ;; Jump off the safe-dining treadmill and explore new territory May 4-10 during Orlando Weekly Restaurant Week,…
I LOVE TELEVISION
SHOCK: OK, I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy going on around here — but C’MON! How can TWO of the best reality-show contestants of the year be voted off in ONE week!? And of course I’m talking about Sanjaya Malakar (the ponyhawked and much-reviled 17-year-old from American Idol), and Heather Mills (the one-legged and much-reviled…
HAPPYTOWN
;So anyway, we thought you’d like to know that the property the city bought with the express purpose of constructing Rich DeVos’ Golden Pleasure Dome™ is contaminated with a bunch of gross stuff that does not belong on your breakfast cereal. Surprise! ;;Last September the city agreed to pay $33.5 million for the West Church…
POLICE BEAT
APRIL 18, 7:16 A.M.: When a 47-year-old man left a church in the 2800 block of Orange Center Boulevard after a day of classroom renovations, a lingering suspect or suspects seized the opportune moment to steal from Jesus. Regular readers of this column know that O-Town ne’er-do-wells generally head straight for the most random, worthless…
MAIL SACK
;Everyone’s a poet ;Regarding “The Great Go-Goop War, Part III” [April 26]:; ;An incredible, but not indelible,; ;Waste of paper and ink,; ;Don’t you honestly think?; ;Some tacky alt gunk,; ;Pages and pages of JUNK; ;This prof managed to sell you on, here.; ;It left me in tears, for the boredom it rears; ;From any…
RISE AGAIN
Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, lived the great empire that called itself Hip-Hop. Oh, but dear reader, what a magical once-upon-a-time this once-upon-a-time was in the province of New York; iron-willed Queens birthed Kings of Rock, philosopher-princes and street disciples. The serfs were well tended to by a President who paid…
SPELLBOUND
At the end of a long residential road in the unincorporated Seminole County town of Fern Park is a nondescript, middle-class home like thousands of others. On a recent Sunday, cars line the street and fill the home’s front yard. Women in flowing white skirts, some with colorful bead necklaces wrapped around their throats, and…
REBORN AT STETSON
Vera Bluemner Kouba was a regular at Stetson University’s music performances. The retired Deltona resident, daughter of modernist painter Oscar Bluemner, had always embraced the arts. But she shocked everyone when she approached the private DeLand university about leaving it more than 1,000 of her father’s works that had been stashed in her modest home…
NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON’T
Come hell or high water, Mayor Buddy Dyer is determined to build his $1.1 billion public works trifecta. But the public isn’t completely sold. Neither are Orange County officials. Doesn’t matter. Tourists are going to pay for it all, so we don’t need to fret, right? That’s the pitch. But there’s an elephant in the…
MORE TOLL ROADS, PLEASE
Florida has a problem. It hasn’t raised gas taxes since at least 1991, even to adjust for inflation. Meanwhile, higher gas prices mean more people are buying fuel-efficient vehicles, which means less money into the gas-tax coffers. The state relies on that money to build highways. Since more than 300,000 people move to Florida every…
