Better off alone
The makers of â??Preciousâ?? fail to recognize themselves
Sew what?
Biopic covers boring portion of a fashion legendâ??s life
Safely exotic
Sanaa focuses on the Indian Ocean side of the Dark Continent
Running hot and cold
Seeing affogato, a scoop of gelato splashed with a shot of espresso (see ‘Bites of spring,â?� Feb. 15, 2007) on the menu at Piccolo, a primo gelato joint in the Whole Foods plaza on Turkey Lake Road, gave me cause for excitement. The combination of hazelnut gelato (made on the premises every day) and a…
The audacity of normal
Mike Dunn & the Kings of New England with Andy Matchett & the Minks, Darling Cavaliers, Louis DeFabrizio 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 20 Back Booth, 407-999-2570 $8 Sundowner (Hopeless) Nobody ever said signing a record deal comes without pitfalls. “I bought a $300 scooter yesterday and busted my hand. First day,” laughs Mike Dunn, frontman…
Blister
The light just went off, that old major airline seatbelt signifier of settling down, of woes left behind like microscopic dust particles in an imagined inner-eyelid rearview mirror. Sure, they’ll dance there, kick up, grow, morph into problems you’ve not even had the foresight to wrap your skull’s insurance policy around, then inevitably blow up…
Surrounded 2
Frightening geography Surrounded 2 Through Dec. 7 at Bold Hype 1844 E. Winter Park Road 407-619-1965 www.boldhype.net Free Put to rest any doubt of the vibrancy of Orlando’s art scene; it’s here and now with talent and creativity still unfolding a year after the original Surrounded debuted at Bold Hype. With mock-ominous implications, visitors again…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19) “A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. I hope you will have many such days in the coming weeks. In fact, I hope that you’ll be blessed over and over again with the hair-raising thrill of…
Assassins
The will to kill Assassins Through Nov. 22 at Seminole State College 100 Weldon Blvd., Sanford 407-708-2040 $10 Most people who kill generally kill someone they know. A slight between friends grows into a grudge, which swells into a rage, which finally erupts into the ultimate violent act. “Shopkeepers and lovers get murdered. … But…
Savage Love
I am a 40-ish married straight woman living in New York. I have been happily married in a monogamous relationship for 11 years. My husband and I met when we were in our early 20s. After listening to all of the Savage Lovecasts together, we started to talk about the idea of “some degree of…
Holy Crap!
Sacrilegious trinity Holy Crap! Final show 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 21, at the Parliament House 410 N. Orange Blossom Trail www.wanzie.com $10 Jesus Christ, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus walk into a bar. (Please don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one; trust me, you haven’t.) Ever since his dad abdicated heaven for a…
Happytown
“I guess Mr. Harris must have taken the week off,” were the prophetic (and chipper!) words of Mayor Buddy Dyer at the end of the Nov. 2 Orlando city council meeting upon noticing the absence of hulking, soft-spoken rabble-rouser — and District 5 anti-Daisy Lynum city commission hopeful — Ezell “E-Z” Harris. Harris, you see,…
Holiday Guide 2009: Holiday Hours
Holiday Guide 2009 With the exception of the lonely and those in serious need of cash, no one wants to work Christmas. You’re supposed to be at home with the family tearing into presents, shoving pie into your piehole and reflecting on the birth of the baby Jesus. You are not supposed to do the…
Council Watch
Only nine days earlier, on Nov. 6, the city — and for a moment, the nation, at least on the cable news crawls — bore witness to a cacophony of gunfire that shut down downtown, so this week’s city council meeting would have to be a very special episode of Growing Pains. Well, sort of.…
DVDs Nuts!
Downhill Racer This little-talked-about sports drama about a competitive skier (Robert Redford on the cusp of his movie-star persona) who must be shaped into an Olympic star by his coach (a pre-French Connection Gene Hackman) is a disarmingly great film. Directed by Michael Ritchie, everything in the film, from the camera shots seemingly mounted on…
Holiday Guide 2009: Bartender
It’s the Island of Misfit Toys. Slightly saddened faces etched deep with perennial rejection line up and hang down along the bar as other people play out their sweater-stretching Christmas conviviality — the torn parcels, grandma’s dentures, the eggnog umbrage — into eventual familial scrapbooks. The holidays aren’t always for everybody, especially when you’re gay.…
Bon M.O.T.
11th Annual Central Florida Jewish Film Festival Sunday, Nov. 22, and Monday, Nov. 23 Enzian Theater 407-629-0054 $10-$60 A Matter of Size (4 Stars) Israeli chef Herzl (an endearing Itzik Cohen) can’t catch a break: He weighs over 300 pounds, he’s demoted to the back of his restaurant for his appearance, and his diet support…
Holiday Guide 2009: Cooks
See A Christmas Carol enough times and you’ll long for a traditional British Christmas dinner, no matter where you come from. Suddenly you find yourself craving a roast-turkey feast with all the puddings, pastries and stuffing on the side, made by hand with real butter. If you can’t make it back to Old Blighty this…
Holiday Guide 2009: Animal service officer
When there are only 27 people in the entire county who do your job, and your job is to protect animals all over the county 24/7, it’s inevitable that you are going to work a few holidays. So when Laura Tuttle, an animal services officer for Orange County, pulled a Christmas shift last year, it…
Live Active Cultures
‘Tis the season again already? I confess I’m one of those schmucks standing astride the calendar shouting, “Stop!” Call me a Scrooge, a stick-in-the-mud, a stiff-necked Semite. But I miss the days when the Xmas season didn’t start until after Santa’s sleigh slid down Sixth Avenue on Thanksgiving. And as a writer I’d like at…
Holiday Guide 2009: ER nurse
At 4:30 a.m., Leesburg is a ghost town, even on Christmas Day. Soon kids will be launching themselves at the tree and their groaning parents will be yawning into their coffee. But at this hour, the streets are empty of traffic on Terri Wilson’s way to work, and they will be almost as quiet at…
Holiday Guide 2009: Stripper
The common wisdom is that suicides skyrocket during the holidays. Though this is entirely unsupported by research, the public buys it because it’s so easy to envision. The de facto mandate of family togetherness at this time of year seems destined to push the haunted lonely — those going through divorce or on the outs…
Holiday Guide 2009: Paramedic
If you find yourself walking the streets of downtown Orlando this Christmas and hear sleigh bells and an irritatingly cheerful chorus caroling “Jingle Bells” at you, it’s probably an ambulance. No, the city’s reviver elite hasn’t gone mad. As it turns out, for those unfortunate enough to be tasked with rushing to the saddest ’round-the-Christmas-tree…
This Little Underground
This year’s Anti-Pop Music Festival had a distinctly different tenor than any of the previous ones. The bad news for the fifth annual chapter is that it was the flattest yet in terms of national talent. However, the organizers get a bit of a recession pass on this, as do all the other local music…
God as a concept album
The Mountain Goats with Final Fantasy 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 23 The Social 407-246-1419 $17-$20 In one of his most popular songs, John Darnielle, frontman for folk-rock group the Mountain Goats, chants “Hail Satan” with a televangelist’s gusto. On the road, he does so routinely, along with throngs of his über-devoted cult of followers, their…
Sheâ??s a man-eater
Neko Case 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19 The Plaza Theatre 407-228-1220 $25-$28 ‘It’s gratifying to be up there with U2 and Taylor Swift,” says Neko Case from her farm in rural Vermont about her latest release, Middle Cyclone, which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts. “All of us just hanging out … that…
