NYC Gestapo Strike Again
What is wrong with police in New York City? First they go and shoot an unarmed man 19 times without provocation. Then N.Y.P.D. (which stands for New York’s Pricks and Dicks) go and stick a plunger up a man’s rectum so far that his intestines rupture. He too, was also unarmed…but that wasn’t enough. Then…
ETERNAL CONFUSION
Sifting through the murk of The Fountain
Claude Chabrol’s Tales of Deceit
Claude Chabrol’s Tales of Deceit Studio: Kino Video WorkNameSort: Claude Chabrol’s Tales of Deceit Kino’s new five-disc Claude Chabrol collection is called Tales of Deceit, a theme in the director’s oeuvre that is hardly specific to these titles. You could throw all of Chabrol’s pictures into a hat, pull out five at random and release…
The Junky’s Christmas
The Junky’s Christmas Studio: Koch Vision Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Junky’s Christmas, The If there could be an exact opposite to the holiday animation of the Rankin/Bass team, this 1993 claymation short would be it. Based on a 1952 short story by William S. Burroughs (it’s also his craggy voice that narrates the film), The Junky’s…
Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears
Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears Studio: Disney WorkNameSort: Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears When Disney decided to dip their toes into the Smurf-stirred pool of 1980s televised animation, they chose the unbelievably stupid premise of magical, candy-inspired bears who can jump really high when they drink, uh, gummiberry juice. While the mid-’80s were…
Alive! Box Set
Alive! Box Set Label: Island Media: CD Format: BoxSet WorkNameSort: Alive! Box Set At the risk of offending the legions of maniacal Kiss fans (as well as my own pre-adolescent self), I must put forth the notion that Kiss has never been much of a live band. Though legendary for the sheer spectacle of their…
Plague Songs
Plague Songs Label: 4AD Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Plague Songs Just in time for Christmas, what could be better than a little musical meditation on how vengeful and recriminatory God can be? Commissioned for an English art event in September that visually and sonically revisited the 10 Biblical plagues, each song on…
Mirrors for Eyes
Mirrors for Eyes Label: Mush Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Mirrors for Eyes The balance captured on Caural’s Mirrors for Eyes originates from experience in recording for at least a couple of labels, but it’s also due to scattered schooling. Before assuming his moniker, producer/electronic musician Zachary Mastoon studied jazz, Southeast Asian music…
Joyride: Remixes
Joyride: Remixes Label: K Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Joyride: Remixes When contemplating remix culture, one thinks of international pop and dance templates enhanced or deconstructed by a shadowy, (somewhat) parasitic cabal of DJs and producers. The clear, cool folk of Philadelphia songwriter Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn ‘ stirring, spare, complete ‘ wouldn’t…
Lazy Afternoon
Lazy Afternoon Label: Blue Toucan Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Lazy Afternoon Recorded by a Swedish-born singer who, at the age of 15, measured her future against the records of João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim, Elin’s debut has all the placid allure of a Rio beach at midnight. Though not a natural…
ASSUME THE POSITION
Two professors tackle the pseudoscience of making an ass out of you and me
FLY WITH THE ANGELS
Christian Hosoi’s rebirth
Bobby
Bobby Length: Single Studio: MGM Distribution Company Rated: R Website: http://www.bobby-the-movie.com/ Release Date: 2006-11-23 Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Lindsay Lohan, Elijah Wood Director: Emilio Estevez Screenwriter: Emilio Estevez Music Score: Mark Isham, Chris Douridas WorkNameSort: Bobby Our Rating: 1.50 If there were an alternate universe where earnestness and good intentions were arbiters…
Freedom’s Fury
Freedom’s Fury Studio: Grainey Rated: NOT RATED Director: Colin Gray (III), Megan Raney WorkNameSort: Freedom’s Fury Our Rating: 3.50 The key interest in Freedom’s Fury is how it uses one event that American audiences are probably unfamiliar with ‘ the violent 1956 Olympic water-polo match between the Soviet Union and Hungary ‘ to tell the…
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
The ethos of the annual Anti-Pop Music Festival, the sophomore edition of which occurred last week, is very much in line with my own. That’s what makes the tepid sensation it left me with all the more perplexing. The verdict The single biggest deficiency of this year’s event was that it didn’t feel like a…
I LOVE TELEVISION
Don’t you kind of feel sorry for Fox TV? In the olden days (back when it was the fourth place network out of four networks), Fox was like a 5-year-old kid jacked up on Mountain Dew and Pixy Stix —it’d do ANYTHING to get your attention. I particularly enjoyed its guerrilla-style (and super-offensive) reality shows,…
ARTS & CULTURE TO GO
Wii “Just because you have a sticker does not mean you will get a Wii! Just because you don’t have a sticker doesn’t mean you won’t get a Wii!” Several dozen fellow geeks and I were being led kindergarten-style into the Wal-Mart electronics department for a midnight purchase of Nintendo’s newest video-gaming wonder. I have…
HAPPYTOWN
Why do we do it? Why do we lovingly craft this column week in and week out, year after year, typing our fingers to the cuticle for subsistence wages? We do it for the kids. And when someone finally recognizes our efforts, well, it feels pretty darn good. The Orange County School District paid us…
POLICE BEAT
NOV. 3, 3:30 P.M.: A man of about 25 strode into a rather ritzy department store in the 4100 block of Conroy Road to wrap up some Christmas shopping. He headed straight to the jewelry counter, handed the representative a credit card and asked for the watch he’d put on hold the previous day. Then…
LETTERS
Cut the Curtis bashing Happytown™: It was cute (and perhaps) forgivable at first, but now this is becoming simply appalling. You write `Nov. 16`: “Clint Curtis may have lost his congressional race to GOP Rep. Tom Feeney by 16 percentage points Nov. 7, but he’s not done yet. Curtis, who has accused Feeney of vote-rigging…
SELECTIONS
Thursday•23 2007 Central Florida international Auto Show There’ll be a lot of eye candy at the 2007-Model Central Florida International Auto Show — a pair of Corvette “VIN Twins” from 1957 and 2007, the world’s longest police car (27 feet), a 2006 Bugatti Veyron and one of the most exotic cars in the world. But…
SLOPPY THERAPY
Tech N9ne’s recent release Everready: The Religion begins with an account of his crew’s van accident last March. After a “dope-ass show in Billings, Montana,” the rapper and his entourage skidded en route to Spokane, Wash., hitting an embankment and flipping five times. Near-death experiences often steer survivors to spirituality, and Tech had a religious…
NEW YORK TO EAST CALIFORNIA
Craig Finn is about to learn a lesson. It’s just not clear what lesson it will be. With their third album, Boys and Girls in America, Brooklyn’s Hold Steady are receiving the best reviews of their career, playing to packed houses and living the crazy life of indie-rock desirables. It hasn’t been easy. They’ve had…
SECOND COMING
“It would be criminal to overlook the serious flaws and inadequacies in our institutions, or to fail to utilize the substantial degree of freedom that most of us enjoy, within the framework of these flawed institutions, to modify them or even replace them by a better social order,” Noam Chomsky wrote in 1969. “One who…
THANKSGIVING VINO
Thanksgiving at my house is a futile exercise in restraint. Which calorie-laden delight should I gorge on first? At my house, we load up on the traditional bread stuffing spiked with country sausage, roast turkey and tart homemade cranberry sauce, but also the less traditional: Dad’s famous spicy pork barbecue and salty, soft butter peas.…
HOME IS WHERE THE HOA IS
“Are you familiar with Architectural Record?” Barbara Verchot asks. She opens the cover of her architect-husband Keith Ray’s book, Contextual Architecture: Responding to Existing Style, which he authored for that high-end glossy’s publishing company. Around Verchot, wind chimes twinkle, water gurgles and koi fish swim in the shallow pond that sits in her impeccably manicured…
BLISTER
“Gawd,” I suck three dollars out of my $15 cocktail and slide down in my seat. “Why is Ben Stein so trying to get with me?” No sooner have copy-doodler Jessica Young and I hyper-spaced our hyper-thesauri to South Beach than does our first celebrity encounter play out through the frosted rims of our cocktails.…
SAVAGE LOVE
I am a 23-year-old lesbian in a relationship of three months. In these three months, I have been tied up, spanked, cut, burned and put on display for strangers at her request because she likes it and I’m GGG. My one and only kink is that I get a deep sexual thrill out of popping…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES I suspect you’ll be a genius of awkwardness in the coming week. What that means is that you’ll have a knack for doing the half-right thing at the half-right time — and yet that’s exactly what’ll be necessary in order to bring about unexpected outcomes that are in everyone’s best interests. In the short…
