Movie: Ray
Our Rating: 3.50 Jamie Foxx’s portrayal of Ray Charles is both a great impression and a great performance, delighting those of us who have been talking up his abilities since Any Given Sunday. Foxx so totally inhabits the skin of the musical giant that he deserves a public-service award, not a measly Golden Globe. His…
Review – “Out of the Blue” Tour Live at Wembley/Discovery
Artist: Electric Light Orchestra
Review – Von
Artist: Sigur Rós
Review – Hoboken Saturday Night
Artist: The Insect Trust
Review – “Out of the Blue” Tour Live at Wembley/Discovery
Artist: Electric Light Orchestra
STOCKING STUFFER
Movie: Stage Beauty
Review – Hoboken Saturday Night
Artist: The Insect Trust
Movie: Alfie
Our Rating: 3.00 Though you can’t make a good case for its essentiality, at least this swinging-’60s rehash ensures that Jude Law won’t be remembered for anchoring the three most disappointing films of the fall. Taking over for Michael Caine in the role of a skirt-chasing cad, Law has to overcome a lot of cutesy…
STOCKING STUFFER
Movie: Stage Beauty
Movie: Head in the Clouds
Our Rating: 1.50 Try Head Up Its Own Ass. Oversexed and silly, this wannabe-provocative period piece views the onset of World War II through the eyes of a half-French, half-American trollop (Charlize Theron) and the British student (Stuart Townsend) who can’t decide if he’s more interested in humping her on a pool table or combating…
Movie: Ray
Ray Length: 2 hours, 33 minutes Studio: Universal Pictures Website: http://www.raymovie.com/index.php Release Date: 2004-11-04 Cast: Jamie Foxx, Regina King, Kerry Washington, Richard Schiff, Aunjanue Ellis Director: Taylor Hackford Screenwriter: James White, Taylor Hackford WorkNameSort: Ray Our Rating: 3.50 Jamie Foxx’s portrayal of Ray Charles is both a great impression and a great performance, delighting those…
Movie: The Incredibles
Our Rating: 3.50 Pixar’s hyper-hyped foray into PG territory isn’t enough of a disappointment to vindicate Michael Eisner’s negotiating-table kiss-off, but it’s still a major letdown after the glories of Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo. Style consistently trumps substance as a married pair of superheroes (voiced by Craig T. Nelson and Holly…
DOWN YONDER
Judging by the crowd on a recent Friday night, someone in charge at the new south Orlando Fish on Fire restaurant is paying close attention to marketing studies; though barely a month old, the place was packed. Perhaps FOF’s management has the adjacent La Quinta Inn to thank for the crowd; or perhaps the fact…
Movie: Ray
Our Rating: 3.50 Jamie Foxx’s portrayal of Ray Charles is both a great impression and a great performance, delighting those of us who have been talking up his abilities since Any Given Sunday. Foxx so totally inhabits the skin of the musical giant that he deserves a public-service award, not a measly Golden Globe. His…
Review – Von
Artist: Sigur Rós
Review – “Out of the Blue” Tour Live at Wembley/Discovery
Artist: Electric Light Orchestra
STOCKING STUFFER
Movie: Stage Beauty
Review – Hoboken Saturday Night
Artist: The Insect Trust
Movie: Alfie
Our Rating: 3.00 Though you can’t make a good case for its essentiality, at least this swinging-’60s rehash ensures that Jude Law won’t be remembered for anchoring the three most disappointing films of the fall. Taking over for Michael Caine in the role of a skirt-chasing cad, Law has to overcome a lot of cutesy…
STOCKING STUFFER
Movie: Stage Beauty
Movie: Head in the Clouds
Our Rating: 1.50 Try Head Up Its Own Ass. Oversexed and silly, this wannabe-provocative period piece views the onset of World War II through the eyes of a half-French, half-American trollop (Charlize Theron) and the British student (Stuart Townsend) who can’t decide if he’s more interested in humping her on a pool table or combating…
Movie: Alfie
Our Rating: 3.00 Though you can’t make a good case for its essentiality, at least this swinging-’60s rehash ensures that Jude Law won’t be remembered for anchoring the three most disappointing films of the fall. Taking over for Michael Caine in the role of a skirt-chasing cad, Law has to overcome a lot of cutesy…
Movie: The Incredibles
Our Rating: 3.50 Pixar’s hyper-hyped foray into PG territory isn’t enough of a disappointment to vindicate Michael Eisner’s negotiating-table kiss-off, but it’s still a major letdown after the glories of Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo. Style consistently trumps substance as a married pair of superheroes (voiced by Craig T. Nelson and Holly…
Movie: Head in the Clouds
Our Rating: 1.50 Try Head Up Its Own Ass. Oversexed and silly, this wannabe-provocative period piece views the onset of World War II through the eyes of a half-French, half-American trollop (Charlize Theron) and the British student (Stuart Townsend) who can’t decide if he’s more interested in humping her on a pool table or combating…
Movie: Ray
Our Rating: 3.50 Jamie Foxx’s portrayal of Ray Charles is both a great impression and a great performance, delighting those of us who have been talking up his abilities since Any Given Sunday. Foxx so totally inhabits the skin of the musical giant that he deserves a public-service award, not a measly Golden Globe. His…
Movie: The Incredibles
Our Rating: 3.50 Pixar’s hyper-hyped foray into PG territory isn’t enough of a disappointment to vindicate Michael Eisner’s negotiating-table kiss-off, but it’s still a major letdown after the glories of Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo. Style consistently trumps substance as a married pair of superheroes (voiced by Craig T. Nelson and Holly…
Review – Von
Artist: Sigur Rós
Culture
Dream State By Diane Roberts (Free Press, 355 pages) It gets wearying, having author after commentator after tourist continually prattle on about what Florida’s really all about. To them, this state is little more than a bunch of ignorant hicks, crazy old Jews and migrant fruit-pickers, all bundled up in a package of suburban strip…
Culture
Naked Airport By Alastair Gordon (Metropolitan, 320 pages) You have to admire Alastair Gordon’s pluck. With Naked Airport he has drummed up 300 pages about a structure that many Americans view as an outer layer of purgatory: those bright lights and security checks, the frozen-yogurt stands, the continuous blare of CNN. Before air travel became…
Culture
Kenneth Anger By Alice L. Hutchison (Black Dog Publishing, 256 pages) Neither a full-on biography nor an off-the-deep-end monograph, Hutchison’s book is, nonetheless, an engagingly comprehensive look at one of cinema’s most inscrutable icons. Although the text is thoroughly sourced and quite informative, the majority of the weight is shifted to a visual dynamic. Thus,…
Culture
The Vintage Book of Modern Indian Literature Edited by Amit Chaudhuri (Vintage, 688 pages) It’s been years since a Bengali-to-English translation of Bibhuti Bhushan Banerjee’s classic novel Pather Panchali has been in print in the United States. Similarly, the dark, Urdu short stories of Sadat Hasan Manto and the stylistically daring family tales told by…
GOOD DEEDS
Parsis: The Zoroastrians of India By Sooni Taraporevala (Overlook, 252 pages) For a somewhat more intimate and uplifting look at Bombay than the one provided by Maximum City, Sooni Taraporevala’s stunning photo essay documents the small but influential community of Zoroastrians in the city. Although Parsis is titularly about Zoroastrians throughout India, most of the…
BOMBAY THE HARD WAY
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found By Suketu Mehta (Knopf, 542 pages) Bombay is my favorite city in the world, and like many others with a deep passion for the city, I find it as endlessly frustrating as I find it endlessly fascinating. Everything about the city – poverty, beauty, bureaucracy, generosity, overcrowding, glamour, pollution…
JUST DON’T DO IT
“I used the condom they gave me from school, how could this have happened?” says a young girl. “Hollywood made it seem so good,” says a teenage boy. “Once a guy has been there, once he’s climbed that mountain, he’s on to the next thing, he doesn’t want you anymore, he’s over it,” says another…
GLOBAL MELTING POT IS GETTING FULLER
Eating Your Words: 200 Words to Tease Your Taste Buds By William Grimes (Oxford University Press, 256 pages) We’ve all experienced it: Open a menu at a restaurant and, even though it’s written in English, there’s nothing that sounds familiar. Just like every other aspect of this shrinking world, cuisines from different cultures are fusing…
ONE FAKE QUEEN
If there’s anything I adore, it’s artifice: artificial insemination, prosthetic limbs, bridgework, preservatives in fruity-pink lip-gloss. They all give my plastic heart pause. Hell, if I could I would lip-synch this freakin’ column, opting instead to dance an impromptu typing jig of nothing but asterisks and ampersands. I suspect you know that I would. And…
Our Election Day Diary
After months of fighting with your wife and stealing your neighbor’s lawn signs, election day is finally over. Lucky for you, Happytown™ was on the scene to chronicle each shouted profanity and angry glare. Read our Election Day Diary and learn how we were almost murdered in the process. (No, seriously.) 6:45 a.m. Rise and…
VANISHING MAGIC
Be honest with me for just a sec, OK? How many people do you know who are even aware (let alone excited) that the 2004-2005 season for your Orlando Magic is about to begin? Well, you’ll find one pumped-up Magic fan right here at Bad Sport, but I would hazard a guess that your answer…
LES PARAPLUIES DE GLASGOW
Let’s all be nostalgic for a past we never had. A rash assumption, yes, and maybe it is somehow possible that kids growing up in Scotland these days really do live in a world where French films and Françoise Hardy records are in plentiful supply, snapped up in eager abandon as a way of dealing…
WE THE (CHOSEN) PEOPLE
Though it affords the Jewish community an invaluable opportunity to codify its image before the general public, the Central Florida Jewish Film Festival has always been at least as useful as a forum for self-examination. The four full-length films that the event’s co-sponsors, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Orlando and the Enzian Theater, have…
PLATE OF CONFUSION
For all the deep and impenetrable layers of pretense that plague the European free-jazz scene – and believe me, it’s thick with it – the one thing that our Continental brethren have managed to keep alive is the spirit of reckless fun that comes from improvisation. When the American jazz mainstream ran screaming from freedom…
Blowfly, Gold Chains, Subhumans, Plates and Spoons and more
Thursday • 4 FROM CORSETS TO BODY PIERCING – AMERICAN GIRLS AND THEIR BODY PROJECTS, AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE We’ve been waiting to talk about the Girl Culture exhibition at the Southeast Museum of Photography – we love girls and the smart women who study them. An award-winning talent, Lauren Greenfield published Girl Culture in 2002,…
WHITHER THE FILM SCHOOL?
Digital media is the technology fueling the city-partnered move by the University of Central Florida into the downtown space formerly known as the Expo Centre. The city’s white elephant will soon be home to UCF’s School of Film & Digital Media, and occupancy could start in a month. Considering the expediency of the project –…
“Your father’s JFK”
From the outside, putting out a liberal weekly newspaper may look like the easiest scam the publishing gods ever invented. And most of the time, it’s exactly that. But it has its occasional disadvantages, too. Witness this week’s issue, which was cobbled together in the desperate hours leading up to Election Day. With no way…
Culture
McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories Edited by Michael Chabon (Vintage, 352 pages) With Dave Eggers’ new collection of short stories hitting shelves at the same time as this compendium of “real” authors attempting genre fiction (sci-fi, mystery, horror, etc.), it looks like this season, McSweeney’s will be the theme for bathroom reading. Watching Joyce…
