RESURRECTION
Memento Label: 4AD/Rhino Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Memento A new, single-disc compilation from Dead Can Dance is not exactly a stop-the-presses moment, but Memento is nonetheless an interesting document. While 1991’s A Passage in Time was a strong representation of the duo’s earlier, more esoteric and darker material (as well as the first DCD album to…
JUST A SLICE
When you think “New York pizza,” there’s a particular expectation: a wood-fired oven, sweaty men toting pizza peels, crude language and fast service. Slice of New York on Dr. Phillips Boulevard meets some, if not all, of these expectations. The room looks like one of those bare-bones places in midtown that New Yorkers dive into…
LYING DOWN
Where the Truth Lies Studio: ThinkFilm Rated: NOT RATED Website: http://www.serendipitypoint.com/wttl/ Release Date: 2005-11-11 Cast: Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth, Alison Lohman, Rachel Blanchard, David Hayman Director: Atom Egoyan Screenwriter: Atom Egoyan WorkNameSort: Where the Truth Lies Our Rating: 1.50 Distributor ThinkFilm raised so much of a stink about its Where the Truth Lies receiving an…
MAO AND THEN
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Studio: Empire Pictures Rated: NOT RATED Release Date: 2005-11-11 Cast: Liu Ye, Wang Suang Bao, Chen Kun, Zhou Xun, Chung Zhi Jun Director: Dai Sijie Screenwriter: Dai Sijie, Nadine Perront Music Score: Pujian Wang WorkNameSort: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Our Rating: 3.00 Though it’s set during the…
Derailed
Derailed Studio: The Weinstein Company Rated: R Website: http://www.weinsteinco.com/derailed/ Release Date: 2005-11-11 Cast: Clive Owen, Jennifer Aniston, Melissa George, Vincent Cassel, Diggs Director: Mikael Håfstrom Screenwriter: Stuart Beattie WorkNameSort: Derailed Our Rating: 2.00 I had wanted to be the only critic not to mention that Derailed is the first release from the newly formed Weinstein…
Get Rich or Die Tryin’
Get Rich or Die Tryin’ Studio: Paramount Pictures Rated: R Website: http://www.getrichordietryinmovie.com/ Release Date: 2005-11-11 Cast: Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Joy Bryant, Benz Antoinee, Viola Davis, Terrence Dashon Howard Director: Jim Sheridan Screenwriter: Terence Winter Music Score: 50 Cent WorkNameSort: Get Rich or Die Tryin’ Our Rating: 2.50 Determined to star in his own 8…
Pride & Prejudice
Pride & Prejudice Studio: Focus Features Rated: PG Website: http://www.prideandprejudicemovie.net/ Release Date: 2005-11-11 Cast: Keira Knightley, Matthew MacFadyen, Rosamund Pike, Jena Malone, Donald Sutherland Director: Joe Wright Screenwriter: Deborah Moggach WorkNameSort: Pride & Prejudice Our Rating: 2.00 After umpteen film and TV translations, what reason can there be to take another whack at Pride and…
Zathura
Zathura Studio: Sony Pictures Rated: PG Website: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/zathura/splash/ Release Date: 2005-11-11 Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Jonah Bobo, Dax Shepard, Kristen Stewart, Tim Robbins Director: Jon Favreau Screenwriter: David Koepp, John Camps WorkNameSort: Zathura Our Rating: 2.00 Jon Favreau’s sort-of-sequel to Jumanji is full of nonsense physics and missed opportunities, though it almost redeems itself via its…
MORE FUN THAN SPIT CUPS
“Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker,” the cinematic candy maker Willy Wonka once pointed out. And with that, a world full of 7-year-olds were scratching their heads wondering what alcohol and candy have in common. Then they shrugged their shoulders and went right on gorging themselves on gummies, lemon drops and jawbreakers. Three decades…
Letters
Ian Grey rules Ian Grey: My compliments to you on a sterling, insightful and accurate review of Jarhead `”Bull devil jacket,” Nov. 3`, and an equally accurate off-hand review of American Beauty and Road to Perdition. You very adeptly point out how Mr. Swofford’s memoirs reflect deep, personal issues that deliver a skewed and imbalanced…
GELT COMPLEX
Only Human (NR) This trials-of-young-love romantic comedy carries the light punch of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (the original one) in its racial investigations. But its humorous delivery is more in line with Meet the Fokkers. This time around in the eternally adaptable plot – kid falls in love with kid who doesn’t meet parental…
GUYS WITH PIES
Your column sometimes refers to chicks with dicks, but I never see anything about my thing: guys with pies. While I identify as a gay man, my ultimate fantasy is a hypermasculine man with a vagina. I had some experience with real vaginas in my younger days and, while I was not attracted to girls,…
OPENING DOORS
Mr. Lif says he’s most productive when he’s at home.”I kinda thought of the name The Perceptionists one day in my pantry,” says the Boston-based rapper, who’s talking on his “piece of shit” cell phone as he’s doing laundry. “I was talking to Ak `MC Akrobatik, the second of the three Perceptionists` at the time.…
SWEEPS WEEPS
Question: When did the world stop revolving around ME? Look, I’m no narcissist. From what I understand there are people with problems even more pressing than my own – but I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about ME. And from a philosophical perspective I’m not even sure any of you EXIST. For all I…
REMEMBER MAMA?
This world, you may have noticed, isn’t getting any easier to live in. The social fabric is unraveling like a cheap sweater. Our leaders are showing feet of clay that go all the way up to their necks. And every summer brings new evidence that the very elements themselves are stacked against us. Why, it’s…
FLIP OF A SWITCH
In July 2003, the United States was four months into the war in Iraq and nearly two years removed from the Sept. 11 attacks. Squashing the enemy was high on the government’s priority list, and surveillance initiatives, like the controversial USA PATRIOT Act, were seen as elemental to the task. Against this backdrop, the FBI’s…
SUBMERGED
My wife spent yesterday in New Orleans, getting the house ready to put on the market. She woke up at 5 a.m. to drive in with a friend. She cleaned the kids’ rooms, hung the pictures back on the walls, stacked the Saturday, Aug. 28, issue of the Times-Picayune – the one with the “Katrina…
Happytown
Ready for some delicious irony? The campaign to recall Mayor Buddy Dyer – based on the premise that Dyer violated Florida election law – is violating Florida election law. Hot dog. Mayoral wannabe Sam Ings announced his Recall Dyer Committee Oct. 31 on the steps of City Hall. Soon after, he sent out a mass…
A WEEK OF TOMFOOLERY
NOV. 1, 10:51 P.M.: Remember our cigarette-swiping suspect a couple weeks ago? And how about that Heineken-heisting fool? Well, both criminals hit a hapless store in the 800 block of Formosa Avenue, gaining entry by pounding holes in the cinder-block wall. The holes were repaired, but we’re sad to report that a fresh hole was…
INCOMING!
The number of international graduate students enrolling in American universities appears to have rebounded slightly this fall following three years of decline. … Specialists blamed the sudden drop in interest among international students in attending American graduate programs after the 2001-02 school year on a range of factors, from visa delays to anti-Americanism to sharper…
Rob Brezny’s Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19) I don’t think you’ll become a king or queen in the coming weeks, but you could be instrumental in determining who does. And that would ultimately be fun for you. Likewise, I doubt that you will be the beneficiary of a windfall or a stroke of uncanny luck, but there’s a…
PUBELITZER PRIZE
Sometimes ideas come out of nowhere, sure. But sometimes they come out of somewhere, be that a cobalt-blue bottle labeled “SKYY,” the mutating fluorescence of a public bathroom-mirror epiphany or just the mouths of babes. Tonight’s idea came last night, sometime after the cocktail and before the hangover, no babes involved. I seem to recall…
Bill Maher, Murder by Death, Gov’t Mule, Converge and more
Thursday • 10 BILL MAHER We’re not saying Bill Maher is a saint. In fact, he’s a chauvinistic jerk who makes ill-considered remarks, like imploring Charlize Theron to quit with the message pictures already and go back to being “sexy.” And then there’s his infamous comment about the Sept. 11 hijackers being “not cowardly” –…
Notable Noise
I saw trash cans overturned, beers flying, middle fingers hoisted, fires burning, naked bodies, evidence of drunken hostility and, at the end of the night, a completely trashed bar. That, my friends, is what a battle of the bands should look like. The Florida’s Dying folks threw together a band showdown Nov. 5 at Back…
THE ICE VAN COMETH
Probably the most notorious example of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s under-preparation for Hurricane Katrina was the over-ordering of 91,000 tons of ice cubes intended to cool the victims and their food and medicine. One now-famous truck, for example, picked up 20 tons of ice in Greenville, Pa., drove to a Carthage, Mo., FEMA facility,…
