BEST OF ORLANDO® NOMINATION BALLOT IS OPEN THROUGH MAY 6!

Oct 1-7, 2003

Oct 1-7, 2003 / Vol. 19 / No. 40

Movie: City of Ghosts

City of Ghosts Length: 1 hour, 56 minutes Studio: United Artists Website: http://www.cityofghostsmovie.com/ Release Date: 2003-10-03 Cast: Matt Dillon, James Caan, Natascha McElhone, Gérard Depardieu, Stellan Skarsgard Director: Matt Dillon Screenwriter: Matt Dillon, Barry Gifford, Michael Jones Music Score: Tyler Bates WorkNameSort: City of Ghosts Our Rating: 0.00 Matt Dillon’s directorial debut follows a con…

Orlando Weekly Staff

Seducing that inner Wonka

When it comes to group gatherings, the dreaded question, “What do you want to do?” sometimes gets answered by an awkward silence. The next time that happens, trying yelling, “Bonbon bash!” and see how fast you make friends (or clear the room). Perhaps thinking ahead to such socially challenging occasions, Farris and Foster’s is offering…

Joseph Hayes

Jeff Lemlich’s top five Orlando 45s

1. (tie) We the People: “In the Past” and “The Day She Dies” “The former for its unique octachord `a sort of 8-stringed electric mandolin` and great moody vibe. The latter for the amazing vocal bridge that outdoes any of the major harmony groups of the era.” `Available on the double-disc retrospective “The Mirror of…

J.M. Dobies

Other keepers of the flame

Ray Ehmen Every weekend, you can find collector extraordinaire Ray Ehmen behind the counter at Rock & Roll Heaven in northwest Orlando, presiding over a vast selection of CDs, vintage LPs, 45s, and other musical artifacts. For over a quarter-century, Rock & Roll Heaven has been an oasis of old-school in an increasingly homogeneous retail…

J.M. Dobies

Garage days revisited

Summer 1966. At places like the Orlando Youth Center, Leesburg Armory, or the Coconut Teen Club, the scene is the same. Hundreds upon hundreds of teens are dancing to the beat stomped out by one or more of the top local bands. The group onstage may be the Rockin’ Roadrunners or possibly Nation Rocking Shadows…

J.M. Dobies

Keeper of a groovy flame

In the mid-’60s, Orlando was a different world from the city we live in today. Eric T. Schabacker, who ran Bee Jay Booking and Recording and the Tener record label, remembers, “The streets were dead at 8 o’clock. In the spring, there was the wonderful scent of orange blossoms. It was a different Florida. The…

J.M. Dobies

Peculiar world

When Boy George professed that he’d rather have a “cup of tea” than engage in any sexual act or preference, the marketing machine behind Culture Club was already drumming at a manic pace. Subsequent androgyny, including an awards show alert that America knows a good drag queen when it sees one, only made the odd…

Billy Manes

Getting it

You see, rock & roll is about the anarchic expression of unmediated exuberance otherwise known as fun. It shares top billing with sex and drugs because it celebrates the same escape into the confines of a transcendent moment. Heck, when the phrase was coined, rock & roll was sex. It’s been mugged more than once,…

Chris Parker

Life is so strange

Here I am, going about my standard Thursday business of making sure that my boyfriend breaks up with me by Saturday for being a fabulous drunk, when a raging banshee of squeak-pop perfection stumbles out of the Hard Rock Hotel green room and into my steady decline. Who says there’s no such thing as fate?…

Billy Manes

Against Love: A Polemic

By Laura Kipnis (Pantheon, clothbound) Rehabilitating adultery into an act of social protest might seem like a dubious goal, but that just goes to show how invested we all are in the idea of domestic bliss. So says Laura Kipnis, professor of media studies and author of “Against Love,” a chatty, discursive look at cheating.…

Angie Drobnic Holan

Sex, Time and Power: How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution

By Leonard Shlain (Viking, clothbound) Leonard Shlain is the kind of bullshit artist you keep reading because he tells a good tale. In “Sex, Time and Power,” he weaves a grand theory about how humans became the only species to develop a deep sense of time. We got it from observing women’s menstruation cycles, he…

Joab Jackson

Munster’s Ball

Like a lot of people my age, I always felt a special affinity for Grandpa Munster. I liked his whole Transylvania-cum-Borscht-Belt schtick. I liked knowing that his list of preferred aliases included “The Count” and “Sam Dracula.” And I liked the way he once defended the Munster family home against a demolition crew that was…

Steve Schneider

Thumbs-up to D-MAC and other digital progressions

For the average movie fan, the plot line of Orlando’s growth and development into digital media is a tough one to follow. “Digital” is not just a buzzword in local film circles anymore; by year’s end, there will be a touchstone for digital filmmaking in the form of the Downtown Media Arts Center, slugged D-MAC.…

Lindy T. Shepherd

How safe is downtown?

Downtown, during its busiest hours, often resembles a full-fledged police state. There are cops on bikes, cops on horses, cops on foot, cops shining flashlights into cars on Orange Avenue, cops giving out tickets for jaywalking, off-duty cops providing security for the more popular bars. As Orlando Police Department spokesman Orlando Rolon puts it, “Everywhere…

Jeffrey C. Billman

Lights! Cameras! Inaction!

The problem with this job is that I don’t get to go to enough press conferences. The lights, the cameras, the softball questions, the passing around of hairspray … It all brings back happy memories of when I was just a wee terrestrial gastropod mollusk. Sigh. Which is why Sept. 30 was such a treat.…

Bob Whitby

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