halloween: rules of the game
Today Bloggytown is all about you and your Halloween dilemma. Where to go? How to dress? If you don’t have your costume together yet, let us help. And for a selection of Halloween events, go here. First up, from New York magazine, a list of stylist Joe Zee’s Halloween rules: Unique is better than sexy.…
Hysteria: Deluxe Edition
Hysteria: Deluxe Edition Label: Island Length: LP Media: CD Format: Reissue WorkNameSort: Hysteria: Deluxe Edition If there exists any album less in need of remastering than Hysteria, I can’t think of it. As perhaps the most meticulously produced and engineered hard-rock record ever made, this 1987 response to the success of Pyromania could basically be…
Ensemble
Ensemble Label: Fat Cat Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Ensemble Ensemble’s first electronic/orchestral full-length for Fat Cat moves quietly into place with what sounds like a failing speaker-phone connection ‘ a few dissipating seconds of nearly inaudible drone introduce an only occasional smallness here. Transcendent opener ‘Summerstormâ?� is a joint affair, with guest…
Under Review
Under Review Label: Sexy Intellectual DVD WorkNameSort: Under Review First, the good news: No Sinbad. No Kathy Griffin. No Carlos Mencia making rope jokes. Now, the bad news: No Joy Division. Well, no uncut Joy Division ‘ just enough of a sampling to whet the appetite for the real thing. In fairness, anyone indulging themselves…
Until Death Comes
Until Death Comes Label: Secretly Canadian Length: LP Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Until Death Comes If you’re like me and a firm believer that less is more in the recording studio, then you’ll be immediately entranced by the minimalist piano-and-vocal attack of Sweden’s Frida Hyvönen’s 2005 Scandinavian debut, only now seeing Stateside release. Flugelhorn,…
NOTHING’S SHOCKING
‘Death of a President’ is not opening near you
Catch a Fire
Catch a Fire Studio: Focus Features, Universal Pictures International Rated: PG-13 Release Date: 2006-10-27 Cast: Tim Robbins, Derek Luke, Bonnie Henna, Mncedisi Shabangu, Terry Pheto Director: Phillip Noyce WorkNameSort: Catch a Fire Our Rating: 3.50 Under the guise of a South African apartheid-era thriller about a wronged black man who sets out to strike back…
Conversations With God
Conversations With God Studio: Samuel Goldwyn Films Rated: PG Release Date: 2006-10-27 Cast: Henry Czerny, Ingrid Boulting, Bruce Page, Vilma Silva Director: Stephen Simon WorkNameSort: Conversations With God Our Rating: 0.50 A hackneyed, melodramatic travesty is certainly to be expected from the cinematic rendering of Neale Donald Walsch’s simplistic, best-selling self-help tomes. But this superficial,…
THE PAST ODDLY
Running With Scissors Studio: TriStar Pictures Rated: R Release Date: 2006-10-20 Cast: Annette Bening, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood, Joseph Cross Director: Ryan Murphy WorkNameSort: Running With Scissors Our Rating: 3.50 For those who still don’t believe truth is stranger than fiction, Running With Scissors may be the ultimate confirmation of that clichéd…
Tales of the Rat Fink
Tales of the Rat Fink Studio: Shout Factory Rated: NOT RATED WorkNameSort: Tales of the Rat Fink It’s only fitting that a biopic about hot-rod artist Ed ‘Big Daddyâ?� Roth would be as flashy and iconoclastic as its subject. But the goofy visual insanity of Tales of the Rat Fink is surprising nonetheless. The weird,…
Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!: The Complete Third Season
Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!: The Complete Third Season Studio: Paramount Rated: NOT RATED WorkNameSort: Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!: The Complete Third Season Magicians usually spend their time creating illusions, but Penn & Teller, those postmodern prestidigitators, have always been at least as interested in dispelling them. On their Showtime series, they do, on occasion, perform…
Mongolian Ping Pong
Mongolian Ping Pong Studio: First Run Features Rated: NOT RATED WorkNameSort: Mongolian Ping Pong In the tradition of great child-centric films like The White Balloon and Where Is the Friend’s Home?, Mongolian Ping Pong is an austere and deceptively simple story about a table-tennis ball that changes the lives and tests the friendship of three…
Captured By You
Captured By You Studio: WEG India/Image Rated: NOT RATED WorkNameSort: Captured By You Originally released in India in 2003 (as Chura Liyaa Hai Tumne), Captured by You is a peculiar film that squishes together a hokey Bollywood love story and a hyperstylized Asian crime drama â?¦ with songs. Opening with a bold midday bank heist,…
That’s My Bush! The Definitive Collection
That’s My Bush! The Definitive Collection Studio: Paramount Rated: NOT RATED WorkNameSort: That’s My Bush! The Definitive Collection If That’s My Bush ‘ Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s weakest venture to date ‘ is ever to receive a Mr. Show-like posthumous surge of popularity, then now’s the time. All eight episodes of the short-lived series…
BOBA FETE
Viet “bakery” offers a sugar-coated sampling of teas and treats
B.I.G. – A
;In March of this year, a federal judge ordered all sales of the seminal hip-hop album Ready to Die by Notorious B.I.G. to cease immediately, 12 years after its release, thanks to an uncleared 5-second Ohio Players sample used in B.I.G.’s title track. Three months later, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke released his first solo album,…
FREE CUC
Liz McCausland admits that she was living in denial. When her mother, 58-year-old Orlando resident Thoung Nguyen “Cuc” Foshee, was arrested and jailed in September 2005 during a trip to Vietnam, McCausland thought there must have been a mistake. Foshee, a Vietnamese-born U.S. citizen, was visiting relatives and attending a wedding. She’s a landscaper with…
DAVE WIETHOP, 1962-2006
There was something in the air at the Oct. 15 Come Out With Pride parade, something more than glitter, activism and hyperbole. In quiet tones not unlike the usual gossip, the word was spreading that Watermark editor Dave Wiethop was dying. He had gone into the hospital just a couple of days earlier with a…
30 ROCK VS. STUDIO 60
;If you don’t already know;about the 30 Rock/Studio 60 double-whammy situation, let me summarize: Two totally separate TV series premiered on NBC this fall, each of which focuses on the behind-the-scenes antics at a late-night show like Saturday Night Live. 30 Rock is a 30-minute sitcom created by Tina Fey, the former head writer and…
SIMULATED SCARES
“Let’s play a game.” To the poor bastard who wakes up with his arm chained to a radiator or strapped into a chair, those are four bone-chilling words, ’cause you just know that freakazoid puppet from the blood-soaked Saw flicks is lurking around the corner. To gamers, those four words are an invitation to frightful…
BLISTER
;After a long, blurry week of Mama’s Vicodin-‘n’-vodka super toothache remedy, the last thing I’m feeling right now is pride. In fact, I’m lucky if I feel anything at all, save some delirium tremens and the haunting suspicion that my entire midsection — near and including my secret place of pride invitation — is caving…
EWWWW, SCARY!
Ernest PageIt’s the middle of the night. Your phone rings. On the other end is Ernest Page mumbling about how you WILL cut him into some nebulous deal if you know what’s good for you. You open your mouth to scream, but can’t. You can’t move. You can’t breathe. You’re drenched in cold sweat until…
SAVAGE LOVE
I’m working with Wikipedia, where we’re currently debating the “Donkey Punch” (fucking someone in the ass and then punching them hard in the back of the head or neck, so that the sudden pain and/or unconsciousness causes the asshole to constrict spasmodically). Some editors have said the article should specify just how risky and possibly…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
;ARIES Nineteenth-century English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote a series of sensual sonnets inspired by his relationship with his wife Elizabeth. Before he could publish them, she died. He was so distraught he placed the only copy of his manuscript in the grave with her. Years later, though, he decided the love poems were too…
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
How ironically droll it was to receive a letter (published last week) chiding me for not being “more thorough than the average concertgoer.” Curious when you consider a day I had last week. All in a day’s work 6:55 pm — Rolled into the parking lot of Solid Image Tattoo to see bluesman Jake La…
I LOVE TELEVISION
I love Halloween! It’s 10 times better than any of the other stupid holidays — and that includes Christmas (and its multicultural equivalents). Why? Because Halloween is the only holiday where your chance to bag some hot booty skyrockets to 87 percent. (My chances hover around 99.8 percent — but then, that’s me.) THINK ABOUT…
ARTS & CULTURE TO GO
;The end of EPCOT ;;Now in soft opening, the Seas With Nemo and Friends isn’t just another family-;friendly addition to Disney’s dark-ride lineup. Sure, it’s a charming attraction that uses cutting-edge projection technology (a digital descendant of the Haunted Mansion’s ballroom) to let the Finding Nemo characters swim among the real fish in Epcot’s aquarium.…
HAPPYTOWN
;Are you as excited about the execution of “Gainesville Ripper” Danny Rolling (which has probably already happened by the time you read this) as the local media? ;;Exhibit No. 1: Just as we were passing out Oct. 21, a strange song floated into the room. It was coming from the TV — WESH-TV Channel 2,…
LETTERS
Good review, bad film Thank you for your review of the monumentally overrated The Prestige `Film, Oct. 19`, whose magic consists of attracting hordes of moviegoers to pay money to see a movie that never rises above the level of solid mediocrity. What baffles me is how any Londoner could be fascinated and fooled by…
SELECTIONS
Friday•27 Disney’s 2006 Martial Arts Festival Remember that “I’m gonna be the next Bruce Lee!” phase you went through a while back? It’s time to put those cheap kung-fu movies away and check out some real action this weekend at the 2006 Martial Arts Festival, held at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex. Watch as…
A CONVENIENT CLAMOR
On the phone with 26-year-old lead singer and guitarist Josh Grier of Minneapolis-based indie rockers Tapes ‘n Tapes, talking about their debut album The Loon, the conversation turns to food. “The name The Loon,” Grier reveals, “refers to the deli that’s right around the corner from here, the Saloon Deli. They make really good chicken…
TOGETHER APART
Though overshadowed in the mass market by the likes of Juanes and Shakira, the vibrant and diverse sounds of Colombia’s alternative-music scene are — just like those of “underground” scenes elsewhere in the world — reaching more and more listeners beyond their native borders. At the forefront is Aterciopelados. Over the course of their 13-year…
Yin Drinks and Yang Cocktails….
Here’s an interesting little article about girly drinks and manly drinks, and how the current trend is an emasculation of our cocktail menus. I can totally agree. While I’ll occasionally sample something that sounds a little overly sweet, my favorite tipple these days is a cognac, neat, preferably in a snifter. In fact, I’m a…
