POSH SPICE
Park Avenue meat market raises the stakes
Purple Haze
Down a flight of stairs from the boisterous Taverna Opa sits the Grape, a purply posh wine bar/boutique where one can down a flight of a different sort. Here, budding connoisseurs, sommeliers and refined alkies can get their fill from more than 120 labels, and get some sideways assistance in pairing a varietal with their…
Into the Wild
Into the Wild Studio: Paramount Vantage Rated: R Website: http://www.intothewild.com Release Date: 2007-10-04 Cast: Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Hal Holbrook, Catherine Keener Director: Sean Penn WorkNameSort: Into the Wild Our Rating: 5.00 As a director, Sean Penn has always been an impressionist. He would rather film the slow-burning atmosphere around his characters…
The Jane Austen Book Club
The Jane Austen Book Club Studio: Sony Pictures Classics Rated: PG-13 Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/thejaneaustenbookclub Release Date: 2007-10-04 Cast: Maria Bello, Jimmy Smits, Emily Blunt, Kathy Baker, Amy Brenneman Director: Robin Swicord WorkNameSort: Jane Austen Book Club, The Our Rating: 3.00 Everything the recent faux-biopic Becoming Jane got wrong, The Jane Austen Book Club gets right by…
Twisted Terror Collection
Twisted Terror Collection Studio: Warner Bros Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Twisted Terror Collection The selling point in Warner Bros.’ Twisted Terror Collection is its big-name directors; it boasts work from Wes Craven, John Carpenter and Oliver Stone. Only Stone’s film is an overlooked masterpiece; Craven’s is a bit of dated fun, but hardly on par with…
Funny Face
Funny Face Studio: Paramount Rated: NONE WorkNameSort: Funny Face Funny Face may have been released in 1957, but looking at the film today, it feels more like ’67. Like the later films of its director, Stanley Donen (Arabesque, Two for the Road), Funny Face has a post–New Wave grasp of formal inventiveness and splashy stylization.…
A Woman Without Love
A Woman Without Love Studio: Facets WorkNameSort: Woman Without Love, A It’s hard to believe this unimaginative chatfest was directed by the greatest Spanish filmmaker in cinematic history. Luis Buñuel made A Woman Without Love in his prolific but generally undervalued ’50s period, directing with the ambition of a clock-puncher picking up his check and…
Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru
Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru Label: Barbès Length: LP Rated: NONE Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru It’s hard to believe that the day has finally arrived when an album with a subtitle like “Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru” feels like a bit of crass market pandering. The…
Total Magique
Total Magique Label: Dare to Care Length: LP Rated: NONE Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Total Magique Though wolf sightings are commonplace nowadays in music, the stuff this Montreal trio stomps out is anything but ho-hum. It’s an outright party that pumps in spasms of bop and thrash. Essentially, they’ve taken Krautrock, slid the stick…
Hallucination Guillotine/Final Worship
Hallucination Guillotine/Final Worship Label: Load Length: LP Rated: NONE Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Hallucination Guillotine/Final Worship Providence, R.I.’s Chris “Kites” Forgues had a mite too much brewing on 2005’s too-ambitious Peace Trials. Certainly, coruscating power-electronics were on the menu. But elements of folk and hummability, while diversifying his extremist’s sound template, compromised the underlying…
Summer Above
Summer Above Label: Burnt Brown Sounds Length: LP Rated: NONE Media: CD Format: Album WorkNameSort: Summer Above The pace never picks up past the speed of Sunday drinks on Summer Above. On this lethargic debut, singer Marie-Claire Balabanian delivers like a half-asleep Tracyanne Campbell, if she’d passed on Camera Obscura rehearsal to huff nitrous and…
BLISTER
On any given Monday afternoon, there exists within my aching connective tissue a divine, unique cocktail, the likes of which would likely burn the tongues off a rabid flock of alcoholic attack Chihuahuas: some steaming alchemy of stress hormones, the pharmaceuticals to numb stress hormones, pain, the pharmaceuticals to counter pain, booze, a fingernail, an…
SAVAGE LOVE
More than a few times, you have implied that if one’s partner is unwilling to satisfy, the deprived person has a right to seek it elsewhere. My sex life with my wife, despite my best efforts, is infrequent and uninspired. I recently met a married woman who has had a nonexistent sex life for many…
ROB BREZNY’S FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES (March 21-April 19) Vegan Erotica is a company that sells S&M bondage gear suitable for vegans. Its whips, harnesses, collars, cuffs and restraints are made of fake leather. So it’s now possible for you to conduct experiments with sexual power dynamics and yet not be responsible for harming any animals in the process. This…
THIS LITTLE UNDERGROUND
Just when I thought I masturbated a lot, Robert Pollard releases a new record Oct. 9 … another double album. The only fanfare this deserves is a single downward-curling horn bleat. Does this guy have one honest person in his life, one who can flip open the dictionary to the word “overkill” and push his…
I LOVE TELEVISION
I’m a busy guy … OK?! And that’s why it’s imperative that I follow a very strict daily calendar in order to fulfill myriad EXTREMELY IMPORTANT duties. Need an example of an average Humpy day? NO PROBLEM. Here’s my schedule for Wednesdays – 10 a.m.: Consider getting up. 11:30 a.m.: Really get up. Noon: Eat…
CULTURE TO GO
Old-school feminism The Heidi Chronicles Through Oct. 21 Mad Cow Theatre $24-$26; 407-297-8788 www.madcowtheatre.com There’s a reason that “feminist comedy” isn’t much of a growth industry – the institutional repression of feminine potential isn’t really a laughing matter. Stepping into Mad Cow Theatre and seeing a set scrawled with notable quotes on feminism (Pat Robertson’s…
HAPPYTOWN
When we first heard, on Sept. 25, that the city had fenced, locked and put up “no trespassing” signs around the Lake Eola Park picnic area, we figured we knew what was going on. This is the spot where hippies gather every Wednesday afternoon to feed homeless people vegan food, and the city of Orlando…
COUNCIL WATCH
Orlando’s on fire! Well, let’s hope not, because at this week’s gathering of civic polemics, the room was flush with hunky firemen. Potentially flaming also was the appearance of pink somewhere in the wardrobe of every city employee (a fashion tribute to Pink October for breast cancer awareness, and sadly not a “pride” thing), but…
POLICE BEAT
SEPT. 17, 2:11 P.M.: Officers discovered a burglary at a senior recreation center in the 90 block of East Marks Street today. Applesauce and Alzheimer’s drugs, however, were left untouched. The goods sought were atop the roof. A rather particular perp or perps mysteriously managed to climb to the top of the building and wasted…
MAIL SACK
Polite demurral I’m writing you from Orlando, where we just screened Divided We Fall for a packed audience, followed by a rich and intense discussion `Film, Sept. 27`. I read your review of the film afterward and found myself wishing you had been able to attend the screening. Your impressions of the film are of course…
SATISFACTION IS WHAT THEY LACK
Since punk came along, the cover song has been a frequent expression of disparagement toward mainstream culture. The early template involved stringing up perishable pop goods and eviscerating them with a shotgun blast, as the Circle Jerks did on “Golden Shower of Hits (Jerks on 45).” A medley from the album of the same name,…
KEEP YOUR MATRIMONY, I’VE GOT MANTRIMONY
I’m getting married to a man. Not married in the traditional sense; that’s illegal in Florida. But in practical terms, and in the eyes of the law, my union will be almost exactly the same as that between a man and a woman. And there’s nothing supporters of a state constitutional amendment to define marriage…
MUSICIANS UNITE
Right about now you could hear a pin drop on the floor at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre. About three weeks ago, members of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra quietly decided to be represented by the musician’s union in a razor-tight 56-50 vote. It’s a major change for an orchestra entering its 15th season. But…
HIGH SEASON OF SCARE
The phone calls started last week: eerie whispers, sputtering chainsaws and chanting children on my voice mail, with nothing to identify the source. Turns out I had a stalker – three of them, in fact. Universal Orlando has upped the ante for its annual Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) event by building a first-ever partnership with…
Aroma Coffee & Wine Bar
Inhabiting the formerly funky space vacated by the Coffeehouse of Thornton Park, this sleek and chic wine bar is a perfect neighborhood fit. Sink into red leather armchairs with coffee and a panini, or sip a glass of wine at the handsome limestone bar. More than 75 wines are available, many by the glass, including…
