BEST OF ORLANDO® BALLOT IS NOW OPEN! 

Oct 31 – Nov 6, 2001

Oct 31 - Nov 6, 2001 / Vol. 17 / No. 44

Movie: Monsters, Inc.

Monsters, Inc. Length: 1 hour, 32 minutes Studio: Disney/Pixar Website: http://disney.go.com/DisneyPictures/monstersinc/ Release Date: 2001-11-02 Cast: Billy Crystal, James Coburn, John Goodman, Mary Gibbs, Steve Buscemi Director: David Silverman, Peter Docter Screenwriter: Andrew Stanton WorkNameSort: Monsters, Inc. Our Rating: 4.00 Led by John Lasseter, Pixar Animation’s creative team has proved its knack for bringing to big-screen…

Orlando Weekly Staff

Movie: Life as a House

Life as a House Length: 2 hours, 25 minutes Studio: New Line Cinema Website: http://www.lifeasahouse.com/ Release Date: 2001-11-02 Cast: Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas, Hayden Christensen, Mary Steenburgen, Jena Malone Director: Irwin Winkler Screenwriter: Mark Andrus WorkNameSort: Life as a House Our Rating: 3.50 The metaphor of life being like a house would appeal to…

Orlando Weekly Staff

Movie: Monsters, Inc.

Our Rating: 4.00 Led by John Lasseter, Pixar Animation’s creative team has proved its knack for bringing to big-screen life unexplored worlds that tap into youthful imaginations. Following the successes of “It’s a Bug’s Life” and “Toy Story,” they have created a fascinating and funny land in “Monsters, Inc.,” one that houses the creatures that…

Orlando Weekly Staff

Movie: Life as a House

Our Rating: 3.50 The metaphor of life being like a house would appeal to George, the hero of “Life as a House.” He’s a maker of architectural models, an admirer of beauty and a thoroughly unhappy man. His life turns for the worse when he’s fired, then really nosedives when he learns he has terminal…

Orlando Weekly Staff

A workplace that’s a real bear

You’d think the animators at Disney/MGM Studios would be thrilled. After all, the buzz swirling around Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida’s next release, “Lilo & Stitch,” has been nothing but positive. Test audiences seem to love this offbeat cartoon about the unlikely friendship between a 6-year-old Hawaiian girl and a genetic freak from another world.…

Jim Hill

Speak No Evil

This is not the time. Over and over we’ve been hearing this phrase in recent weeks. It’s not the time for Democrats in Congress to question President Bush. Not the time to make jokes, however dark, however grimly fitting. Not the time for any of us to appear doubtful about the course that our president…

Daryl Gale, Frank Lewis, Gwen Shaffer, and Jeffrey C. Billman

Around and around

September was a cruel month for Jim Faherty. During a pick-up basketball game at his Delaney Park home, a buddy kneed him in the head, creating an 8-inch gash across the top of his skull. Four hours later, Faherty walked out of the hospital with 21 stitches in his scalp. Then, on the day of…

William Dean Hinton

Game(s) over

Today is a very important day for Central Florida,” says Elmer Nagy, a Chevrolet regional manager, standing at a podium erected on the Outlook Dock of downtown’s Lake Eola. It’s a gorgeous Tuesday morning, with colorful banners waving in the cool autumn breeze, the lake reflecting a cloudless blue sky. Behind him sit scores of…

Jeffrey C. Billman

It’s a sleazy world after all

In author S.V. (Shirish) Dáte’s just-published fourth novel, “Deep Water,” Orlando is caught in the grip of the Waldo Whipple Corp., a family-entertainment giant that values profits over ethics — or even human life. Whipple’s money-mad CEO, Lew Peters, masterminds a nefarious scheme that involves altering the water levels in Serenity, the picket-fence community the…

Steve Schneider

Fall from disc grace

Pop stars never really go away. For most of them, the options following the inevitable fall from disc grace involve either going to rehab, going to Europe, or, well, going gay. “We’re up here! Get off my husband,” crows Gioia, one-time Exposé girlband leader — before, that is, Seasons Changed. “Just kidding. Get on my…

Billy Manes

Amidst reality, a reality check

Thanks to the miracles of communication technology, we can now know every teensy thing that goes on in the world as it happens. A lot of us are sick of it. Special bulletins every time a D.C. mail carrier sneezes, constant reminders of our newly tense status in even the fluffiest magazines, daily batches of…

Liz Langley

Chopped sticks in court

Susan Heitker and Matt Glass staged a week-long anti-logging protest in Vinton County, Ohio, sitting on a platform they had constructed in two stately trees near a patch of forest scheduled to be cut. But the state Department of Natural Resources got in the last licks. The protesters were arrested for trespassing, and the two…

Chuck Shepherd

When money doesn’t matter

There was a time when everyone sat in the kitchen and ate with mama, and the dining room was saved for company. Times have certainly changed, because now the epitome of fine dining, at least at Disney, is to squeeze yourself and a few close friends into the kitchen with the chef. Citricos, the New…

Joseph Hayes

On the Carousel

Will Hoge had a life plan roughly mapped. “I left high school with the intention of becoming a history teacher and coaching high school basketball,” he recalls. But he got a guitar before he started college, and he began writing some songs, and then he began playing out a little. He put together a band…

Noel Murray

Where to draw the line in arts

Before moving to Florida a decade ago, I sat on a local arts council in Somerville, Mass. From that perspective, and as someone who makes his living working in and reporting on the arts, I have watched — sometimes in befuddlement, other times in despair, and once in a while in hopeful anticipation — as…

Al Krulick

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