Theater Review: Opening night at 2nd Annual Orlando Improv Festival
Do you love to laugh? In that case, you’re in luck, because this week two different comedy festival are luring entertainers from around the nation to Orlando for your amusement. First up is the 2nd Annual Orlando Improv Festival, which began last night (Sunday 9/25) at the Winter Park Playhouse and continues through tomorrow (Tues…
TV Captivity Day 4: “Pan Am”
Just one week in, Pan Am is already trouncing The Playboy Club in the race to be named the season’s best retro ensemble drama. To be fair, all it needed to win that competition was to earn the plaudit “does not appear to have been assembled by primates.” To be fairer, last night’s debut episode…
In New York Times report on unprecedented power of prosecutors, Florida is front and center
After the we saw the headline in the New York Times which read “Sentencing Shift Gives New Leverage to Prosecutors,” we had a hunch that the report, though nationwide in scope, would draw heavily on the state of Florida. “Tough on crime” has been a mantra of the state legislature for decades, and mandatory-minimum prison…
Selection Reminder: Manhattan Short Film Festival!
Monday, Sept. 26 – 13th Annual Manhattan Short Film Festival Considering the U.S. was benched for last year’s annual global, one-day-only celebration of the world’s best short films simulcast on art-house screens (like the Enzian Theater) everywhere, it’s heartening to see our ever-divided country get back in the game this time around. American filmmakers Neil…
Sunday Film News Roundup — September 25th, 2011 (Updated Sun PM!)
So, Netflix had itself another nightmare week this week when it announced that, not only were they not going to address customer complaints and cancellations, they were going to sweep them completely under the rug and pretend they didn’t exist by splitting the company into two separate, completely de-integrated companies. But they’re keeping the red…
Selection Reminder: Kevin Smith’s Red State shows at Enzian!
Sunday, Sept. 25 – Red State It wasn’t that long ago that a new Kevin Smith movie would have legitimately been an event; not exactly a mainstream happening by box-office standards, but there would hardly be a corner of the Internet in which to hide from the chatter. But now, after numerous public temper tantrums,…
Remembering Kelly Fitzpatrick
Kelly Fitzpatrick was a true local personality. When she died at age 36 on Friday, Sept. 23, her friends and family lost a soul full of pure goodness, and the city of Orlando lost one of its best and loudest cheerleaders. Kelly was best known as the nightlife columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, a duty…
Selection Reminder: Afflatus Handmade Art Bazaar at Redlight Redlight!
Sunday, Sept. 25 – Afflatus Handmade Art Bazaar We hope the organizers of this art bazaar, which features all women artisans and women-owned small businesses, will forgive us for this, but afflatus? Really? Sure, it means something good – a strong creative impulse – but it sounds, at best, stuffy and academic. And considering what…
Selection Reminder: Perfect Strangers art show at Say It Loud!
Saturday, Sept. 24 – Perfect Strangers What’s great about America? Instant gratification. This party featuring collaborative art by local artists Bryan Soderlind and Brandon McLean is a love letter to the king of instant art: the Polaroid. Image-in-60-seconds Polaroid film made the deferred appreciation of your masterpiece a thing of the past. In addition to…
Selection Reminder: VarieTEASE Carnivale!
Saturday, Sept. 24 – VarieTEASE Carnivale In a perfect world, we would have limber-girl Baby Blue with us all the time – like some kind of animatronic Barbie that tore up our passenger-side seat while we giggled along to showtunes, jumped up and down on our bed just because she knew we had a headache,…
Review: Red State – Kevin Smith (2011)
Red State Dir: Kevin Smith 1 Star It’s hard to recall a movie that’s more confrontational than Red State. Both the film itself – a damning portrait of a super-strict cultist religion based on Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church – and its director began the journey to the screen in a highly combative spirit.…
TV Captivity Day 3: “Person of Interest”
On a conceptual level, Person of Interest gives you everything you expect; as narrative, it keeps you guessing to the very end. Elaborating on themes he introduced in The Dark Knight, creator/writer Jonathan Nolan posits a world in which surveillance is omnipresent and crime prevention has given way to crime prediction. The problem is that…
Ralph Ameduri benefit show announced.
The basics: Sunday, Oct. 23. A one-day indoor/outdoor street festival. Proceeds go to Ralph’s girlfriend and family. Starts at 4pm on Pine St. Donations can be made otherwise at any Wells Fargo Bank. Here’s the full release: Ralph Fest Tribute and Benefit Show to Honor Ralph Ameduri Jr. Our friend and brother in music and…
Presidency 5 … the sadness after the debate
Here’s Casey Morell’s last dispatch from the Presidency 5 debate, filed at 2 a.m., well after things at the Orange County Convention Center had died down … There may not be anything creepier than an empty convention center — especially one as massive as the one we have here in Happytown. You see, it’d been…
Selection Reminder: Halloween Horror Nights opens tonight!
Through Oct. 31 – Halloween Horror Nights 21 Ah, Halloween Horror Nights. The strobe lights, the gallons of fake blood, the loud and sudden arrival of manufactured evil – we remember it fondly, since it gave us teenagers an excuse to finally clutch our crushes in “fear,” though ideally, they would do so first. But…
Presidency 5: not unlike a high school reunion
More from Casey Morell, live from the Presidency 5 event/debate at the Orange County Convention Center: I’ve now been firmly entrenched on this couch for about two hours — the media room is filling up and these couches in the blog/new media/other people area are now almost full. Bill O’Reilly is talking to Laura Ingraham…
Our man at Presidency 5
While most of us will at home, sitting on our fat asses monitoring the Presidency 5 summit circus from the safety of our couches, beer clenched firmly in hand, former Orlando Weekly intern Casey Morell is taking one for the team. He’s at the Orange County Convention Center right now. Here’s his first missive from…
Video: Eating Insects at Orlando Science Center
This weekend, the Orlando Science Center debuts its latest traveling exhibit, “Harry’s Big Adventure,” which explores the world of insects through the eyes of a friendly Praying Mantis. I took a brief tour of the under-construction attraction with Katie Wassmer, spokesperson for ironic sponsor Terminix (“We celebrate bugs in their natural habitats, but not in…
Selection Reminder: Peter Bjorn and John tonight at the Plaza Live!
Thursday, Sept. 22 – Peter Bjorn and John If there’s one thing the Swedes do exactly right, it’s affordable furniture. If there’s two things, it’s precise pop production, and Stockholm trio Peter Bjorn and John are magicians in the studio. It’s a gift that brought them fame a few years back when their breakthrough, whistle-driven…
TV Captivity Day 2: “Up All Night”
Ordinarily, it’d be about as easy to get me to watch a sitcom about new parents as it would for the Koch brothers to enter the kingdom of heaven on the head of a pin. But for some inexplicable reason, there was no new episode of Dance Moms this week. And I need to pick…
NHL in Orlando?! How did the Blues/Lightning game go?
Ordinarily the Tampa Bay Lightning sustaining a 4-3 preseason loss at the hands of the St. Louis Blues wouldn’t be much of a story around these parts. But the game, in a step to broaden the fan base of the young, exciting Bolts franchise, was played right here in Orlando, at the Amway Center. “For…
Selection Reminder: Cirque du Soleil’s Dralion!
Through Sept. 25 – Dralion As if we could tire of our resident Downtown Disney Cirque du Soleil show, the vibrantly eccentric La Nouba, this week the globally recognized performance troupe brings us the touring production Dralion. The show’s blend of Chinese cultural traditions and acrobatics incorporates naturist themes, personifying symbolic animal characters of the…
Selection Reminder: Douglas Witmer artist lecture!
Thursday, Sept. 22 – Known Roads to Unknown Places: Douglas Witmer Lecture Douglas Witmer’s I Found a Reason at the Cornell, his first solo museum exhibition, showcases his deceptively simple works on wood and paper. Why deceptive? With their bright colors, their small size and humble materials, it’s easy to disregard or miss altogether the…
Sipping time
OB3: Orlando Bourbon, Beer n’ Bites 1711 Jake St.4-8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24eventsforchangeinc.org$40 Riding the heels of last week’s annual ode to “America’s official native spirit” in Bardstown, Ky., Baldwin Park plays host to Orlando’s iteration of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail with OB3: Orlando Bourbon, Beer n’ Bites. OB3 will transform the lot behind Paddy…
On a roll
With trendy new digs and a modernized menu, RanGetsu makes Eastern promises in Maitland
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19) “I have a simple philosophy,” said Alice Roosevelt Longworth, a self-described hedonist who lived until the age of 96. “Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. Scratch where it itches.” That’s not an approach I recommend you pursue all the time, but I think it could be both wise and fun for…
Council Watch
Billy Manes paying attention to local government so you don’t have to
Live Active Cultures
When you were little, did youdream of running away to join the circus? That clichéd fantasy sums up the American desire to abandon structured society in favor of pipe dreams. But who actually goes ahead and does it? As we all learned from Water for Elephants, a life in the circus can only lead to…
Moneyball
Talents clash in well-acted, poorly directed underdog tale
Your CPAC flask
A slightly debauched survival guide for the Conservative Political Action Conference
Style is the vital thing
Comedic overachievers sparkle in Orlando Shakes’ 23rd season opener
This Little Underground
Bao Le-Huu takes on Two-Man Gentlemen Band, Woodsman, Swans and Sir Richard Bishop
Senna
Doc about Formula 1 legend carries the flag for its subject
Rotation: What local artists are listening to
This week: Auto! Automatic!!
Social insecurity
In 2001, Nickel and Dimed got rapturous reviews for its exposure of the invisible poor; 10 years later, the groundbreaking investigation feels like business as usual
DVDs Nuts!
Lesser-seen OW approved titles
Savage Love
I am a 22-year-old college grad who has been living at home for the last year.
Seed money
A proposed urban garden near Lake Eola is burdened by ties to a giant agribusiness
Happytown
This week we take a SWAT at Patty Sheehan’s condo-hostage shenanigans, get ready to take a bullet wound in all 50 states and listen to Newt Gingrich fans discuss a new target-practice immigration policy. BANG!
Autumn sonata
The inaugural Indie Fall Fest promises a collage of great local music
The Revisionist Oscars: 1995
Well, this week the Academy Awards for the year 1994 became topical again, when Disney re-released The Lion King in 3D. One of the biggest (and best) animated films ever produced by the world’s biggest feature animation production house, The Lion King broke through even the hardest of critical hearts with its Hamlet-inspired tale of…
Reminder: Coneheads @ Enzian tonight (FREE)
It may have just been the exact right movie at the exact right time in a less than bright teenager’s life, but Coneheads has, for a very long time, been one of my go-to movies to cheer up to. Yes, really. Shut up, it’s true. SNL sketch movies are hit-or-miss, but largely miss. Coneheads is…
Selection Reminder: Tampa Bay Lightning game at Amway Center tonight!
Wednesday, September 21 – Tampa Bay Lightning vs. St. Louis Blues With the NBA still solidly mired in the doldrums of lockout – currently, team owners are forbidden from simply uttering a player’s name – other professional sports are picking up the slack locally. The brand-new Orlando City Soccer Club has developed a spirited following,…
Selection Reminder: Foster the People tonight at House of Blues!
Tuesday, September 20 – Foster the People Is it a crime for a relatively newly formed L.A. indie band with outrageously catchy hooks and an offbeat sense of melody to hit paydirt with a novelty single? Of course not. Does it come with a price? Absolutely. As much as Foster the People have claimed their…
TV captivity day 1: “The Playboy Club”
The negative advance buzz on The Playboy Club, the first of the season’s two major-net Mad Men knockoffs, was entirely correct. But the one element I didn’t see adequately acknowledged in the initial pans was the uncanny degree to which star Eddie Cibrian is a vocal dead ringer for Jon Hamm. The Cib could have…
Selection Reminder: Fleet Foxes tonight!
Tuesday, September 20 – Fleet Foxes Hey, remember when Arcade Fire won the Grammy for Album of the Year? That was crazy, right? Here’s something even crazier: If we can assume that the voting committee for those things has somehow gotten a little younger and a little hipper since the days when (shudder) Steely Dan…
