Because Some Men Want the Unexpected

On the day of Judy Garland’s funeral, Bunny the Drag Queen leapt off her barstool and fumed, “God did not create us in his fucking image to fucking judge one another.” That, and the “all men are created equal” truism from Thomas Jefferson, spurred director Michael Leeds to helm Some…

A Modern Holocaust (With Popcorn)

Filmmakers’ cameras haven’t been aimed anywhere near the most brutalized of Darfur’s regions, and for good reason: Arab militia dispatched by the Sudanese Government are systematically starving, raping, castrating, and then offing African and Christian locals on the sly, and the men in power would rather you not see images…

Gypsys: Yes. Tramps and Thieves: Not So Much.

A bunch of marauding, sock-stealin’ pickpockets these gypsies ain’t – or so Johnny Depp pledges. He cameos the documentary Gypsy Caravan, about a wayfaring troupe of musicians cranking out their scintillating – and eclectic — palette of flamenco, jazz, raga, klezmer, Indian folk, and Romanian violin during a six-week concert…

Bookstore on the beach with the candlestick

Bibliophiles can usually distinguish between a novel’s vast fantasyland and reality’s bitter pill. Fortunately, the rules don’t apply inside the novelty bookstore Murder on the Beach: ghoul and gargoyle tchotchkes are nailed to blood-red walls, stained mahogany bookshelves are stacked menacingly high, and that bifocal-wearing skeleton nestled in the plush…

Media Deathmatch

There’s nothing more headache-inducing than the Britney-Lindsay-Paris terror trifecta presently hogging headlines. But before you start jamming knives into your peepers to assuage the irreversible damage done to your sensibilities, you might want to relax a smidge, slide into an aisle seat, and watch said media-snafuing parodied on the silver…

Viral Fungus Among Us

History buffs and flower-power vets of the ´60s remember America’s all-consuming fascination with the space race and its mad scramble to monopolize the world’s nuclear warheads — that is, until a different fixation oozed into public consciousness: biological warfare. Michael Crichton’s 1969 sci-fi techno-thriller novel The Andromeda Strain is more…

Art School in a Can

So you’re the next Rembrandt, but you know absolutely squat about pimping your magnum opus to the kingpins of the world? That’s a quandary which, if left untreated, could pigeonhole even the most brilliant artisans of acrylic in a dead-end beat like (shudder) comic book inker. Conveniently, art consultant Ed…

Don’t Call Checkmate Just Yet

Existential gripes are the hallmark whimsies that the late director Ingmar Bergman adored and honed to perfection. The prolific Swedish virtuoso crafted countless cinematic gems under the Janus Films distributor label, including his gold-standard of radical arthouse, a little cerebral banquet called The Seventh Seal. This ol´ “chess game with…

Behind the Velvet Curtain

Backstage at the Gershwin Theatre, far from the prying eyes of spectators, the lead actress of Wicked dons a garish gypsy robe, marshals the cast, and bestows blessings upon her fellow thespians. This bohemian opening night ritual seems pretty handy since many Broadway virgins are bedeviled with scorching reviews by…

18 Postcards from Paris

A handful of cities could’ve inspired the 18 charming short films from Paris, Je T’aime, but only one pulled it off: the infectiously spellbinding City of Lights. Like sampling nougat from a box of truffles, 21 famed directors dish out rich kaleidoscopic slices of urban humdrum in petite vignettes, each…

Fishing Down Under

There’s a passé adage that’s swapped among the most fervid fishermen: angling is always cheaper than a psychiatrist. But when some dead lass washes up against the lakebed while you’re busy hooking trout, couch time with your favorite quack sounds pretty sensible. So how can you reason what an Aussie…