Inside Undergrounds Coffeehaus (2743 E. Oakland Park Blvd., Fort Lauderdale), Aileen Liptak, one of the shop’s two proprietors, is giggling with some regulars. The crowd is familiar and its faces are relaxed, but then they should be – Aileen has been toting this cast of mug-swigging addicts with her for…
Alfred Hitchcock: The Early Years of the Master of Suspense (Lions Gate) All Quiet on the Western Front (Universal) Anything but Love: Volume One (Fox) Arabian Nights (Universal) Best Picture: Academy Award Winners Collection (Paramount) Boynton Beach Club (Sony) Charmed: The Complete Seventh Season (Paramount) Cinderella III: A Twist in…
What could be scarier than yet another PG-13 creepfest serving up pasty, staggering ghouls with stringy hair? Why, the same PG-13 creepfest set against the high-tension backdrop of… sunflower farming! Sorry, fear fans — if you were expecting a Ferry-Morse catalog of floral fright from The Messengers, the latest Hollywood…
As we’ve seen from British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s guerrilla-style comedy hit Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, one actor’s deadpan dedication to heavily accented cultural naiveté in the face of unsuspecting victims can do wonders. Actor Ken Davitian, who played Borat’s bearded and…
Dear Sol Theatre: When I was a little boy, I was a great fan of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. I loved how resourceful little Alice could be, bringing all of her upper-crust English politesse to bear in situations that would reduce most brave men to senseless blubbering and bowel…
Demonstrating that sabbaticals really are more than just a fancy word for a vacation from academia, Professor Carol Prusa returns from her yearlong absence with an exhibition of new works, “Drawn In/Drawn Out.” Her images are delicate and organic — sometimes floral, sometimes vaginal, and sometimes cellular. Though billed as…
The Science of Sleep (Warner Bros.) Feature films are to video directors what sitcoms are to stand-up comedians, and for every David Fincher and Seinfeld, there are dozens of artists who should have stayed in the field they know best. Michel Gondry, who made his name directing fantastic videos for…
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Wii
Price: $49.99
ESRB Rating: E+10
(Everyone 10+)
Score: 9 (out of 10)
Though I’m sure it’s purely coincidental, the decision to release the Diane Keaton/Mandy Moore rom-com Because I Said So with the scent of this year’s Sundance Film Festival still fresh in the air provides us with an excellent opportunity to review the wayward career of the movie’s director, Michael Lehmann…
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PARK CITY, Utah — We all know about the cathartic power of blues music, but until the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, who knew that it could serve as a cure-all for everything from nymphomania to childhood sexual abuse? In Hustle & Flow director Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan, whose out-of-competition…
One morning, Gary Walkow was suddenly transformed into a successful Hollywood filmmaker. Gone were the hat-in-hand searches for financing, the deferred salaries, the long shooting days with undermanned crews, and the months upon years spent touring the festival circuit while seeking a distribution deal. For a moment, he was taking…
PARK CITY, Utah –On the first Saturday of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, I rolled out of bed and hustled up Main Street for the 8:30 screening of Tamara Jenkins’ The Savages, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as adult siblings caring for an irascible elderly parent. Only I…
Art is a lot more important than sociology, and any artist who forgets it is liable to replace drama with polemic. Case in point: Look at the windier works of Lee Blessing. Or the more overtly political screeds of Joe Strummer, the entire works of Ayn Rand, the latter-day Susan…
If you’re not familiar with Marjory Stoneman Douglas — and if you’re living in South Florida and don’t know the name, shame on you, because you should — then head over to the Old Fort Lauderdale Museum of History for a crash course. The museum is located in the historic…
In case you needed more proof that celebrity gives a person a big head, here’s “Gerry Gersten: Face to Face,” an exhibit of caricatures by the guy who was once an illustrator for Mad Magazine, capturing the enormous mugs of entertainment celebs and political personages. For instance, Willie Nelson’s big…
Catch a Fire (Focus) In his commentary for the underrated, undervalued Catch a Fire, director Phillip Noyce discusses the inspiration: witnessing the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. He wanted to comprehend “the terrorist’s mind,” so he found a story that accomplishes such a difficult thing: the…
Publisher: Capcom
Platform: Xbox 360
Price: $59.99
ESRB Rating: T (for Teen)
Score: 9 (out of 10)
PARK CITY, Utah — Ten days of terse texting among professional narcissists working on little or no sleep in one of the last cold spots left on Al Gore’s inconvenient Earth: Welcome to Sundance ’07, where wounding homefront melodrama Grace Is Gone sells and it hardly pays to be nice…
PARK CITY, Utah — Even by the lacerating standards of recent Sundance docs Why We Fight and Iraq in Fragments, the nonfiction at this year’s fest felt, well, real — alarmingly so. Indeed, after doing battle with films about U.S. policies on Iraq, Darfur, and global warming, this critic was…
Academy Awards Collection (MGM) The Comedians of Comedy (Anchor Bay) Dallas: The Complete Sixth Season (Warner Bros.) The Doctor, the Tornado & the Kentucky Kid: Ultimate Collector’s Edition (New Video Group) Dora the Explorer: Cowgirl Dora (Paramount) The Fabulous Baker Boys (MGM) Facing the Giants (Sony) The Festival: The Complete…
New-school genre junk food: Take a Tarantino wannabe with Sundance credentials, add a large, famous-enough cast and a show-biz backdrop, season the violence with references to Sergio Leone and Takeshi Kitano, serve cool, and garnish with a cynicism beyond irony. Smokin’ Aces is writer/director Joe Carnahan’s third and most elaborate…
