Woody Allen has Manhattan. Neil Simon has Yonkers. But for local playwright Gregg Tomé, there’s only one town in the state of New York he needs to keep apprise of, and that’s his hometown of Babylon, Long Island. The town is special to him for a number of reasons, not…
If a southern-sounding guy named “Buford” calls and asks for an oxygen tank for his pet hog, there’s no need to reach for your English-Redneck dictionary – it’s only Rickey Smiley, the character comic with a penchant for prank calls. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Smiley is proof that…
Most alleged sightings of biblical figures entail some form of the Virgin Mary, whether she’s visible in the light shining through a tangle of tree branches or in a grilled cheese sandwich. But such sightings are usually reported by lay people, not members of the clergy. If a priest were…
It took more than a year after 9/11 for President Bush to lay down the bureaucratic red tape known as the Department of Homeland Security. But when Bush won re-election in 2004 (or re-theft, depending on your viewpoint), it took Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge only a few weeks to…
Ab-Normal Beauty (Tartan) Art of the Devil (Tokyo Shock) Bram Stoker¹s Dracula/Mary Shelley¹s Frankenstein (Sony) Caged Heat (Buena Vista) Dark Water (Buena Vista) Diary of a Mad Black Woman: The Play (Lions Gate) Empire of the Wolves (Sony) 15 Things You¹re Not Supposed to See (Xtreme) Happy Here and Now…
Publisher: Konami
Platform: PlayStation 2
Price: $39.99
ESRB Rating: M (for Mature)
Score: 4 (out of 10)
Microsoft isn’t described as an underdog very often. But in the world of videogames, Sony’s PlayStation is king, and all others fight for scraps. While Microsoft’s Xbox managed to bump the once-great Nintendo into third place, it nevertheless remains a distant second to the PS2, which commands an installed base…
2005 may be the last hurrah for this generation’s aging consoles, but sugar, they’re going down swingin’. The PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Game Cube age gracefully, pushing their hardware to the limit one last time and developing some brilliant games in the process — from tear-jerking, giant-slaying adventure to piss-in-your-pants…
The notion that Wolf Creek is opening nationwide on Christmas Day brings to mind the scene from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas in which a young boy opens his holiday gift and finds a severed head. Wolf Creek is about as diametrically opposed to the concept of “goodwill toward…
Let’s engage in a little free association. I say Whistler and you say — what? The word that springs to mind is most likely mother, as in Whistler’s Mother. The formal title of that 1871 painting by American artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler is actually Arrangement in Grey and Black,…
Nowhere Man (Image Entertainment) There’s good reason why you’ve never heard of this UPN show from the mid-’90s, which lasted 25 episodes before getting shuttled off to, well, nowhere. It’s a convoluted mind-fuck that owes its existence as much to The Prisoner as The Fugitive, and if you missed one…
It’s impossible to talk about The Ringer, a comedy about someone pretending to be retarded in order to rig the Special Olympics, without mentioning that episode of South Park in which Cartman does the same thing. The Ringer was already in production when that episode was made, and it has…
Out of sight, out of mind… right? So it may take you a minute to recognize the name Valerie Harper. The actress was all over television in the ´70s and ´80s, thanks to her successful role as Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which eventually led to a…
Publisher: Activision
Platform: GameCube, PC, PlayStation 2, XBox, XBox 360
Price: $39.99-$59.99
ESRB Rating: M (for Mature)
Score: 7 (out of 10)
BROWARD/PALM BEACH CLUBS Alligator Alley: If you want to keep it cheap this New Year’s Eve and avoid people hurling and acting insane, you might want to head over to Alligator Alley’s “No Hype, No High Prices” nonextravaganza. $10 gets you the buffet and the band, Way of the Groove…
Serenity (Universal) Joss Whedon’s film version of his TV series Firefly came and went like a lightning bug in October; the predicted phenom stuck around the multiplex just long enough to lose millions. But like Firefly, which sold enough boxed sets to warrant a movie, Serenity’s bound to do well…
Those who will sit around wondering whether Munich is the work of an anti-Israeli or just a self-hating Jew — which is to say, Steven Spielberg, who has been branded both by Israeli officials and newspaper columnists in recent weeks — give the movie and its maker far too much…
One cannot, in good conscience, describe the countless strands of plot and strains of characters skittering through The Family Stone without knowing that description merits at least a snicker… OK, all right, bellowing guffaws. The movie is too overstuffed by half with pointless people and plot lines that dangle like…
The gifted Irish novelist and filmmaker Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Michael Collins) says that his overriding concern is “how individuals work with what they’ve been given.” Case in point: Jordan’s new feature, Breakfast on Pluto. This bittersweet, gender-bending drama takes a page from Candide — its beleaguered hero, too,…
Regardless of the damage done by David Sedaris’ Santaland Diaries and Billy Bob Thornton’s Bad Santa, the wide-eyed hope inspired by Santa lives on. Tots dressed in their holiday best still ritually queue up with their haggard parents to create the kind of endearing memories that will later fuel pre-rehab…
When I told a neighbor last week that I was going to the King Tut exhibition, a look of relief came over her face. “Oh, gosh, I thought I missed it,” she said. “I thought it had come and gone.” This was the day before the show opened. That overbearing…
“Fashioning Art: Handbags by Judith Leiber” is a retrospective featuring more than 150 high-end designs that “transcend utility to become objects d’art.” Her 30-year career defined handbag trends of the elite and allowed her to join the ranks of esteemed designers such as Tiffany and Cartier. Leiber won the Council…
