History repeats itself: 11 Decembers ago, Universal had the season’s strongest movie — a downbeat sci-fi flick freely adapted from a well-known source by a name director. With a bare minimum of advance screenings and a shocking absence of hype, the studio dumped it. This year, it’s done it again…
Steel Magnolias, no matter what version you’re seeing, is a story about ordinary people giving the finger to circumstance, trying to live their lives on their own terms, and discovering that the right to self-determination doesn’t come cheaply. That said, the stage version is also about something else: the importance…
A well-to-do couple was scooping out sections from grapefruit halves as they wondered aloud about a Crow Indian necklace made of beaver teeth and weasel fur (circa 1815). With spoon poised just inches from her mouth, the missus stopped, turned to the mister, and said, “Oh, honey, the natives have…
Robert Wilonsky and Jordan Harper recap their top DVDs of 2006: Eraserhead (Absurda/Subversive) — Finally available on DVD, David Lynch’s debut film is as captivating and frustrating as it ever was. The print looks great in its own weird way, and the feature-length doc shows Lynch speaking more clearly about…
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Wii, Game Cube
Price: $49.99
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
Score: 10 (out of 10)
The Good German, directed by Steven Soderbergh from Joseph Kanon’s bestseller, is as much simulation as movie. Specifically, it’s the simulation of a 1940s private eye flick. It’s not just a period film but one that feigns being shot as it would have been in that period. Filmed for maximum…
It took Norman Mailer seven years and 1,282 pages to write 1991’s Harlot’s Ghost: A Novel of the CIA, and if memory serves, it took me 12 years to actually finish it. So director Robert De Niro and screenwriter Eric Roth can be forgiven for taking two hours and 40…
Avi Hoffman’s New Vista Theatre is a theater company started by Avi Hoffman, and its very first production is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, currently being performed in the future Avi Hoffman Commemorative Theater, starring Avi Hoffman as all characters and directed by Avi Hoffman…
Don’t be put off by the clunky title of artist Tin Ly’s current exhibition at the Coral Springs Museum of Art, “Morphing Forms: Selection of Dimensional Work (1990-2006).” The show and its components — a few paintings but mostly compact metal sculptures painted in oil — are much more graceful…
The zen of tedium can produce the sweetest fruit. “Yozo Hamaguchi: Father of the Modern Mezzotint” proves it, though the contemplative exhibit might easily be overlooked, tucked in a quiet corner behind the flagrant Marilyn Monroe exhibit at the Boca Museum. You really would be missing something. The Japanese artist…
Publisher: Sony
Platform: PlayStation 3
Price: $59.99
ESRB Rating: M (for Mature)
Score: 7 (out of 10)
Jackass Number Two: Unrated (Paramount) This sequel to the dumb-ass jamboree makes its predecessor look plain and inoffensive. In short: more puke, more blood, more semen (from a horse, consumed nonetheless), more shit, more piss, more everything till you’d think the Jackasses (Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, etc.) would be…
Our top DVD picks for the week of December 19: Agnes & His Brothers (First Run) All the King’s Men (Sony) American Pie: The Naked Mile (Universal) The Beauty Academy of Kabul (Docurama) The Celestine Prophecy (Sony) Checking Out (Allumination) Derailed (Weinstein) Dreamland (Sony) Invincible (Disney) Lady in the Water…
Airwolf: Season Two (Universal) Be With Me (Film Movement) Dane Cook’s Tourgasm (HBO) Danica (First Look) Factotum (IFC) The Family Values Tour 2006 (Firm Music) Girls Behaving Badly, Volume One (Starlight) Haven (Fox) Mars Invades the Earth! (Alpha) Mi Amigo (Velocity) Mr. Fix It (First Look) The New Adventures of…
What’s better – getting buzzed or getting massaged? Do both during “Wine & Recline” nights, a brilliant collaboration between the geniuses of Planet Massage and the really smart people at The Grape. With them, you can skip the preliminaries and get straight down to business. Instead of drinking until you…
It is said that a great actor or actress can “bring down the house,” but before I saw (and heard) the 25-year-old American Idol finalist Jennifer Hudson in the film version of the 1981 Broadway musical Dreamgirls, I can’t recall the last time I truly feared for the architectural stability…
Bankrupt and brain damaged in Rocky V, a bout fought so long ago that the other Bush was still sucker-punching Saddam, Sylvester Stallone’s titular pugilist returns to suffer another beating in Rocky Balboa. How much punishment can an audience take? Even 007 gets his license renewed by younger models every…
The Good German, directed by Steven Soderbergh from Joseph Kanon’s bestseller, is as much simulation as movie. Specifically, it’s the simulation of a 1940s private eye flick. It’s not just a period film, but one that feigns being shot as it would have been in that period. Filmed for maximum…
Praise be to everything holy, David Wiltse’s Hatchetman has almost nothing to do with golf. I was really concerned about this before I saw the play, now enjoying its world premiere at Florida Stage: The advertisements all feature images of a tiny man teeing off atop a giantess’ bare navel,…
Binding mortality, relationships, and blessings together poetically in one exhibit, Marsha Christo’s “Contemporary Approaches to Printmaking” explores the art of replication. Using a variety of printing approaches — silk-screens, stencils, woodblock stamps, and plaster and rubber relief prints — the Albanian-American artist shows the power of printmaking to explore an…
When the Levees Broke (HBO) Spike Lee’s four-part doc, easily the best non-fiction film of 2006, gets a fifth part on DVD: a 105-minute epilogue that reveals just how little has changed since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005. Featuring new interviews with the displaced and displeased,…
Publisher: 2K Sports
Platform: PS2, PS3 Xbox, X360
Price: $30-$60
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Score: 8 (out of 10)
