Note: The following is part of a recent cell phone conversation overheard at the Coral Springs Mall. “Omigod! Did you see Walk the Line? Like, Joaquin Phoenix was so hot as Johnny Cash! Oh, but who I really liked was Tyler Hilton. He was the cutie who played Elvis. Uh-huh……
Didn’t Richard Donner retire? A 1980s star-director name, among many, that should now send bolts of discouraging dread down your spine, Richard Donner may well be seeing his filmmaking skills peak with 16 Blocks — even if saying it’s his best, least flatulent, most efficient film is tantamount to saying…
What do little girls want? If we are to follow the emotional heart of Aquamarine, a new film about two13-year-olds who help a runaway mermaid fall in love, the answer is . . . bling. Hailey (Joanna “JoJo” Levesque, pretty much a Lindsay Lohan ringer) and Claire (Emma Roberts) are…
The world premiere of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party at the Toronto International Film Festival last September had the vibe of a sold-out concert — all those spotlights beaming to and fro in front of a venerable old theater, all that pushing and shoving for the best seats, all those celebs…
Consider the irony: When the first French impressionists began exhibiting their work in the late 19th Century, the occasion marked a fairly radical break with the academic art of the time. Even the designation impressionism, coined by critic Louis Leroy and popularized by the French press, had a slightly derogatory…
Last fall, Microsoft hyped its pricey Xbox 360 by promising to reinvent gaming as we know it. The blockbuster “next generation” titles were supposed to harness the machine’s awesome power to deliver high-definition graphics and impossibly realistic action. But a funny thing happened on the way to the future. The…
Walk the Line (Fox) No matter what a junkie does with his spare time — say, redefine country music, or forge one of history’s most enduring personas — movies about junkies are a drag to watch. So it’s too bad this Johnny Cash biopic is a by-the-numbers fall-and-redemption tale. A…
Annie Duke’s Conquering Online Poker (Big Vision) The Avengers: The Complete Emma Peel Megaset (A&E) Battle’s Poison Cloud (Cinema Libre) Bleak House (BBC Warner) Camara Oscura (Warner Bros.) Charmed: The Complete Fourth Season (Paramount) Death Tunnel (Sony) The Hobart Shakespeareans (Docurama) The Ice Harvest (MCA) The Lords of Discipline (Paramount)…
You would think that hockey players feel shafted. After all, the NBA players get all of the media hype. Major League Baseball gets all the television coverage. NFL teams get whole squads of cheerleaders – but the Florida Panthers only have six. “Is that all?” said Panthers center Stephen Weiss,…
So it’s 1962. John F. Kennedy is president, there’s a happy cultural zeitgeist in the air, and you just want to dance! Without messing up your blue bouffant, of course! So what if you’re a plus-sized girl in small-minded Baltimore? You can win the Corny Collins Show dance contest and…
The past five centuries have been a roller coaster ride for Caribbean countries – slavery, British imperialism, U.S. imperialism, wars of independence and emancipation, and all that fun stuff. But unless the History Channel airs a History’s Mysteries episode on a long lost slave colony, your best bet for an…
Now that the 2006 Winter Olympics are over, there’s only one Starting Line you need to know about, and it has nothing to do with the rivalry between U.S. speed skaters Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick. Nope. This Starting Line is a bright and shiny pop-punk/emo quartet from Churchville, Pennsylvania…
Unlike the graphically misleading King Tut exhibit (what, no sarcophagus?), there’s no allusion to anything other than artwork being displayed in the exhibit “Dali on Tour.” If there’s any assumption to make, it’s that the tour features plenty of works from the Dali Museum in Saint Petersburg – an assumption…
News flash, gentlemen: The reason your significant other has been giving you the silent treatment is because you bungled Valentine’s Day by staying home and watching WWE Raw. Surprising your lady with a night out would be a good idea, and a smart choice is Friday’s Bonnie Raitt concert. From…
Voice acting has always been one of the most under-appreciated of the performing arts. But leave it to a guy known for his wildly diverse roles – the inimitable Johnny Depp – to excel as the voice-over star in an IMAX movie about ocean life. Along with screen queen Kate…
It’s a long way from the corn fields of Nebraska to the cane fields of Palm Beach County. But for the tour-happy band fronted by Darren Keen, the show’s just over the rainbow. Wait, scratch that – the Show Is the Rainbow. Yep, it has been several months since the…
You may think it overly presumptuous of comic Lisa Lampanelli to call herself the “Queen of Mean.” Of course, Ann Coulter never claimed that title, so the honor is all Lampanelli’s. After all, it was Lampanelli who took part in the cinematic filth fest known as The Aristocrats. And even…
Tommy Lee Jones’ feature directorial debut is probably much as you’d expect: a blast of nostalgia that nonetheless accepts the realities of modernity, which isn’t surprising coming from an actor who’s getting up there in years but has found more fame as an older man than as a young’un. The…
If you’re a parent trying to teach your sullen teenaged kids that movies with subtitles aren’t all bad, try taking them to see Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor). Like Christophe Gans’ The Brotherhood of the Wolf or Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, this is a foreign-language film that proves that…
If you have any awareness at all of the existence of Running Scared — no, not the Gregory Hines/Billy Crystal cop buddy comedy, but the new film written and directed by Wayne Kramer — chances are you have but one question: How in God’s name does anyone expect us to…
Few things are harder to describe than childhood molestation, but Paula Vogel’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning controversial play How I Learned to Drive, now on stage at the University of Miami’s Jerry Herman Ring Theater, does just that. Set in Maryland largely during the ’60s, this 90-minute dark comedy moves in…
The dark, tattoo- and graffiti-influenced work of art student Patrick Maxcy covers a wall of the hallway leading to Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt Gallery, now presenting “Picturing Florida.” It’s an interestingly intimate segue from the expansive surrounding campus to the almost bare gallery. Maxcy’s approach differs from the usual paintings…
