After the next few apocalypses, hundreds of thousands of years from the moment we clever humans smugly call “now,” the great philosopher-scientists will gather to assemble the remaining traces of our present time and species. In particular, these evolved beings will find fascination in the structure of our crania, which…
Faced with yet another sports movie in which lovably troubled kids triumph over adversity, it’s easier to scoff and grumble than to feel even partially uplifted. So let’s do it — let’s scoff and grumble. At least for a moment. In Brian Robbins’ Hardball, a degenerate gambler who owes bent-nosed,…
A year after Cameron Crowe climbed back aboard the tour bus for one last spin through rock’s golden days of giddy hedonism and phony heroism comes a film set a decade later, in the mid-1980s, when the parties got harder, the music louder and the musicians prettier. The world of…
Film fans, rejoice! The Orpheum Theatre is kicking off its third season of Silent Sundays.The series is a clever idea, well-executed. Old silent films are screened every few months on Sunday afternoons. Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney Jr., Clara Bow, Bessie Love, Errol Flynn, Jackie Coogan — these and other great…
You celebrated Cinco de Mayo and probably thought you were participating in Mexico’s equivalent to the Fourth of July. But Cinco de Mayo celebrates Mexico’s fight against the French — which, as the Germans will tell you, is no big deal. The real Mexican Independence Day is September 16, the…
The indie Let It Snow was originally titled Snow Days. Both titles are terrible — they suggest either a schmaltzy ’40s-era holiday musical or else a kiddy comedy from Nickelodeon. The movie is, rather, a derivative but likable romantic comedy, sort of a bus-and-truck When Harry Met Sally . …
Ralphie May, who is white, calls black men “niggers.” In his standup act, he uses the word repeatedly; he also riffs on Mexicans, who “see the Virgin Mary in everything,” and whose names are easy to remember “because they’re on their necklaces.” He was raised in the deep South, in…
There is a trick to making shofars — the hollowed-out rams’ horns blown on Rosh Hashanah — and also a trick to blowing them. Generally, though, rams’ horns are more easily mastered than French horns, and it is possible that you will walk away from the Shofar Factory, a shofar-making…
Judd Apatow tries not to think of what became of Sam and Lindsay Weir, Neal Schweiber, Bill Haverchuck, Daniel Desario, Nick Andopolis and the other freaks and geeks Apatow knew back at McKinley High School. Those kids were his family, the children born when Apatow and writer Paul Feig created…
In Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour, a little girl destroys her teacher’s life with accusations that the teacher is gay. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, mere mortals are tried and convicted as witches by their peers. In the best theatrical tradition, recent behind-the-scenes shenanigans at local companies have combined…
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Seldom are the advantages of a home-based art space so obvious as in the case of “A Good Way to Learn, Lesson 4: Chores (Content Clean)”; it’s performance art in the guise of mundane household chores, or mundane household chores in the guise of art. Either way, the piece comes…
God works in mysterious ways. How else to explain the sudden appearance of a press release about Elvis on the office bulletin board? Well, maybe the “PLEASE POST THIS ON YOUR BULLETIN BOARD” it requested in polite italics, pulsing with the gentle insistence of ALL CAPS, had something to do…
Cuddly outsider #63178D, please step forward. Well, my goodness, look at you! You are so alternative, so fringe, so punk! So artsy and alienated! So utterly aimless and oozing with angst! Tell us, girl, what ought we to call you? Edwina Scissorhands?That’s one easily justified reaction a viewer may take…
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Far too often, those who work in the music industry are so concerned with making a living they often forget they’re capable, at their best, of making history as well. They sacrifice art and artists in the name of commerce, then sleep soundly wrapped in bedspreads made of silk and…
What I did this summer is scramble to find theater productions to write about, which is how I came to break my rule about never attending any play presented in a strip mall. But a summer season almost entirely bereft of theater found me last weekend driving up and down…
Anybody with siblings knows that, while birth order isn’t the determining factor in how we develop, it certainly provides a convenient excuse for any number of undesirable character traits. The eldest child can be insufferably responsible and bossy, lording it over his or her younger siblings, or wild and crazy,…
Woody Allen’s latest romp through Old New York combines (among other things) a skirt-chasing insurance investigator with the charm of a rodent, a wisecracking Vassar grad who takes no guff and a nightclub hypnotist in a sequined turban who doubles as a major jewel thief. The year is 1940. The…
Beware the filmmaker who looks through the camera’s lens and sees only himself on the other side, blowing kisses. He’s the fool who confuses “personal vision” with “jacking off,” and he’ll try every time to convince you there’s something meaningful and imaginative in the shallow and hackneyed. He is so…
Joe Rogan, who as a standup comedian works more or less the same hours that strippers do, is not a 9-to-5 kind of guy. He is, however, an 18-to-34. That’s the demographic group from which Rogan, a NewsRadio veteran and the host of NBC’s Fear Factor, draws most of his…
How many times must I tell you kids Before you shut your yaps? Yes, ‘n’ how many ways must I say the same thing Before I can get my nap? Yes, ‘n’ how many times must your parents be called Before they make you cut the crap? The answer, you…
