It’s impossible to write about David Wain’s The Ten without first making passing reference to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. The former, originally made for Polish TV 20 years ago and first shown in the United States in 2000, offered a modern-day take on the…
1. Balls of Fury is a movie about: a. A former table tennis prodigy (Dan Fogler as Randy Daytona) enlisted by the FBI to infiltrate the underground ping-pong tournament of a legendary Chinese criminal (Christopher Walken). b. Suppository jokes. c. Little worth discussing and even less worth seeing. d. All…
By late summer, when director James Wan’s Death Sentence is playing side-by-side with Neil Jordan’s The Brave One at many of our nation’s multiplexes, moviegoers will be forgiven for thinking that they’ve traveled through a time warp and landed in the late 1970s, when first-class cinemas and seedy grindhouses alike…
It’s become a little embarrassing, frankly. I find myself answering the same handful of disgruntled questions, time and again, about how and why I dare to work as a theater critic. My favorite entreaties include “Why are you so mean?” (Because I can be) and “Don’t you care that theater…
The next-gen consoles are sexy as hell, but it’s not all bad being the reigning “last-gen” champ either. With more than 100 million PlayStation 2 consoles sold, software companies can afford to be a little adventurous — after all, even if their game appeals to only 1 percent of that…
Year of the Dog (Paramount Vantage) It’s just about the First Commandment of Hollywood: Don’t kill the dog. So it’s a testament to the clout of writer-director Mike White (School of Rock) that killing off the dog is the first of many rules broken in this weird-ass movie. Folks fooled…
Surely you clubgoers must be tired of hearing the same mindless Top 40 hits that stink up the airwaves every day. At this point, no amount of booze can make you wanna shake it to “Party Like a Rock Star” (just givin’ you the benefit of the doubt here). So…
Tired of all of those emissions-unfriendly gas guzzlers on that there road? Of course you are, eco-freak. We say get your nose out of Silent Spring and suck in the sulfur at Diesels in the Desert, a high-octane competition showcasing two bracket classes of high-speed trucks. Sat., Sept. 1, 7…
The street-art creations of California’s Style Renegades — comprised of Randy B. and Lady Orchid — ain’t your granny’s black-velvet Elvis. The artists/models/photographers/musicians perform original tunes and display their edgy, “neo-klassical” mixed-media works. Chicks with guns is a recurring theme. Sat., Sept. 1, 6-10 p.m…
Arguably the King of the Monsters, Godzilla is unquestionably one of the all-time Kings of the Summer Movie. What better way, then, to observe the last day of August than by watching the titanic reptile throw down and put his gigantic taloned feet in the asses of a couple of…
In some regards, we understand why modern-day hip-hop gets a bad, uh, rap, especially when it comes to glamorizing violence. Just look at some of the names. C-Murder. Mykill Miers. Murda Mook. So does that mean we’re gonna start tucking in our stuffed shirts and siding with poll-battling politicians in…
We’ll occasionally tune in to CBS’ Ghost Whisperer to check out Jennifer Love Hewitt’s boo . . . er, sparkling acting abilities, and to NBC’s Medium because, well, Patricia Arquette actually has acting abilities. Then there’s the dearly departed’s main man — James Van Praagh, whose work as a medium…
Your first drink was at age 11, when you stole a bottle of Wild Turkey and choked it down in the alley with your buddies. In high school, you went to dockers and made out with drunk girls in the dirt. College brought on a number of nights where you…
Certain cities conjure thoughts of death, but at least, according to Ray Nagin, the big-mouth Big Easy mayor, “it keeps the brand out there.” Take the mysterious case of Ciudad Juárez, where more than 300 young females have been brutally murdered since 1993. Referred to as las muertas de Juárez…
Tiki bars are so damn pleasant, what with all the tropical accouterments and umbrella drinks. Shayna’s is taking tiki back to its hoodoo roots with the Thursday-night weekly Haunted Tiki with DJ Horsepussy. The equine-punani man spins a spooky surf/garage/rockabilly/punk/rock mélange. Thursdays, 2007…
Did’ja get picked last in grade-school volleyball? Did it leave an emotional scar? Perhaps you became antisocial and personal relationships suffered as a result of the trauma. As you grew older, you began to push people away. Now you can’t even hold a conversation with the opposite sex unless you’re…
What the hell is pop/punk, anyway? Wasn’t punk originally a coup d’état against bloated pop stars? Well, if there is such a thing as pop/punk, The Dollyrots are it. Think the soda-pop effervescence of Belinda Carlisle’s Go-Go’s surgically sutured to Nirvana’s jagged harmonics. The L.A. trio’s single “Because I’m Awesome”…
They resemble picture postcards from the recent past: the one of the big, pink, stucco apartment house on Central Avenue; the one of that weird, circular bank that looks like a spaceship; the one of Gammage Auditorium, glowing warmly with violet light. But Michael Lundgren’s images from “Mid-Century Marvels: The…
Just when you thought the only music coming out of Southern California was made by dolled-up teen-screen queens between stints at pricey Malibu rehab facilities, The BellRays arrive with their energetic mix of guitar-centric Motown garage punk. Lead singer Lisa Kekuala, who’s part Aretha, Kelis, and Patti Smith (think punk-rock…
Tawni Shuler’s childhood on a Wyoming farm laid the foundation for her way of seeing and painting. “It’s very empty,” says the artist, “and you think that it’s very still, and yet there are all these small things occurring, all these decompositions, and things are growing — this huge place…
Remember the tale of Daedalus? It’s a thin line between failure and glory? Well, broken bones await the losers, but world domination is the sweet prize for the champions of the Action Sports World Tour. The amazing spectacle features skateboarding verts, BMX box-jump competitions, and freestyle motocross demos. A few…
In our opinion, nothing quite captures the quintessential New York City experience like James Baldwin’s Another Country. The 1962 book strips the universe’s creative center of its collective veil and poignantly explores the city’s violent and racist tendencies, the depression of its transplanted residents, the unparalleled art scene, and its…
