Try though they might, neither actor Christopher Haines, who appears in Glen Berger’s one-man, one-act Underneath the Lintel, nor Charles St. Clair, its director, can save this sinking ship of a show. Lintel is an exploration of faith that comments on man’s place in the universe — one that’s couched…
Movie-based videogames have a well-deserved reputation for sucking. Ever since Atari’s E.T. — a game so ill-conceived that thousands of unsold cartridges were dumped en masse in the desert, creating the crappiest buried treasure of all time — Hollywood tie-ins have bombed big-time. Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game…
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Magnolia) The best two hours you’ll ever spend learning about accounting, Enron is one part civics lesson, one part Greek tragedy, and one part political cartoon. Director Alex Gibney makes no pretense of objectivity; he wants you to hiss and boo at Ken…
At first you don’t even notice it. What’s to see? Funny how the ground level on either side of your feet remains unchanged, or barely changed, for so long. Then, okay, a slight rise, but not so high that you couldn’t jump over it. Not that you do. But you…
I am what is known in polite circles as a collector. I own 16 children’s phonographs, 213 Old Maid card games, 47 LPs by Jerry Vale. Although many people see my endless hunting and gathering of useless ephemera — century-old bars of still-wrapped soap, 1970s breakfast-cereal premiums, thrift-store paintings of…
I always envy those people who glide into January resolving to lose weight, quit smoking, or kick their eBay habits. These are self-inflicted vices, ones that might possibly be solved by the person suffering from them. My problem is completely beyond my control, and certainly beyond the reach of your…
There is no good explanation for the coat that hangs in my closet. Not that it’s ugly. Far from it. Heathery brown tweed, with a nipped waist and shoulders that sit just so, it’s cut beautifully enough to make even Janet Napolitano look lanky. In fact, if I stood up…
When Katrina struck, he borrowed a truck from the U-Haul dealership where he worked his second job. Instead of loading up his worldly possessions before fleeing the path of the storm, he loaded up relatives and neighbors; they squeezed into the holding cell of the borrowed truck for a dark,…
It’s like clockwork. As each and every night out rolls around, you swear it’ll be filled with excitement, rather than the regular routine of dinner and a movie. But alas, creature of habit, when your head hits the pillow, you’ve somehow wasted your evening filling your face with the usual…
Adventures of Superman: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros.) Asylum (Paramount) Casino (MCA) Celebrity Mix (TLA) Final Destination: Scared 2 Death Pack (New Line) Gendernauts (First Run) Ghost in the Machine (Anchor Bay) Industrial Strength Keaton (Mackinac Media) Jamie Foxx Presents Laffapalooza! 6 (Image) Junebug (Sony) Lois & Clark: The…
Sometimes the rut you’re in is bigger than all that. Sometimes it’s deeper and wider than just Whoa, I wear too much orange or So there are other channels besides the Spice Channel? Sometimes that rut you’re in is so huge that getting out of it entails not just a…
One of the hottest trends going in the art world is for artists or groups of artists to work under a pseudonym. The phony name is a protest against commercialism in art, and it’s also a heck of a good gimmick. Enter COAX, the nom de brush of a Phoenix…
There’s an oft-repeated urban legend about Dragon Quest’s popularity in Japan: So many gamers ditched school and work to play that the government decreed that future releases had to take place on weekends. In reality, there’s no such law, but as with most myths, the message rings true, even if…
Sam Peckinpah’s Legendary Westerns Collection (Warner Bros.) At a mere $42 through most websites, this four-film boxed set ranks among the best ever compiled; not only does it contain the restored version of one of the greatest movies of all time (The Wild Bunch), but also three other brilliant westerns…
Over the years, moviegoers who double as sports fans have had ample opportunity to pick and choose their favorite miracle — Shoeless Joe Jackson emerging from the tall corn, Rudy suiting up for Notre Dame, Rocky going the distance with Apollo Creed, the U.S. hockey team taking down the Russkies…
Over the centuries, the legend of Tristram and Iseult has fueled the derring-do of King Arthur, aroused Richard Wagner’s operatic thunder, driven poets as diverse as Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Edwin Arlington Robinson to the heights of passion, and helped stock the back streets of Manhattan with companies of leaping Jets…
What’s an unemployed former superspy to do? Faced with a midlife career change, suave Pierce Brosnan seems to have chosen wry self-mockery, reinventing himself as a scruffy, fallen James Bond surrogate, sometimes still furnished with a license to kill and a certain gift for cool, but far more likely now…
When a movie promises that a character played by Queen Latifah may well die during the course of the action, one might hope that the movie in question is Hostel, so that she could be beaten a few times and then dismembered, ideally by someone who sat through The Cookout,…
According to Occam’s Razor (Elite Entertainment) Black Books: The First Complete Series (BBC/Warner) The Chumscrubber (Universal) The Constant Gardener (Universal) Dead Poets Society: Special Edition (Touchstone) Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Bueller . . . Bueller . . . Edition (Paramount) The Flash: The Complete Series (Warner Bros.) The Gambler (Time…
Susan Copeland at Burton Barr Central Library: Hey, America, wake up and smell the discrimination. That’s the theme of Susan Copeland’s exhibition “Refuse,” a name that refers to the materials Copeland uses in her mixed-media creations and to treatment she believes African-Americans get in this country. The strongest pieces in…
Pity the college basketball coach. He toils endlessly to explain the vagaries of offensive sets and defensive zones. He frets over lineups, injuries, and scouting reports. His job is never safe — one losing season, and it’s back to teaching bounce passes to the JV girls at St. Elizabeth’s. Few…
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…
