The sinewy young tough with the skull tattoo etched into his bicep is beating a hasty retreat from Washington Square. On his way to the door, he passes under the white board across which is scrawled, in multicolored lettering, “Wednesday, March 3, Worst Band in America!” “What’s the hurry?” someone…
Il Ladro di Bambini (Stolen Children) is a small film that packs a mean wallop. You don’t realize what a tour de force you’re watching until midway through, and then not because of a Crying Game-like plot twist or a whiff of Scent of a Woman-ly bombast. Rather, Bambini wins…
“It is not a dance; [it is] synthetic sex turned into a spectator sport,” asserts choreographer Jeffrey Holder. “If they turned off the music, they’d all be arrested,” adds phlegmatic comedian Bob Hope. The object of such moral outrage? A vulgar, animalistic dance known as the Twist. Canadian documentary filmmaker…
Thank goodness for small favors: the new Disney release, A Far Off Place, is not a Newsies-magnitude bomb. On the other hand, the best thing about the film (a loose adaption of two books by Laurens van der Post, A Story Like the Wind and A Far Off Place) is…
Bassist Bobby Reynolds likens the phenomenon to “a skin graft that didn’t take.” Since taking the MCA plunge, Reynolds’s band, the Mavericks, has been on a wild ride. From Hell to Paradise, their major-label debut, corralled a herd of glowing reviews from the likes of USA Today and Billboard. Yet…
The NAACP once accused controversial FBI director J. Edgar Hoover of being prejudiced. The cross-dressing pit bull’s characteristically sensitive response was that he was buddies with Amos (Freeman Gosden) and Andy (Charles Correll), white men who played embarrassing black stereotypes on a popular radio program. Needless to say, the NAACP…
During the Seventeenth Century, aristocratic women often glued little dots of black taffeta to their faces or breasts to accentuate the whiteness of their skin. On the forehead such a mark was called a “majestique,” near the eye a “passionne,” and near the lip a “galante.” On the chin, it…
I don’t know whose idea it was to lock Doc Wiley (Washington Square), John Tovar (band manager), Sandra Schulman (Sun-Sentinel, XS), Lisa Cillo (WKPX-FM), Laura Regalado (WVUM-FM), Ariyah Okamoto (Snatch the Pebble), Curt McIntosh (Long Distance Entertainment), Glenn Richards (latent axe murderer), and me in a room without adult supervision,…
As a young actor, Robert De Niro learned a lot by studying, and occasionally emulating, Marlon Brando. Who would have guessed that De Niro would someday go so far as to mimic the Godfather’s penchant for taking the money and running? Chances are that Mad Dog and Glory wouldn’t have…
Admittedly what most people remember from the movie The Big Easy is either the steamy love scene between Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin or Quaid’s cockeyed Cajun accent. Louisianans from Thibodaux to Natchitoches howled at Quaid’s mangling of the vernacular, especially the way he said “cher” (it’s pronounced “sha” as…
Harvey Keitel plays the profane, heavy-betting, dope-sucking, whoremongering police officer of the title. It is a role that affords this underrated actor the kind of exposure that has eluded him to date: full frontal nudity. In addition to the family jewels, we get to see Keitel masturbating (fully clothed) in…
Nearly a decade ago film critic Vincent Canby of the New York Times vilified the work of French director Alain Corneau, dismissing it as “lethargic, pretentious, overblown, neopoetic nonsense.” Since that review, no American distributor has been daring (or batty) enough to market another of Corneau’s movies in this country…
Maybe they’ve forgotten to bring their guitars with them. Maybe they’ve had too much to drink. Maybe they just don’t feel up to it. Whatever the reason, the last scheduled performer of this open-mike Wednesday night at Cactus Cantina has stepped away from the microphone, leaving five minutes to kill…
Extreme Close-Up was Paul N. Lazarus III’s first feature film, and the independent producer had delivered it on time and under budget. There was just one remaining hurdle — the rating. Lazarus had promised his backers the film would receive no worse than an R from the MPAA. This was…
Now that Skinny Elvis has his stamp, Fat Elvis has ascended into the White House, and Saddam Hussein has so graciously consented to single-handedly reversing CNN’s ratings slump, the time has finally come to refocus our nation’s awesome problem-solving skills on a deeper dilemma, one that threatens to lower the…
Most of them have moved on by now, to places like Key West, Naples, Orlando. At the very least they’ve gotten real jobs (or tried to), gotten married (or tried to), and hunkered down in Kendall (despite trying not to). Maybe, if they somehow stashed enough dough, they bought a…
Yes, still more local efforts cross our ears and end up with ink all over them. Thanks for your feedback. Thanks for the music. Thanks for a great year. See ya in ’93. XSF Doodles (independent cassette) BY TODD ANTHONY One of the biggest cliches in the rock criticism biz…
It felt like one of those magical nights, full of promise. As I headed along Dixie Highway toward the Beach, I popped in the Christmas cassette Rat had given me, the one with the big, hand-painted, red-and-green block letters: TOILING MIDGETS/AMERICAN MUSIC CLUB. Mark Eitzel’s edgy, elegiac voice bled out…
Keeping the lines open and dialing in area codes With the three previous installments of this feature (April, June, and September) we covered 23 recordings, a mere drop in the local-sound bucket. We hope by now you have the idea — some of these are on sale, those that aren’t…
It’s 1:30 p.m. on a typical weekday afternoon. The phone rings. I shove breakfast aside and pick up the receiver. “Hullo.” “Hey, Todd. Michael Bolton here.” Right. The preeningest poseur of ’em all, the consummate, definitive white opportunist making a fortune by neutering, bastardizing, aping, and otherwise exploiting classic African-American…
A little more than a decade and a half ago, when Warren Zevon was the Excitable Boy, talking a great game, playing with guns, and out-drinking anyone foolish or self-destructive enough to challenge his virtuosity with a bottle, you could’ve gotten great odds he wouldn’t survive long enough to see…
Seems like only yesterday the Goods were “the best live band in Miami.” Blowing everybody away at Miami Rocks, tearing up Churchill’s. “If only they could get it on tape…” was the rap against them. Then came 1990’s Too True to Be Good vinyl EP and the single “I’m Not…
