If ever there were a bit of material not in need of a good dusting, it’s this Jane Austen novel; no more mystery can be wrung from its machinations, after all. Yet what could have been dreary and old-fashioned, this potential montage of bodices and balls sure to glaze the…
Pay attention, Disney: This is how you do a family film right. Neither pandering nor dull, Zathura plays exactly like a no-limits replica of the kind of space adventure that imaginative kids left to their own devices might enact. Assuming there’s no Xbox to distract them, naturally. Loosely based on…
Chicken Little is a groundbreaking movie in more ways than one. Not only is it Disney’s first in-house all-computer-generated feature, but also, on select screens, it will be presented in Disney Digital 3-D, a brand-new system created with the help of George Lucas’s special-effects company Industrial Light & Magic. It’s…
It’s been 85 years since Douglas Fairbanks slashed his way into the top tax bracket as the masked hero Zorro, and Hollywood still can find no reason to shut down the franchise. Technically speaking, The Legend of Zorro, starring Antonio Banderas as the guy with the sword and Catherine Zeta-Jones…
Does Steve Martin have multiple personality disorder — or is he just brilliantly in tune with some things and wildly out of touch with others? Shopgirl, the movie based on Martin’s novella of the same name, is one of the most schizoid films in recent memory. It opens with crystalline…
When we first see the protagonist of North Country, a working-class heroine portrayed by a deglamorized Charlize Theron, she’s sporting a black eye and a slight limp, the results of an encounter with her abusive husband. We soon learn that Josey Aimes is only now beginning to take her lumps…
A sport you can learn in a just a few minutes, requires very little skill, and is traditionally played while sipping cocktails? We’re there! Pétanque — pronounced pay-tonk — is one of the most popular outdoor games in Europe. The object of the game, which originated in France in the…
THU 10 You could just stay home, smoke a bowl, and watch a movie, or you could give those tiny brain cells a workout with some mind-tingling poetry. Tonight at 8:00, the Literary Salon salutes the cinema and pop culture with “At the Drive-In,” a mixed-media presentation of poetry readings…
There’s a Website dedicated to proving Bob Saget is God. That argument could have been made in the Eighties, when he simultaneously starred as everyone’s favorite father figure on the saccharine family sitcom Full House, and the goofy and charming host of America’s Funniest Home Videos. Before the cameras, Saget…
West Indian legends take the stage SAT 11/12 Horace Forbes isn’t a fan of contemporary Jamaican music. In fact the silver-haired serenader is openly dismissive of dancehall artists like Beenie Man, Sizzla, and Buju Banton. “You know those mongrel dogs that go growl, growl, growl? That’s how they sound to…
Offshore race fans catch a wave to the Keys SUN 11/13 ou could rent a hotel room and watch from there. Or find a viewing spot at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park. But right down in Key West Harbor, on water’s edge, the salty spray stinging your face — that’s…
French films for the well-adjusted FRI 11/11 When the topic of French cinema is broached, most American film buffs wax poetic about the strident feminism of Catherine Breillat or the rich narrative tapestries of Claire Denis. But for every French movie that’s a meta-meditation on the dynamic of self and…
Ren Faire Fantasia FRI 11/11 The musical duo Four Shillings Short delight in the exotic. Rather than employing traditionally folkie instruments like guitar and upright bass, free-spirited Californian Christy Martin and Irishman Aodh Og O’Tuama prefer hammered dulcimer, gemshorn, tin whistles, and mandolin. Their music is a global potpourri where…
Beavis and Butt-head: The Mike Judge Collection, Volume One (Paramount) This three-disc, 40-episode volume chronicling Beavis and Butt-head’s early years will come as a relief to anyone who was stuck in a teenage wasteland when the MTV series first hit the air; turns out, we weren’t just stoned — this…
Rockstar Games has a winning recipe: Blend a nuanced story with a rich environment, add a dash of sensational marketing, then drench the confection in blood. What else would you expect from the publisher that gave us Grand Theft Auto? Rockstar’s latest release, The Warriors, proves that the bad boys…
Bang Rajan (Hart Sharp) Big Fish: Special Edition (Columbia/Tristar) Blue Collar TV: Season 1, Volume 1 (Warner Bros.) Burn (Columbia/Tristar) Christmas With the Kranks (Sony) Cronicas (UMVD) Edward Scissorhands: Anniversary Edition (Fox) 50 Cent: Refuse to Die (New Line) Jumanji: Deluxe Edition (Columbia/Tristar) La Dolce Vita: Deluxe Collector’s Edition (Koch…
Bill Maher has publicly compared mentally handicapped children to dogs and called the death penalty a way of “thinning out the herd.” The iconic self-proclaimed bachelor is a clever, charismatic, and quick-witted man to watch onscreen, but speaking with him on the telephone, away from the spotlight, borders on irritating…
Brooklyn Boy: A writer from a fabled neverland called Brooklyn finally makes it big just as his personal life begins to fall apart. Donald Margulies’s bittersweet and not particularly satisfying comedy is so obviously personal that it feels unseemly to complain. Still, there is precious originality in the playwright’s treatment…
The terrain of the holy can appear a rough row to hoe in a pair of strangely provocative exhibits fertile with the sacred and profane. “The Saint Makers: A Living Tradition in American Folk Art” features more than 75 works of outsider religious iconography largely drawn from the collection of…
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Lucasfilm Ltd.) The final installment of the Star Wars saga actually plays better at home: You can watch it, then pop in the original trilogy and chart the evolution of Anakin, and have it all actually make sense. Though it’s still a…
Pity the videogame zombie. He spends his short afterlife dodging self-righteous heroes hell-bent on peppering him with buckshot, setting him on fire, or blowing him to smithereens with a bazooka. Well, Stubbs is here to even the score. Set in the 1950s, Stubbs the Zombie casts players as the eponymous…
American Chopper: Third Season (Columbia/Tristar) Attack Pack (Commando, Predator, and Kiss of the Dragon) (Fox) Bill Maher: I’m Swiss (Image Ent.) The Brady Bunch: Four-Season Pack (Paramount) Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam (Warner Bros.) Disney Princess: A Christmas of Enchantment (Disney) Duran Duran: Live From London (Universal Music) Fame:…
