In the five years since MP4: Days Since a Lost Time Accident, Michael Penn has kept busy producing albums for Liz Phair and wife Aimee Mann and scoring a movie or two. He's also apparently imagined the decade before his birth, as the setting of his awkwardly titled new album...
Culture clash always makes for great comedy. It's fun to poke fun at ourselves through archetypes colliding on stage and screen. The resulting yin-yang battles have well-known, usually entertaining results, like neat freak Felix versus slob Oscar or straight-acting gay Will versus nelly gay Jack. In his engagingly cute Modern...
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Philip Freedman steps out of an elevator on the 39th floor of Broward County's tallest building and into a condo fit for an episode of MTV Cribs. A dapper and affable salesman, Freedman cues Frank Sinatra's "I've Got the World on a String," then walks...
Once you get past its negligible plot, scant dialogue, and almost zero action, Gus Van Sant's elliptical rendering of the final hours in the troubled life of a grunge musician is rarely boring. That may seem like a backhanded compliment, but given the absence of such customary cinematic conventions as...
A few months past his 16th birthday, Jerrod Miller longed for manhood. Throughout the beginning of 2005, the Delray Beach teen had been searching for part-time work in his hometown, but landing a first job isn't easy — even more difficult if you're a black teenager. Tall and lanky, with...
A rich family returns to their nice home after a vacation, but something isn't quite right. The place has been . . . burgled? No, not quite. The stereo that's missing -- it's in the fridge. The chairs have been stacked into a tower. And there's a note attached: "Your...
A rock star and two eight-balls, sittin' in a tree... FRI 9/2 When Phil Varone was a student at Coral Springs High, "I was into playing the drums and trying to get chicks," he says. But he grew up to join Saigon Kick and Skid Row, and while on tour...
On a Sunday summer afternoon so sultry that steam swirls from the street and water vapor beads on windows, Christopher Moll flips off the A/C in his Coral Springs condominium. He snakes microphone cables from a bedroom closet to his small recording studio/office, then signals his singer, Tim Yehezkely, who's...
The Man isn't so much a movie as a parody of one, the kind of thing people in movies about the movie business pitch as outrageous, inept ideas when a director's for the cheap and quick giggle. Only in movies like The Player or Bowfinger or Christopher Guest's The Big...
If you can afford to dine at Café L'Europe (331 S. County Rd., Palm Beach, 561-655-4020) on a regular basis, it's unlikely you're sweltering through an August in SoFla. Maybe Norbert and Lidia Goldner, who own this 25-year-old goldmine, know that. To celebrate the café's silver anniversary, in a gesture...
Four cool exhibits at FAU FRI 9/9 There's a running joke that FAU stands for "Find Another University," not Florida Atlantic University. But it would be hard to find another university -- in these parts, anyhow -- that's so bent on proving its dedication to the arts. Its league may...
Expressing their distaste for adult entertainment, Boca Raton's City Council members last month took a bold stand against strip joints in their town. By banning food. Sure, the council also outlawed lap dances and restricted skin shops to the crappiest part of town -- a warehouse district. But those sorts...
And so, once more, the googolplex emits the stink of the network rerun, this week offering yet another worthless big-screen take on small-screen detritus. As Hollywood wonders -- cries, actually, over spilt spoiled milk -- why audiences are staying away from theaters, offering theories ranging from the absence of such...
The call to James W. Johnson came in April 2004. On the phone was Winston Thompson, an associate dean at Broward Community College, telling him that Lulrick Balzora, an assistant professor of religion at the college, had been called up for duty in Iraq. "Would you be willing to take...
Is this what heavy metal has come to? Foul-mouthed exchanges between Iron Maiden's aging sextet and washed-up doper Ozzy Osbourne's hausfrau, Sharon, who spent the past couple of weeks publicly berating main Maiden Bruce Dickinson after allegedly pulling the plug on his band's final Ozzfest gig? But just when you...
By now, the story of the Dead Kennedys' bitter legal battle with former vocalist Jello Biafra is old news (Biafra's label, Alternative Tentacles, was ordered to pay the band $200 G's for damages resulting from unpaid royalties). So it was no surprise that, when punk rock's legendary troublemakers re-formed in...
Red Eye may not seem to be your typical Wes Craven movie. It's not really horror, there are no marketable monsters, and unlike Cursed, Scream 3, and other recent Craven offerings, it's actually an enjoyable time at the movies. But heroine Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) is very much in the...
Misery:Horror meister Stephen King certainly knows a thing or two about the vicissitudes of fame. Like many a writer before him, King draws on personal experience for his short novel Misery, a grim fairy tale about a famous novelist held captive by his "number one fan." The 1992 play is...
Preston Henn's mug shot shows a thin, older man with deep-set, pale-blue eyes. His head, with thinning hair on top, is cocked a bit to one side. His lips are pursed; a worry line creases his chin. He could be your grandfather on a bad day. After the shot was...
THU 8 In case you missed him two months ago, Flip Orley is back in town this weekend, spellbinding audiences with his brand of trance-inducing comedy. That's not to say Orley's routine is so snooze-errific you'll fall asleep in your chair; the guy's a full-fledged hypnotist. He invites audience members...
A play called If We Are Women in a place called the Women's Theatre Project? Shocking but true. What sounds like scary Lifetime television, though, is actually entirely satisfying, even if you happen to sport one of those crazy penis things. It's so satisfying that you should be prepared to...
The first thing Hollywood Police Officer Cyndi Commella Ruiz saw were the neighbors -- 21 people looking on in horror at a house on Tyler Street. Inside a screened porch, Pui Kei Wong, a small-framed 53-year-old with thick eyeglasses, was swinging a hatchet over and over again. Blood and small...
