New Reviews
Changing Lanes “Lawyers as swindlers — a novel idea” Dir. Roger Michell; writ. Chap Taylor and Michael Tolkin; feat. Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson, Toni Collette, Amanda Peet, Sydney Pollack, William Hurt (R) Partner in a high-powered Wall Street law firm, 28-year-old Gavin Banek (Affleck) is one of those potentates of capitalism Tom Wolfe dubbed…
Video & DVD
Donnie Darko DVD, 20th Century Fox When it comes to male teenage alienation, it’s hard to top Catcher in the Rye — whether the background is bebop or hip hop, the emotions are much the same, and the classic still pegs ’em. You have to credit first-time filmmaker Richard Kelly with a degree of maturity…
Still Playing
A Beautiful Mind “Pity, fear, and cognitive reverie” Dir. Ron Howard; writ. Akiva Goldsman, based on biography by Sylvia Nasar; feat. Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Vivien Cardone, Adam Goldberg, Judd Hirsch, Christopher Plummer (PG-13) Big Trouble “That joke isn’t funny anymore.” Dir. Barry Sonnenfeld; writ. Dave Barry (novel) and Robert Ramsey…
ONE FOR THE BUSH TEAM
In law, words are used as weapons — to advocate for or to injure civil rights, to uphold or castrate the Constitution. A battle over President George W. Bush’s nominations to the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, has focused on two nominees, including one from the…
LIQUID GOLD
“We’ve got forty days and forty nights,” grassroots anti-PGA activist Joe Pagliare remarked recently, talking about the petition drive to force a referendum on City Council’s vote in favor of the PGA Village project. Pagliare said he’s under no illusions about what the anti-PGA side is up against — starting with a slick public relations…
AMERICAN MUSIC
Dave Alvin is close to 50 years old. He is (no offense) kind of funny looking, with a big forehead and a mouth — sometimes toting a soul patch beneath it — that’s a little too wide for the head it sits on. Yet every time I go see the guy play, I’m surrounded by…
A GREAT ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SWINDLE
Do pie-eyed, pierced 15-year-olds really care if they pay a king’s ransom to see a decoy DK? Jello Biafra certainly thinks so. In February, the ex-Dead Kennedys frontman filed a lawsuit against his former bandmates East Bay Ray, Klaus Flouride, and D. H. Peligro for the unauthorized use of his name, voice, photograph, likeness, and/or…
POLKA’S MANIC SQUEEZE
`Ed.’s note: You can read the following story, but the masked ball Incognito SOLD OUT April 16. But we won’t stop you from finding out what you’ll miss, so go ahead and check it out …` Richie Yurkovich and the salted floor of Dee’s Bar in the Polish/Czech town of Ely, Minnesota were my first…
BLACK IS BACK
It’s been more than a decade since the Pixies titillated suburban teens with the Buñuelian horror-show ditty “Debaser” (“Slicin’ up eyeballs / Ha ha ha ho” — Marilyn Manson, eat your heart out … please). But the Pixies were about a hell of a lot more than morbid thrills; they were one of the ’80s…
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A BOOZY SCREW-UP
For William Faulkner, great writing vindicates odious writers. “If a writer has to rob his mother,” he famously told a Paris Review interviewer, “he will not hesitate; the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies.” Like Faulkner, Larry Brown grew up around Oxford, Mississippi, and dropped out of Ole Miss…
GIVING CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman may have scripted only one produced film (Being John Malkovich) until now, but it was such an oddly visionary movie that he’s now the object of much curiosity. With his second film just out and two more coming soon, we spoke with him about the special challenges of writing for the movies.…
