I read Kerouac’s On the Road a few months back, and, yes, after turning the last page, I desperately wanted to do what everybody who reads the book wants to do: set out on a magical journey of self-exploration that takes you back and forth in a drunken zig-zag across…
So you wanna be the coolest parent on the block? Consider sending the brood to the Ballpark After Dark Sleepover this weekend and you’ll be off to a good start. Better than an old school lock-in, it’s like spring training for your kids. The program, for grades 1 through 5,…
Man, talk about a faux pas. When I signed up to preview Rickie Lee Jones at the Lakewood Theater, who I pictured in my mind was Joni Mitchell, I thought I’d get to talk about discovering Mitchell for the first time last year thanks to a promo cd and how…
It must be a brain-wiring thing, or maybe it’s my complete lack of rhythm combined with the personal grace of a blind, drunk duck, but dance is an eternal mystery to me. I’ll understand quantum physics before I’ll understand the pleasure other people get from watching barefoot dancers prance, jump…
Life magazine is a cultural institution, and its journalists have the power to lift their subjects to fame with a stroke of the pen or click of a lens. The play The Cover of Life follows a female reporter who travels to a small town to chronicle the lives of…
Those of us who plan our annual schedules according to film festival start dates have learned one thing this year: Zooey Deschanel—who’s had multiple movies in every fest in 2007, including two here—is the new Parker Posey. Does that sound cranky? Well, you must excuse the weariness; we’re still groggy…
Inland Empire: A movie about David Lynch’s obsessions, Inland Empire includes familiar tropes such as a movie within the movie and the notion of Hollywood as haunted house. But nothing in Lynch’s work is truly familiar. Reality is first breached when a ditsy Polish gypsy traipses into the disconcertingly empty…
As Charlie Fineman, a New York dentist who lost his wife and three young daughters in one of the September 11 plane crashes, Adam Sandler sports a mass of bedraggled locks and walks with his head hung low, the sounds of the city drowned out by The Who or Bruce…
In the same week that sees Adam Sandler playing a grieving 9/11 widower in Reign Over Me, another lone figure reeling from post-traumatic stress fills the central role in the new Antoine Fuqua-directed thriller, Shooter. Named Bob Lee Swagger and played with appropriately gruff machismo by Mark Wahlberg, he’s a…
Hard-core phantasie geeks will relish role-playing every enemy of The Last Mimzy, a family-style sci-fi adventure whose director Bob Shaye is better known to them as the evil wizard—the alien executive who peed all over the Fellowship. Shaye, in his other job as New Line Cinema topper, has let it…
Wendy Wasserstein wrote An American Daughter more than a decade before Hillary Rodham Clinton’s election to the Senate and her push toward the presidency, before Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House. Condoleezza Rice, as the newly appointed Stanford University provost, wasn’t yet a major political power player in 1993,…
In his desperation to reclaim his early ’90s success, Pauly Shore filmed a movie in which he faked his own death (Pauly Shore Is Dead). His 2005 reality show (Minding the Store) also focused on returning Shore to his former glory, with a different but equally pathetic twist: Viewers who…
Spoiler alert! Despite what you’re led to believe in The Usual Suspects, Keyser Söze is not any of the usual suspects. He’s not mumbling, menacing Fenster. He’s not short-fused McManus or wiseass Hockney. He’s not our hero Dean Keaton nor is he the limping, gimpy Verbal. He’s not even interrogating…
As Las Vegas grows more commercialized, the schmaltz of old Vegas is being pushed out for the big bucks of arena headliners. So what’s a lounge singer, or excuse me, “interpreter of standards,” supposed to do when his stage gets mowed down to make room for Celine Dion or Elton…
Any kid can be a soccer player or a violin prodigy. I was special. I was a nearsighted ballerina. I never wore my glasses when I performed, for fear they’d go flying and render a fellow wood nymph unconscious. So I danced blind, never knowing when another dancer would appear…
I hate to break the news to you, but there’s more to international dance and performance than watching Paulina Porizkova foxtrot or Heather Mills (not so much McCartney) try her hand, I mean leg, at Dancing With the Stars this week. Mills may samba, paso doble and tango alongside other…
Is Pacific Heights Michael Keaton’s last great movie? He had such a huge head start with Night Shift, Mr. Mom and Beetlejuice. Then he made Batman and things went south. Other than his role of “Doug Kenney #4” (the clone in Multiplicity who carries pizza in his wallet), Keaton hasn’t…
Freaking Sideways. One minute, you were totally happy to order a Bud Light, and the next minute you’re waffling over which Pinot to order at the new wine bar down the street. This time, stay ahead of the cool curve and get into sake, that tasty Japanese rice wine. This…
You know him as Lord Have Mercy from Norbit, Harry Beaver from Epic Movie and Money Mike from Friday After Next. In other words, you don’t know comedian Katt Williams from a slew of high-brow, Oscar-worthy cinema. Course, you might also be familiar with the permed and pimpin’ wonder thanks…
A person can get a lot accomplished in five years. You can earn a college degree, for instance. Or spend your life’s savings on a emu farm and run it into the ground—whatever works. The possibilities are endless, really. The Last Five Years, a musical now playing at the Flower…
Guatemala, known for its volcanoes, its coffee and its majority Mayan population, isn’t so good at soccer. In fact, the blue and white have never earned a berth in the World Cup. The United States, on the other hand, regularly qualifies, and in 2002, made it all the way to…
The Monterey Pop Festival was the first major fest of the rock era, organized in part by John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and featuring performances by the Association, the Byrds, the Who, Simon and Garfunkel, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Moby Grape, Canned Heat, Ravi…
