Have you ever considered the fact that, in 1951, Hank Williams actually wrote “Hey Good Lookin'”? That, for the first 175 years years of American history, those words and that melody weren’t already part of our shared heritage? Williams didn’t just pluck it out of the air, of course. Cole…
Ask weary WWE viewers to identify why the professional-wrestling titan’s creative direction has gone so stagnant and you’ll hear one answer time and again: lack of competition. It’s no coincidence that the company’s late-‘90s heyday ran concurrent with the rise of Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling, which at one point…
Thunderous, ponderous and occasionally exciting, Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice opens with one of those grim proclamations that the creators of modern superhero movies are so fond of: “There was a time above, a time before,” intones the voice of Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), over a by-now…
Who’s a good dog? Your dog? Well, it’s time to reward them, then! While you’re away your dog is sitting at home, waiting, wondering if every sound or flash of lights against the front window is you getting home. You’re their entire life. They love you unconditionally. They don’t tell…
The joke was on me when I first saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding back in 2002: I watched the film at a press screening that also happened to be attended by a large group of older female tourists. While I grimaced through the movie’s obvious gags and not-ready-for-prime-time direction,…
Like the Juggernaut or St. Patrick’s Day drunks, nothing can stop the hundreds of hours of filmed superhero junk that hits our faceholes each year. But rest easy, true believer! Once in a while, the onslaught can still offer surprise and pleasure. A shiver of both hit me minutes into…
When everything’s a game, it’s easier to forget the wrongdoing perpetrated during play. We see this in sports, but we also see it in war, young men and women coping with stress by envisioning their targets as the bad guys in a first-person shooter. In Pablo Trapero’s bleak but occasionally…
Thursday, March 24 Chris Tucker began his career as a standup comedian with Def Comedy Jam in the early 1990s and became known for his extremely clean performances. Within a few short years, Tucker transitioned into acting. But he neither lost his comedic touch nor the high-pitched, motormouthed, back-talking character…
Take heart, Newsroom fans. If you were hankering for more scenes of Jeff Daniels standing around talking, you’ll find an unlikely ally in the new young-adult sci-fi sequel Allegiant, the third entry in the Divergent series based on Veronica Roth’s hit novels. Too bad the stuff he’s saying is so…
Prestige cable flatters us about the past. It lets us vacation in the backwardness of previous generations, usually while throwing some empathetic side-eye. Gape at Mad Men’s blithe white dudes, each convinced he earned every bit of authority he commands over women and minorities. Or thank Jezebel that we’ve evolved…
Nestled among the warehouses and industrial facilities in west Pompano, you will find the Dark Angel Armory & Forge — a metal art school and custom ironworks shop. It’s run by Shaun Williams, age 47, who is the regional coordinator for the Florida Artist Blacksmith Association (FABA) Southeast Region, a…
The Pee-wee Productions logo that kicks off the new Netflix film Pee-wee’s Big Holiday trumpets comedian-turned-actor Paul Reubens’ comeback as the formerly ubiquitous man-child. Forget about The Pee-wee Herman Show, Reubens’ fan-service-intensive Broadway extravaganza. Big Holiday (which premieres March 18 on Netflix) plays like an un–self-conscious continuation of the character’s…
For the protagonists of cable dramas, sex and death are twin forces of titillation, pressure valves for frustrated middle-aged men or steely-eyed careerists. That’s also true for the audience of cable dramas, of course, but there’s a reason we eagerly pursue onscreen what often makes us squirm in real life:…
Thursday, March 17 The Irish are known for a couple of things: being lucky and drinking. All right, so that probably doesn’t hold true for all Irish. Stereotypes hurt. However – for better or worse, stereotype or not – on St. Patrick’s Day, much of the world celebrates by getting…
This patchy comedy about a cossetted, obnoxious gymnast who has slid deep into sloth in the decade or so since her Olympic triumph gets an occasional laugh from the American ills it sends up: jingoism, the sports-industrial complex, home-schooling, fast-food gluttony. The scattershot jabs pepper the flaccid storyline of the…
Of course, there were romance novels long before Fifty Shades of Grey started flying off bookshelves and ended up as a Hollywood movie. The tawdry tales that litter drugstore aisles have been around seemingly forever, distinguished mainly by cover photos featuring hunky, bare-chested,musclebound men who are about to ravish innocent…
Why is it that little movies about being out of step so often wind up feeling the same? Not long into Michael Showalter’s Hello, My Name Is Doris, a comedy about a misfit frump pining for a much younger hunk, the unlikely target of the heroine’s affections muses to his…
In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot after attending a public rally. Rushed to the hospital, he died hours later. His assassin, Israeli ultranationalist Yigal Amir, is in prison for life, having achieved his goal: Without Rabin, the tentative Palestinian-Israeli peace process collapsed. Where’s the story in an…
“I have always been a fan of storytelling in all forms and think that sequential storytelling is a unique and exciting way to weave a tale,” says Cary Polkovitz. “My parents gave my brother and I these hardbound volumes of the classic Batman and Superman comics and that hooked me…
For over 20 years the Florida Renaissance Festival has brought a little slice of 16th century Europe to South Florida. Sure, it requires a little imagination to make those velvet robes and English accents not seem out of place in sweltering heat and tropical plants, but the dedicated men and…
The Brothers Grimsby is a movie for those who thought Kingsman: The Secret Service didn’t go far enough. If all the exploding heads and anal-sex jokes and creative impalements of Matthew Vaughn’s tongue-in-cheek spy thriller didn’t do it for you, rest assured: This time, we get to see British super-agent…
Everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, or so the saying goes. Luckily, there are plenty of parades and parties to keep you in the green till the wee hours of the morning. Just be sure you show up to work the next day. Here are the best parties and…
