Entertainment News Archive: ‘Edukators’ teach themselves about trust
08-12-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

Director Hans Weingartner, who co-wrote “The Edukators” with Katharina Held, has given us a leisurely and engaging tour of the present state of youthful idealism in Germany. Whi le their contemporaries engage in conventional protest marches ag

Music Academy: A sparkling ‘Cosi’
08-12-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

W.A. Mozart’s sunniest opera was served up as a kind of dessert soufflé by the Music Academy of the West last weekend - a sweet culmination to the summer’s music season.

“Cosi fan tutte” was beautifully sung by stars of the Academy’s vocal program, at the Lobero Theatre, with Marilyn Horne - voice program director - in attendance at the Sunday matinee. The

Sonic Spotlight: Mercury Rising
08-12-2005
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

There are break dancers at the Mercury, as well as loads of music, upcoming:
“The Attractives and Big Boy Napoleon” tomorrow, the 13th -Dawn O’Brien (owner/ matriarch).
And, across the street, I see rumblings of life at the long-dorma

‘Great Raid’ bogs down in its historical authenticity
08-12-2005
By Gabe D' Annunzio, Special to the Voice

A lot of the questions raised by the arrival of the new based-on-a-true-story film, “The Great Raid,” are more interesting than the film itself. Why, for instance, should a movie showing the Japanese as ruthless, murderous, even sadistic conquerors be

‘Dukes’ a lesson in being simultaneously over-the-top and tedious
08-12-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Hollywood continues this summer’s obsession with retro remakes, this time pulling out and dusting off “The Dukes of Hazzard,” starring Johnny Knoxville and Sean William Scott as cousins Luke and Bo Duke, Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke, Burt Reynolds as

Arts& Entertainment Previews
08-12-2005

Eagles landing at the Bowl

Perhaps the greatest American rock and roll band, ever, the Eagles, will be playing a concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl at 7 p.m. next Tuesday, August 16. Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh, Don Felder, and Timothy B. Schmidt will take the stage at the

‘Four Brothers’ a 1960s western with urban attitude
08-19-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Director John Singleton lifts the template from the dusty roads of the Wild West and lays it on the icy streets of Detroit in his new film “Four Brothers,” a tale of outlaws, murderers, shootouts and revenge.

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gib

‘Beautiful Country’ follows a specific consequence of Vietnam War
08-19-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

“The Beautiful Country” is about a young man in Vietnam, son of a Vietnamese mother and an American GI whom he has not seen since he was an infant, who decides that if he wants a life of his own, he has to go to America. The story of hi

Music Academy: Ending with a Slavic flourish
08-19-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

The Music Academy of the West’s Festival Orchestra played its swan song at the Lobero Saturday night, concluding this summer season with a stunning Russian program.

The young musicians performed under the baton of Russian Maestro Alexander Lazarev, making a return appearance after his successful visit last year. The orchestra chose two guaranteed crowd ple

‘Skeleton Key’ drips with atmosphere, drowns in obscurity
08-19-2005
By Gabe D' Annunzio, Special to the Voice

“The Skeleton Key” has been getting a lot of good press, and in a way I can see the point of the praise. It looks really good, with its rain-soaked bayous, huge trees draping Spanish moss, and its decaying old mansion so closely and affectionate

Sonic Spotlight: Good Land Hoping
08-19-2005
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

Still riled up from Fiasco the Merc. Charges on with a vibrant musical agenda. Saturdays are especially wild! Last Saturday featured Blesk opening for Big Boy Napoleon, and Thursday offered entertainment from an authentic master of the tabla.

Ho

Arts & Entertainment previews
08-19-2005

Dr. Laura Schlessinger eschews false humility

The popular and outspoken Dr. Laura Schlessinger will present a show at the Lobero Theatre at 8 p.m. this Friday and Saturday, August 19-20.

“Dr. Laura: In My NEVER To Be Humble Opinion” will be a two-act one-woman theatrical event that

'Saint Ralph' works a miracle or two
08-26-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Just when I thought I had gotten all crusty with cynicism-the fate of many a former Catholic schoolkid-along comes "Saint Ralph," a Canadian comedy about a pubescent Catholic schoolboy staking all he has on a footrace and a miracle.

Few films are

Camerata Pacifica raises a glass
08-26-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Camerata Pacifica and its artistic director, Adrian Spence-always game to try something new-last week took a shot at combining the cocktail hour with chamber music.

The affable Spence greeted a full house at Roy's, the downtown bistro usually given over to less serious music. He told the 5:30 p.m. crowd that "Camerata Pacifica's Happy Hour" was an experime

'Junebug' goes South, with empathy
08-26-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

"Junebug" is a small, astonishing movie-about the South, and Outsider art, and cultures banging up against each other-with a first-time director and a remarkable cast.

Phil Morrison, the director, and Angus MacLachlan, the writer, have created a quiet

'Dirty Deeds' pushes high school comedy envelope, a little
08-26-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

It is tempting to guess that Jon Land and Jonathan Thies, who wrote "Dirty Deeds," have never been to an American public high school. On the other hand, it seems entirely possible that they are still attending one.

The story involves

Arts & Entertainment previews
08-26-2005

Bruce Robison Sings Like Hell

Bruce Robison, one of the best of a new breed of singer songwriters (according to Billboard), will join the Sings Like Hell gang with a concert at the Lobero Theater at 8 p.m. this Saturday, August 27.

Robison's songs are sought by country stars like the Dixie Chicks ("Travelin' Soldier"), Tim McGraw and Faith Hill ("Angry All the Time") and George Str

‘Brothers Grimm’ a treat for the eye, a bafflement for the mind
09-02-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Children’s stories come to grotesque life in “The Brothers Grimm,” starring Matt Damon and Heath Ledger as Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, two brothers who play themselves off as 19th century ghostbusters in French-occupied Germany, only to come face to face

‘Asylum’ is well-done, but obscure
09-02-2005
By Gabe D’Annunzio, Special to the Voice

Born in London in 1950, author Patrick McGrath grew up on the grounds of Broadmoor Hospital, Britain’s largest top-security mental hospital, where for many years his father was medical superintendent. Since his novel, “Asylum,” chronicles the fortunes

Sonic Spotlight: Luna de Fuego
09-02-2005
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

Last Thursday evening the Chumash Casino was ignited to new heights with the (“Gypsy”) “Kings” of Latin music. They offered many old favorites, like, “Volare,” and played many new hits from the new release, such as: “Galaxia,” Amor d’Un Dia,” “Gyp

Arts & Entertainment previews
09-02-2005

Einstein meets Picasso in PCPA play

PCPA TheatreFest’s production of Steve Martin’s comedy “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” moves from Santa Maria to the Festival Theater in Solvang this Friday, September 2, for a 2-week run that ends September 18.

Martin’s clever concoction about

‘Gardener’ needs a new driving wheel
09-09-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Drector

John Le Carre’s novel, “The Constant Gardener”-and the movie made from it by the Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles-charges the pharmaceutical companies with murder and the British government with shameful complicity.

The scene of the

‘November’ muddies the water of fate
09-09-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

“November” tells a type of story more or less invented by Edgar Allen Poe and brought to perfection by Ambrose Bierce before he vanished into Pancho Villa’s uprising in 1916: a compelling narrative constantly undercuts itself by causing the rea

‘2046’: days of future passed
09-09-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Director Wong Kar-wai has taken us down time’s dark corridors before (2000’s “In the Mood for Love”); his latest film, “2046,” makes a quantum leap, both backward and forward.

The same elements as the wrenching “In the Mood for Love” are present: a l

Sonic Spotlight: Hillsides Music Festival
09-09-2005
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

Well the Spotlight falls on Ventura this Sunday, after last weekend’s Reggae Fest at Seaside Park, this weekend offers . . .

The Ventura Hillsides Conservancy will host the 2005 Ventura Hillsides Music Festival on Sunday, September 11, 2-4 p.m., in

Wit’s a-poppin’at PCPA/Solvang
09-09-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

When Steve Martin was cracking us up as a wild and crazy guy on SNL, who knew that his goofy persona concealed such a sparkling wit and sweet philosophy?

Example: his effervescent comedy “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” now gracing the PCPA Theater in S

‘Thunder’ aims low, scores a solid hit
09-09-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Based on a short story by Ray Bradbury, and directed by Peter Hyams (“2010”) “A Sound of Thunder” follows time safari guide Travis Ryer (Edward Burns) as he struggles to fix the consequences of a mistake made in prehistory that results in evolution g

Arts & Entertainment previews
09-09-2005

Next week belongs to the Center Stage

The Center Stage Theater in the Paseo Nuevo Mall in downtown Santa Barbara is the venue of virtually every performance event in the coming week-unless, like the PCPA production of Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” the event has al

‘Unfinished Life’ echoes in the mind
09-16-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

A battered woman is forced to run for help to her resentful father in law, igniting past grievances and reopening old wounds in the film “An Unfinished Life,” directed by Lasse Hallstrom (“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” “My Life as a Dog”).

W

‘Emily Rose’ looks at both sides of exorcism
09-16-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Say the word ‘exorcism’ and the first thing that comes to mind is the twisty-headed pea soup spewing young girl in the 1973 film based on the book by William Peter Blatty. Thankfully, there’s little of that in Scott Derrickson’s “The Exorcism of E

‘Baxter’ celebrates the also rans
09-16-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

“The Baxter” has so many strikes against it-the title is the least of them-that I have put myself out finding worthy things in it. It is a hymn to low-keyed lives, and Michael Showalter-who wrote, directed, and is the star of “The Baxter”-clearly

Arts & Entertainment Previews
09-16-2005

Circle Bar-B visits ‘The Murder Room’

The next production of the Circle Bar b Dinner Theatre will be Jack Sharkey’s comic mystery, “The Murder Room,” directed by Directed by Jim Cook, and starring Matt Cooper, Gerry Hansen, Jamie Hixon, Trammell Scott, Jim Sirianni and Leslie St

‘Lord of War’ boasts virtuoso performance by Cage
09-23-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

And now for something that could be scarier than any of the horror or sci-fi disaster films we’ve seen all summer: Nicholas Cage stars as Yuri Orlov, a Ukrainian-born American gunrunner with the uncanny ability to move massive amounts of weaponry

Camerata takes it to next level
09-23-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Camerata Pacifica launched its 16th season last week with such a splurge that the organization may very well find it hard to match in its concerts to come.

Playing from the stage of the cozy Victoria Street Theatre, the musicians gave admirable readi

Sonic Spotlight- From the heavens to below
09-23-2005
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

Having bounced back from their first album and international tour “STELLASTARR*” is again touring, YEAH!! Tonight with special guests “The Morning After Girls.” Their current campaign is to deliver “Harmonies for the Haunted,” a multifaceted gem o

‘Mr. Vengeance’ offends the senses, very slowly
09-23-2005
By Gabe D' Annunzio, Special to the Voice

Korean director Park Chan-wook had a big commercial hit with his film, “Joint Security Area.” His studio gave him a much bigger budget and he came up with “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,” a handsome, thoroughly discomforting revenge thriller that offers none of the usual satisfactions of the genre-Tony Scott’s “Man on Fire,” with Denzel Washington is the go

Arts & Entertainment previews
09-23-2005
The Queen of Alt-Country and pure harmony comes to town

The popular singer-songwriter series, Sings Like Hell have joined forces with UCSB Arts & Lectures to present Emmylou Harris and Buddy Miller in concert at the Arlington Theatre at 8 p.m. Tuesday, September 27. Blessed with an angel’s

‘Corpse Bride’ offers 76 minutes of Burton magic
09-30-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Tim Burton is perhaps the only person who can pull off something simultaneously morbid and sweet like "Corpse Bride," his latest offering. Unlike the sinister psychedelic extravaganza that was "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," with its obvious

‘Holy Girl’ a breath-taking enigma
09-30-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

In the Argentine film, "The Holy Girl," writer/director Lucrecia Martel explores the burgeoning sexuality and religious fervor of two teenage girls, Amalia (Maria Alché) and her best friend, Josefina (Julieta Zylberberg).

Amalia lives n the t

'Touch the Sound' seeks to turn audio into visual
09-30-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

"Touch the Sound" is a documentary about the Scottish avant-garde percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who was a soloist last year with the Santa Barbara Symphony. Director Thomas Riedelsheimer has a fairly specific and limited goal in making his film, which is to put us insofar as possible inside Glennie’s sound world. This is more difficult than you m

‘Murder Room’ explores the funny side of homicide
09-30-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Staff Reporter

After the introductions were made, the birthday and wedding anniversary greetings wished, and everybody had settled in, the folks at the Circle Bar B Theater treated us to an afternoon of murder.

It’s a story we’ve all heard before: a stunning woman who may or may not be a gold digger marries a wealthy elderly gentleman who dies mysteriously after the wedding

Arts & Entertainment previews
09-30-2005
Ensemble Theatre stages ‘ Humble Boy’

The venerable Ensemble Theatre Company of Santa Barbara will open their 2005-2006 season with a new production of Charlotte Jones’s award-winning comedy "Humble Boy," the story of a young astrophysicist who returns home for his bee-keeper father

Polanski triumphs with Dickens adaptation
10-07-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

As expected, Roman Polanski comes through with something exquisite in his rendering of the Dickens classic, “Oliver Twist.” A master of ambience, Polanski manages to pull together a film that spans the breadth of society in 19th century England without

Family matters a-bubble at Ensemble
10-07-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

“Humble Boy,” Ensemble Theatre Company’s present offering at the Alhecama Theatre, is a British comedy with overtones of “Hamlet” and a setting straight out of “Miss Marple.”

It makes for a pungent blend, although at two-and-a-half hours it runs a little long. The setting is a seemingly idyllic country house in England’s Cotswolds, set in an absolutely sum

‘History of Violence’
10-07-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

The seduction of a David Cronenberg film works by establishing an intensely-sometimes sordidly-naturalistic mis-en-scene. The realism of the filming vouches for the authenticity of the characters and the story. The actors are harshly lit, and s

Arts& Entertainment Previews
10-07-2005

New theater company offers ‘Exits & Entrances’

Santa Barbara Theatre, the city’s new professional theater company, opens its inaugural 2005-2006 season with Athol Fugard’s play, “Exits and Entrances,” which revolves around the friendship between a young playwright and an aging a

‘Wallace & Gromit’ set the audience all a-giggle
10-14-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Creator Nick Park ("Chicken Run," "Creature Comforts") and crew once again stretch the limits of clay in the newly-released, "Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit," with audiences giggling throughout the entire film.

Beloved characters

‘Thumbsucker’ has brilliance and clichés in equal measure
10-14-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

I have to admit I was a long time getting around to watching "Thumbsucker." I am pretty sick of stories about bright adolescents growing up in dysfunctional families. Such films are generally written and directed by the same person, and they

‘Exits and Entrances’ powered by Higgins’s performance
10-14-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

The inaugural production of the new Santa Barbara Theatre Co. re-unites the personnel of the World Premiere production at the Fountain Theater in Los Angeles of "Exits and Entrances," by Athol Fugard.

Partaking somewhat of Ronald Harwood’s "The Dresser," somewhat of David Mamet’s "A Life in the Theater," "Exits" is a two-character . . . what?

MirrorMask: Special-Effects-R-Us
10-21-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Thirteen-year-old fans of fantasy and special effects will have a ball at “MirrorMask,” but younger children and grown-ups may not fare so well.

The tagline for this 100-minute extravaganza is “Enter a world where dreams are real.” It plunges its heroi

The ‘Kids’ are not all right
10-21-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

This movie is pretty unbelievable-when it is not being boring or downright offensive-but the hardest thing to believe about it is the “inspired by a true story” tag. There are a lot of adjectives I might be tempted to apply to “Kids in America,” but “true” is definitely not one of them. What it is is an illustrated tour of the decline and fall of Ame

‘Tennessee Monkey Trial’ means well, standing still
10-21-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

I liked nearly everything about “The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial” except sitting through it. There was so much high-powered acting talent on stage, and the subject was so compelling and utterly relevant to, as T. S. Eliot said, “where we have, in a manner of speaking, got to,” that I fully expected to be spellbound and swallowed until the final curt

Music season begins at the top
10-21-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

The Santa Barbara Symphony opened its 53rd season over the weekend with a diverse program led by yet another worthy candidate for the job of permanent conductor.

Joana Carneiro, 29, already a sensation in her native Portugal, led the orchestra through works by composers as varied as contemporary Peter Maxwell Davies and 20th century Russian giant Sergei Ra

‘Domino’ chops itself into tiny pieces
10-21-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

One has to applaud Keira Knightley for being brave enough to take on a role as unconventional as the title character in Tony Scott’s newest offering, “Domino.” The daughter of actor Laurence Harvey, Domino was a Ford model turned bounty hunter, givin

Arts & Entertainment previews
10-21-2005
One Sings Like Hell, so does the other

The popular singer-songwriter showcase Sings Like Hell will present a double bill of singing strummers at 8 p.m. Saturday October 22, in the Lobero Theater.

Grammy winning singer songwriter and guitar slinger Dave Alvin returns to the Lobero

‘Squid and the Whale’ shows the end of a world in detail
10-28-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial

DirectorNoah Baumbach’s films have a flavor all their own. He seems to be traversing the same terrain as Woody Allen -- Jewish intellectuals in Brooklyn -- but the two men’s films bear scarcely any resemblance to each other.

Baumbach’s male characters

Clooney’s ‘Good Night’ is a classic political melodrama
10-28-2005
By Gabe D' Annunzio, Special to the Voice

David Strathairn plays the heroic broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow, and George Clooney plays his congenial boss, Fred Friendly, in Clooney’s film, “Good Night, and Good Luck.” The film dramatizes the time in 1953 when Murrow and Friendly drag

Music Club offers a trio with brio
10-28-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

The Santa Barbara Music Club audience heard a season-opening concert of true classics on Saturday, ending with Peter Schickele’s sincerely serious - but still amusing - “Serenade for Three.”

Schickele, better known as musical satirist P.D.Q. Bach, was not kidding when he wrote this trio in 1993, as violinist Emil Torick explained. Torick enlisted Nancy Mat

State Street Ballet redefines ‘Carmen’
10-28-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

The Gypsy seductress Carmen, who shocked 19th century Paris opera lovers, still wields her magic in the State Street Ballet’s new creation by choreographer William Soleau.

The ballet’s latest production opened the company’s fall season over the weekend at the Lobero with two performances of Soleau’s fiery work. It starred Jennifer Batbouta in the leading r

Hoffman taps a cosmic connection in ‘Capote’
10-28-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

“Capote” is not a conventional biographical film covering the whole life of the novelist and playwright Truman Capote. It is much more restricted in scope, and way more affecting in its impact. The film is simply the story of how the diminutive,

‘Doom’ turns audience into lost zombies
10-28-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

For about ten dollars, you too can watch a hundred minutes of The Rock’s mad dog stare and all its variations. “Doom,” the new sci-fi movie from cinematographer-turned-director Andrzej Bartkowiak (“Cradle 2 the Grave”) is also part zombie, part slasher, and all big guns.

It’s based on a premise that’s become so trite that it (wisely) gave up trying to b

Preview: The Bad Plus brings their subversive jazz to the Lobero
10-28-2005

The hippest alternative jazz trio in America comes to the Lobero. Audacious and rule breaking, these bad boys of jazz have the essential jazzmen’s ability to improvise, a classical way with melody and phrasing, and the elephantine touch of rockers. They crunch and sometimes pulverize swing to let improvisational freedom shine. Jazz purists may tremble but the vanguard will rejoice! Easily the m

‘Prime’ urges us to fly, then shoots us down
11-04-2005
By Gabe D’Annunzio, Special to the Voice

The fact that the theme of “Prime” -- a romance between a 37-year-old woman and a 23-year-old man -- is still controversial is a measure of the double standard that still functions in our society with respect to the age differential of lovers.

Write

Music, love, tragedy, at Arlington
11-04-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Some might call it redundant, but for opera lovers who filled the Arlington Theatre Friday night, it was a treasure-trove of Puccini’s most beloved arias.

Opera Santa Barbara presented “Le Donne Di Giacomo Puccini” (“The Women of Puccini”), a program of beloved arias from the Italian composer’s operas. The program was weighted toward such favorites as “Mad

‘Weather Man’ swirls with clouds of dark laughter
11-04-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter
Nicolas Cage is David Spritz, a Chicago TV meteorologist with a few storms of his own to weather, in Gore Verbinski’s “The Weather Man.”

It’s a darkly funny movie, capitalizing on the ironies of mid-life and the American Dream. Spritz is a blin

Spend ‘Christmas’ on the rez
11-04-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Somewhere between “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Bad Santa,” there’s “Christmas In the Clouds,” a sweetly sentimental film with a slightly sardonic undertone.

This gentle and funny film took honors at the Sundance Festival - hardly surprising, s

Arts & Entertainment previews
11-04-2005

Life imitates art imitates life in UCSB play

Theatre UCSB opens its 2005-2006 season of drama and dance with “bobrauschenbergamerica,” a raucous play written by Charles L. Mee, in the UCSB Performing Arts Theatre (no late seating). “bobrauschenbergamerica” brings the ideas of v

‘Kiss Kiss’ a cornucopia of guilty pleasures
11-11-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

A gay private eye (Val Kilmer), a small-time thief posing as an actor (Robert Downey Jr.), and a struggling actress (Michelle Monaghan) team up to solve a convoluted case in Los Angeles in the noirish “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.”

Writer/director Shane B

‘Protocols’ -- the lie that never dies
11-11-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Documentary maker Marc Levin’s film about the upsurge in anti-Semitism after 9/11 - “Protocols of Zion” - is a valiant attempt to grapple with the lie that seems likely to outlive the truth.

According to Levin, shortly after 9/11, a Manhattan taxi driver

‘Innocent Voices” recalls what we’d rather forget
11-11-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

Luis Mandoki’s first Spanish-language film in 18 years is “Innocent Voices,” a harrowing, affecting melodrama about a family (mother and two children) trying to stay alive and healthy during the 12-year war that devastated the tiny Central Americ

‘bobrauschenbergamerica’ is everybody’s USA
11-11-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

Pauline Kael once wrote that movies are the American theater. We watch them so we can talk about them.

Charles L. Mee’s “bobrauschenbergamerica” - ending its 2-weekend run at UCSB’s Performing Arts Theater this Friday and Saturday - aims to d

Licitra, like love, conquers all
11-11-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editorial

The world would be a sorry place indeed without Italian tenors, and fortunately a newly-minted one named Salvatore Licitra has appeared on the scene.

He made his Santa Barbara debut last Sunday at the Lobero Theatre, to a packed house ready to receive a worthy successor to Luciano Pavarotti. Licitra did not disappoint.

The young tenor had an advantage

Arts & Entertainment previews
11-11-2005
Dos Pueblos’s ‘Moby Dick’ turns Melville around

Dos Pueblos High School’s production of “Moby Dick -- the Musical,” by the creative team of Robert Longden (book, lyrics, and music), Martin Koch (musical supervisor and orchestrations), and Hereward Kaye (music and additional lyrics), will be d

‘Zathura’ sucks you in, then spits you out
11-18-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

This follow-up to 1995’s “Jumanji” is not so much a sequel as it is a clone -- a state of the art, science fiction clone based on the same premise: kids find an old game, play it, and crazy things start happening.

It’s still a meaty premise, one t

‘Derailed’ darkly suspenseful but unconvincing
11-18-2005
By Gabe D’Annunzio, Special to the Voice

“Derailed” was the first American project for Swedish filmmaker Mikael Håfström, which accounts for both good and bad qualities in the film.

The good parts are the freshness of his vision in the way he looks at a big American city -- in this case

Youth, ardor animate Symphony
11-18-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

The Santa Barbara Symphony, engaged in a search for a new conductor, on Sunday showcased not only an outstanding candidate for the job, Daniel Meyer, but an incomparable soloist, cellist Zuill Bailey.

There is no such thing as a perfect concert, but this one came close, with music by Mozart, Shostakovich and Dvorak. The orchestra was in peak form, and the

Current Sounds shows a kinder, gentler side of contemporary music
11-18-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

Well, I guess I have staved off the charge of fuddy-duddyism one more time -- I attended my first concert by Current Sounds, the local association dedicated to the performance of work by living composers. I have to admit that I felt it would be more of a duty than a pleasure -- living up to my oft-repeated statement that to avoid becoming a museu

Arts & Entertainment previews
11-18-2005
Chamber Choir celebrates Mary, and others

At 8 p.m. this Friday, November 18, the UCSB Chamber Choir and University Singers conducted by Michel Marc Gervais, will join forces to present a concert, in St. Anthony’s Seminary Chapel (2300 Garden St), of some of the most beautiful a cappel

‘Walk the Line’ exalts the Carter-Cash romance
11-25-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

With shades of “Ray,” the Ray Charles biopic permeating this film, it’s tempting to think that “Walk the Line” is just another riff on the theme of man-sells-soul-to-devil-for-outrageous-fame-and-his-eventual-redemption.

It is, and it isn’t. “

Harry and Co. play up and play the game in ‘Goblet’
11-25-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

“Romanticism,” wrote the critic Geoffrey Scott, “ . . . idealises the distant, both of time and place; it identifies beauty with strangeness. . . . It is always idealistic, casting on the screen of an imaginary past the projection of its unfulfilled desires. Its most typical form is the cult of the extinct.”

He might have added that it is profoundl

‘Bee Season’ takes spirituality to a new level - of shallowness
11-25-2005
by Olivia Kienzel, Special to the Voice

If the last effort from directing team Scott McGehee and David Siegel was “The Deep End,” their latest work, “Bee Season,” might be fairly dubbed “Kiddie Pool.” It’s not so much because this story focuses equally on two children-who could have been seriou

Heavenly voices for hurtful times
11-25-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

The Santa Barbara Master Chorale opened its 21st season over the weekend with Gabriel Fauré’s beloved Requiem and Joseph Haydn’s Mass in Time of War.

These are sacred pieces about profound matters, and the chorus and orchestra gave them their full due. Led by long-time Music Director Phillip McLendon, the singers and musicians produced a finely nuanced, po

Sonic Spotlight- From the heavens to below
11-25-2005
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

Majestic Blues - a Benefit Concert for Howard Freiberg

As you probably know, concert promoter Howard Freiberg (pictured at right) has been diagnosed with a radical form of cancer known as Lymphoma. As you probably also know, chemotherapy trea

‘Little Chinese Seamstress’ looks back on a romantic and perilous time
12-02-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

Dai Sijie’s "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress," a film adaptation of his own best-selling autobiographical novel, is set in China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s. It is the story of Luo (Chen Kun) and Ma (Liu Ye), two cultured

UCSB group harvests music grown in Everest’s shadow
12-02-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

USCB’s vibrant cultural tapestry showed its South Asian colors Monday night with a concert of music from India and Nepal, performed in the intimate Karl Geiringer Hall.
Student players were guided and inspired by Ham Nath Upadhyaya, a musician from Nepal who spends about nine months at the Isla Vista campus every year, according to Rob Wallace. Wallace, a

Ballets Russes - love and rememberence
12-02-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

In the documentary "Ballets Russes," dance defies its image as the most fragile of the arts, presenting a roster of the still vital old people who once gave ballet to America.
The surviving members of the fabled "Ballets Russes" - a theatrical force f

‘Ice Harvest’ a disappointing offspring with a great pedigree
12-02-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Taking advantage of the holiday season is Harold Ramis’s ("Analyze That") comedy, "The Ice Harvest," starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton as two less than competent thieves trying to pull off a holiday heist.

Cusack (Charlie Arglist) and Thornton (Vic Cavanaugh) are born to do straight-faced quirky, and there’s plenty of this in the film, but tha

‘Fourth Wall’ shows Ensemble back on top
12-09-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

"The Fourth Wall," by A. R. Gurney, is a long way from a masterpiece, but it makes a more than adequate vehicle to take the Ensemble Theater company back into the front ranks of local theater companies - thanks to the deft, subtle direction o

Joan Baez conjures memories of war, hope
12-09-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

The flashbacks to Vietnam resulting from the Iraqi war were brought home powerfully last week in the appearance of 1960s folk star Joan Baez at the Lobero.

The long, lustrous black hair is now silver and cropped short. The peasant blouse has been replaced with a tailored jacket and scarf. The voice is a little darker and rougher. But the times, they really

‘Aeon Flux’ trades violence for elegance and comes out on top
12-09-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

In yet another sci-fi film about people saving the world in tight black clothing, Charlize Theron takes on the role of Aeon Flux, a futuristic assassin sent to kill the leader of the ruling regime.

The film is based on a cartoon that was part of MTV’s

Aulos and Baird evoke early Christmas
12-09-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

A rare and engaging Christmas concert ushered in the season on Sunday at Trinity Episcopal Church, with the appearance of the Aulos Ensemble and soprano Julianne Baird.

The Aulos quintet is composed of first-rate musicians, playing the warm wood instruments of the Baroque period. The players are all graduates of Juilliard, and each individual boasts additi

Arts & Entertainment previews
12-09-2005

Speaking Of Stories roasts some Holiday Chestnuts

The popular Speaking of Stories Christmas show returns with readings by Tony Miratti and Ed Romine! Tony will perform "SantaLand Diaries" by David Sedaris, while Ed brings to life "The Christmas Memory" by Truman Capote. Add in some

Sonic Spotlight: Looking for the Sound
12-09-2005
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

Just caught some CA high mountain-air bluegrass from the likes of "The Hot Buttered Rum String Band" last Thursday. Plus I got some great Americana from, Vince Herman, the front man of Leftover Salmon is on the road spreading his good timepickin’ and foot stompin’ sounds throughout the West Coast, also at SOhO.

Steve Kimock Band is touring to feature b

Emerson Quartet opens brilliantly, runs out of steam
12-16-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

The Emerson Quartet had me fooled for the first half of their December 9 concert at the Music Academy of the West. When I heard them last year, at Campbell Hall, I was impressed with their letter-perfect performance, but had trouble keeping awak

’Narnia’ spectacular, but disappointing treatment of a great book
12-16-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

As I write this, I feel like I’m telling some kid there is no Santa Claus. I loved the Narnia books and was eagerly anticipating this film, definitely wanting to like it. This 140-minute Hallmark card, however, barely revives C.S. Lewis’ much-beloved

Sonic Spotlight: Majestic Aquabats Invasion
12-16-2005
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

That’s right, all you aqua-groms & grunion. Run on down to the Majestic Theatre in Ventura for some surfadelic madness that would make most grown men cringe. The Aquabats' latest release is titled "Charge," and I suggest you hit the 101 (Southbound mama) and do just that this Saturday 12/17. Just don’t have a "Meltdown"; watch out for the "Fashion Zombie

In ‘Syriana’ oil tars everything it touches
12-16-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Fathers and sons, blood and oil, deceit and corruption - "Syriana" weaves these themes into a dense tapestry of a political thriller that rewards close attention.

The film was directed and co-written by Stephen Gaghan, the screenwriter for the similar

‘Ushpizin’ offers warm look at closed community
12-16-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

"Ushpizin" is an Aramaic word meaning "guests." The new Israel movie of that name is set in the Orthodox Jewish community of Jerusalem. The protagonist, Moshe (Shuli Rand) was once a secular Jew, but he has rediscovered his faith and become an

‘King Kong’ delivers more than it promises
12-23-2005
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” is a stupendous, overwhelming movie experience. Jackson is the unrivaled master of special effects - even Spielberg and Lucas pale to insignificance beside him - and the world he creates is beautiful and awe-inspiring in

Sumptuous ‘Geisha’ misses several big points
12-23-2005
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Although I couldn’t believe for one second that Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li, and Michelle Yeoh were geishas, their film “Memoirs of a Geisha” was a opulent visual experience coupled with heart-rending romance.

It’s not that any of the female leads weren’t t

Quire of Voyces in rare Noel form
12-23-2005
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

An austerely beautiful Christmas concert by the Quire of Voyces was sold out Sunday afternoon, and some people had to be turned away at the doors of St. Anthony’s Seminary Chapel.

The popularity of the group is owed in part to Nathan J. Kreitzer, the founder and artistic director of the Quire, which sings under the sponsorship of the Santa Barbara City Col

‘Brokeback Mountain’s breathtaking heights not to be missed
12-23-2005
By Olivia Kienzel, Special to the Voice

Having probably heard one or two things about “Brokeback Mountain,” some of you may have concerns that it will be too far outside of your own experience to allow you to relate to it. Don’t make such a quick misjudgment: this stunning film is more im

2005 arts highlights
12-30-2005

From left: Soprano Robin Follman gets into the spirit of Opera Santa Barbara’

More highlights
12-30-2005
From left: Members of the AXIS Dance Company, some of whom have disabilities, perform

Notable films
12-30-2005
Left, George Clooney had a spectacular year, writing, directing, and playing Fred Friendly in the gripping docudrama, “Goodnight, and Good Luck” (pictured), and producing and starring in the

‘Dick and Jane’ lampoons a multitude of corporate ills
01-06-2006
By Gabe D' Annunzio, Special to the Voice

The first version of "Fun with Dick and Jane" was made in 1977. It was directed by the Canadian Ted Kotcheff, just after he made his immortal "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz." The earlier version starred George Segal and Jane Fonda, and was

Symphony New Year glitters
01-06-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

The Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra always provides plenty of pop and fizz at its annual New Year’s Eve Concert, but there was something a little extra this year.

Guest conductor Richard Kaufman, well-known as a master of the pops concert, waited until after the intermission to introduce a special "guest-guest" conductor. Patricia Gregory, devoted suppor

‘Munich’ long, obvious, and very powerful
01-06-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Both predictable and compelling, Steven Spielberg’s "Munich" is a story of the true price of revenge set in the aftermath of the slaying of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympics. Eric Bana ("Hulk") stars as Avner, a Mossad officer who becomes

Sonic Spotlight: Mountain House "Divine Ball"
01-06-2006
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

My New Years Eve celebration was the best I’ve enjoyed. Especially, since my near fatal injury, last year. Though my revelry was decisively more contained, I wasn’t slowing anybody else down. The theme was to come as a representative of your favor

Arts & Entertainment previews
01-06-2006

Pico Iyer talks with Mark Salzman at UCSB

Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, cellist and martial artist Mark Salzman will discuss his work with esteemed author Pico Iyer ("The Glo

It’s all in the game for ‘Grandma’s Boy’
01-13-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Anyone looking for cheap laughs in a movie that doesn’t tax the intellect could do worse than “Grandma’s Boy,” a stoner comedy celebrating eternal youth — or immaturity, or something.

Adam Sandler has production credits, and his brand of juvenile a

'Hostel' delivers the goods, unfortunately
01-13-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

If you haven't gotten enough squeamishness from the "Saw" franchise, extreme bloodletting from Asian horror cinema, or death and dismemberment from the nightly news, you're in luck because Eli Roth ("Cabin Fever") has generously volunteered to taint o

‘Casanova’ a cure for what ails us
01-13-2006
By Olivia Kienzel, Special to the Voice

Serious drama and scrupulously researched biopic it ain’t, but “Casanova” sure is an antidote to any winter blahs you might have managed to contract. With its sumptuous costumes, its bright pacing, and its refusal to take anything too seriously, I fo

Glenn Hening: Surfing's Iconoclast
01-13-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Highly articulate and with a sardonic wit, Glenn Hening is ready to take on the juggernaut that is the commercial surf industry - by himself, if he has to.

"It's astounding the way [companies like Volcom and Quicksilver] do business because, as it turns out, the surf industry is not the surf industry, it's clothing companies with a very good hook . . .

'Match Point' revisits the scene of 'Crimes'
01-13-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

In "Match Point," Woody Allen translates the main theme of his mostly great "Crimes and Misdemeanors" -- there is no God, nobody is watching, you can get away with murder -- from the milieu of Jewish intellectuals of the earlier film to the m

Sonic Spotlight
01-13-2006
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

This year is off to a smashing start. Last Tuesday night I was treated to a special performance by Antara Blasius, who is going it her own way after an extended and mutually beneficial partnership with both the C.E.C. and bandmate Delilah. She sounded vibrantly strong and strummed out some new material with renewed vigor. She was followed by a brash trio

Arts & Entertainment previews
01-13-2006
Camerata Pacifica showcases modern Celts

Camerata Pacifica first program of the new year features their principal violinist the pretty Irish lass, Catherine Leonard. The South Coast performances of the concert will take place at 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. in Victoria Hall (Victoria and Chapala)

‘New World’ haunts and thrills
01-20-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Carpenter

In 33 years, writer-director Terence Malick has made only four feature films: “Badlands” (1973), “Days of Heaven” (1978), “The Thin Red Line” (1998), and “The New World,” which was given a limited release at the end of 2005, and will open acro

‘End of the Spear’ blesses the peacemakers
01-20-2006
By Gabe D' Annumzio, Special to the Voice

“End of the Spear” is the second film Jim Hanon has made about the time in 1956 when five Christian missionaries from the United States went down to the Amazon basin of Ecuador to contact the fierce and homicidal Waodani Tribe. (Hanon’s first film was

Budapest plays a ‘Titan’ of a concert
01-20-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Putting works by Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler on the same program gave listeners at the Arlington Theatre last weekend a chance to compare the character of these mighty Teutons.

The Budapest Festival Orchestra offered pieces by the two masters, along with Felix Mendelssohn’s exquisite Violin Concerto in e minor, Opus 64. The young French virtuoso Renau

‘Tristan and Isolde’ has a void at its center
01-20-2006
By Oivia Kienzel, Special to the Voice

I’ll admit it: I’m prejudiced. Before I even walked into “Tristan and Isolde,” I was thinking to myself, “Why on earth would anyone put James Franco in this role?” Though perfectly cast as a jerky loser in the TV show “Freaks and Geeks,” I thought he w

‘Last Holiday’ runs on Latifah’s star power
01-20-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

After finding out she has a rare disease and only three weeks to live, shy, unassuming Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah) leaves her job as a department store clerk and books herself into a posh European hotel to live out the last days of her life in extra

Sonic Spotlight
01-20-2006
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

Touring with a high stem new CD, “Peculiar,” which gives this SKA rebels something to chant them down produced in Jeff “Django” Baker New Jersey studio. Rumor has it they’ll be skankin’ our direction soon.

Last week I was treated to “The Bastard

Arts & Entertainment previews
01-20-2006

Bridgewater swings at Campbell

Actress and renowned jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater, accompanied by the knockout 15-piece Hollywood Jazz Orchestra, will perform the classic Ella Fitzgerald songbook at 8 p.m. Saturday, January 21 at UCSB Campbell Hall. The show will largely draw f

'Evolution' - 2nd verse, same as the first
01-27-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

The heroes in tight black clothing and trench coats aesthetic shows no sign of abating, as shown in "Underworld: Evolution," a sequel to the 2003 film starring Kate Beckinsale as Selene, the vampire who falls in love with her mortal enemy, who hap

Arts & Entertainment previews
01-27-2006

Reza Aslan to talk with Jack Miles about Islam

Two acclaimed thinkers about religion-Reza Aslan and Jack Miles-will conduct an on-stage conversation about the state of Islam at 3 p.m. Sunday, January 29 at Victoria Hall Theater, 33 W. Victoria Street, Santa Barbara. The publication

‘Matador’ wins both ears and the tail
02-03-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Pierce Brosnan steps out of his usual suavity and into something less comfortable (but way funnier) in “The Matador,” a film about an assassin who comes undone and attaches his sociopathic self to the first regular guy (Greg Kinnear) that comes along

‘Caché’ piles mystery on mystery
02-03-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

The aptly named “Caché” (Hidden), which opens today at the Riviera, is a disturbingly ambivalent mystery. It starts out looking like one of the films Andy Warhol made in the 1960s (“Sleep,” “Empire”) - a fixed camera records the comings and goings

State St. Ballet scores a ‘Beauty’
02-03-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

State Street Ballet’s “Beauty and the Beast” - based on the avant-garde 1946 film of Jean Cocteau - brought beautiful dance to town last weekend, and something more.

The company showed both courage and originality in creating this work in 2000, and ha

Sonic Spotlight
02-03-2006
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

Ulysses Jazz has been an icon of the downtown live music thing, appearing for packed houses all for FREE. Frank Franks on the banjo serves to somehow congeal the multi- chemist musical potion. There music will transport you to a different place and time.

For another displacingly pleasant show check out New Orleans Piano Legend: Henry Butler! The SB Blu

‘Nanny McPhee’ will make you behave
02-03-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

When Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson) arrives at the Brown household, she is, in her own person, a sight to make children behave. Draped in relentless black, leaning on a crooked cane, Nanny’s chin sports two horrendous black warts, her nose is a hid

Youth, verve and, of course, Mozart
02-03-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Conductor Mir Kabaretti and violinist Jennifer Koh brought youthful verve and considerable talent to their appearance with the Santa Barbara Symphony at the Arlington Theatre.

Kabaretti, an Israeli with a wealth of conducting honors to his name, is one of the finalists in the search for a successor to the Symphony’s departing leader, Gisele Ben-Dor. Tall a

‘Transamerica’ crosses all the right lines
02-03-2006
By Olivia Kienzel, Special to the Voice

Neither angry polemic nor cozy family story nor campy caricature, first-time director-writer Duncan Tucker and his actors managed to make “Transamerica” into what it was least likely to be: a pretty normal road trip film about an important journe

'Imagine Me & You' proves gays can be boring too
02-10-2006
By Olivia Kienzel, Special to the Voice

It is interesting that films with gay themes are now so much a part of the mainstream that some of them are just as predictable, shallow, and unexciting as any other date movie.

I suppose that, when the people who made "Imagine Me & You" envisioned

No news is good news in 'Something New'
02-10-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Just like Kenya McQueen, the uptight African American career woman played by Sanaa Lathan, I resisted the urge to turn to sap at the slightest indication of romance. "Something New," if anything, is formulaic enough for you to see what's coming a mile away.

And like her, I still got bowled over by it. Go figure.

Coming at us at that time of year when

'Falcon' is fond and funny
02-10-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

"The Night of the Falcon" is a breakthrough for local filmmaker Ted Mills, an affectionate and witty look at the nuttiness of the creative process.

This short film has been given two additional screenings during its rotation in the Santa Barbara Intern

Sonic Spotlight
02-10-2006
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

After a thrilling night with Rebecca Kleinman's stellar all-female trio, "Feminina" - flute, mandolin, and percussion which has a wonderfully backyard/world-beat flavor - I walked into the clamoring finale from the latest band to blow up from our own backyard, "Holden." Touring in support of their nationwide hit "When You're here." They left the crowd an

Arts & Entertainment previews
02-10-2006
Ensemble production invites all to ‘Touch the Names’

Santa Barbara’s premier theater company, the Ensemble Theater, will present the West Coast premiere of the stunning piece “Touch the Names,” by Broadway writer-director Randal Myler and blues singer-composer Chic Streetman, starting

‘Curious George’ precious but not too
02-17-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Little kids will be excited, and their parents nostalgic, as “Curious George” makes the rounds onscreen. “Finding Nemo” or “Robots” it’s not, but the old school graphics have a charm of their own.

Will Ferrell is the voice of the Man in the Yellow H

‘Firewall’ covers old ground in novel ways
02-17-2006
By Gabe D' Annunzio, Special to the Voice

The plot of “Firewall” is: the hero’s family held hostage, under sentence of death, unless he does what the villain demands of him. Harrison Ford, the hero, plays Jack Stanfield, a cyber-security expert at a mid-sized commercial bank in Seattle. Wh

“Final Destination 3” stinks up the screen
02-17-2006
By Olivia Kienzel, Special to the Voice

“Final Destination 3,” how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways…. Let’s see, there’s the unbelievably stupid script and the uninspired direction. The fact that the only thing the filmmakers seemed to concern themselves with was how to devise the most gratuitiously bloody, intricate, unbelievable, and horrifying deaths they possibly could. The way the film

‘Touch the Names’ touches the heart
02-17-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

“Touch the Names” is a powerful piece of theater, a veritable oratorio of grief.

It is not a play. There is no dramatic conflict; there is no story. Everything has already happened. The invisible fourth wall, between the audience and the stage,

Leahy keeps it in the family - with a Celtic flair
02-17-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Simply-named Leahy, the popular Celtic family band from Canada, brought a rowdy good time to Campbell Hall on Sunday, delighting a full house of listeners.

The band managed to fill Campbell Hall on Sunday - with fans who stomped, whooped, and cheered th

‘Indian’ takes us on a wild ride with an old man
02-24-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Anthony Hopkins stars as Burt Munro, a man with a plan to set the fastest speed on land. “The World’s Fastest Indian” is an ode to underdogs and dreamers everywhere, as it follows the true story of Munro and his 1920 Indian motorcycle’s journey from

‘Three Burials’ chronicles injustice, revenge, and redemption
02-24-2006
By Gabe D' Annunzio, Special to the Voice

Rancher Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) is joking and shooting the breeze in the barn with some of his hands when a young vaquero rides his wonderful horse into the square of daylight formed by the doorway and announces he is looking for work. He says his name is Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo) and he is “just a cowboy.” Pete takes an instant liking t

Opera manifests a fiery ‘Tosca’
02-24-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

If there is a quintessential Italian opera, it is “Tosca” - and Opera Santa Barbara is giving it a full measure of passion and fire during its current Puccini Festival.

Opening night last Saturday saw a handsomely dressed crowd at the Lobero Theatre; the festival runs through March 5. Along with repeats of “Tosca,” the festival will include performances o

Symphony, Bidini tackle Prokofiev
02-24-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Italian pianist Fabio Bidini joined the Santa Barbara Symphony last weekend in a masterly performance of Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26.

The concert, at the Arlington, was also the opportunity for Australian conductor Kynan Johns to make his bid to succeed Gisele Ben-Dor at leader of the Symphony. Johns acquitted himself well at

‘White Countess’ a beautiful tale of the past recaptured
02-24-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

“The White Countess” is a charming and haunting fable about Mr. Jackson (Ralph Fiennes), a retired American diplomat living in Shanghai in the late 1930s, and about Sofia (Natasha Richardson), a Russian countess who fled her home during the 191

‘Nightwatch’ gives vampires an East-Euro spin
03-03-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Here’s the thing about good versus evil movies: we’ve seen it all before. Whether they’re supernatural beings, or military powers, or resistance fighters in space, it always comes down to the fate of the world, and two or three characters around w

Symphony, Bidini tackle Prokofiev
03-03-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Italian pianist Fabio Bidini joined the Santa Barbara Symphony recently in a masterly performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26.

The concert, at the Arlington, was also the opportunity for Australian conductor Kynan Johns to make his bid to succeed Gisele Ben-Dor as leader of the Symphony. Johns acquitted himself well at the

Opera demonstrates Puccini’s versatility
03-03-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Opera Santa Barbara continued its Puccini Festival Saturday at the Lobero with two one-act operas - one utterly captivating, the other less so.

Puccini premiered the two works - “Suor Angelica” and “Gianni Schicchi” - with New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1918. The former was doleful in the extreme, albeit with excellent singing. The latter was a hoot, als

Arts & Entertainment previews
03-03-2006

Bulgarian Chorus to mesmerize South Coast

The 22-member Bulgarian State National Radio and Television Chorus-known as Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares-one of the premier women’s choirs worldwide, will make its Santa Barbara debut at 8 p.m. Monday, March 6 in UCSB Campbell Hall. Known for dramatic adaptations of folk singing styles and spine-chilling harmonies, punctuated by whoops and qua

‘Ultraviolet’ great-looking nonsense
03-10-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

A sci-fi production meets a fashion show in Kurt Wimmer’s “Ultraviolet,” starring Milla Jovovich as the vengeful post-apocalyptic vampire-warrior Violet.

It’s a gorgeous production, to be sure. Everything is engineered to make Jovovich impossi

Belcea Quartet Glows at Lobero
03-10-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

The Belcea Quartet, the young English ensemble that has dazzled chamber music circles in England and Europe, brought its exceptional sound to the Lobero Theatre on Monday night. Their program included Mozart’s “Hoffmeister” Quartet in D Major, K. 499, Benjamin Britten’s Quartet No. 3, Opus 94, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s towering Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Opu

‘Bog of Cats’ oozes into Slough of Despond
03-10-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

“By the Bog of Cats,” by Marina Carr, aspires to be an Irish equivalent of the myth of Medea - who, when rejected by her lover, killed her two children by him and then herself.

The Theatre UCSB production of Carr’s play is directed by a great the

Arts & Entertainment previews
03-10-2006
ECM concert takes aim at forever

UCSB’s Ensemble for Contemporary Music (ECM), under the direction of Jeremy Haladyna, will present their winter concert at 8 p.m. next Thursday, March 16, in Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall.

The concert gets its title, “Amarantos: Eternal Flower,” from

'Why We Fight' tells it like it was and is
03-17-2006
By Gabe D' Annunzio, Special to the Voice

In “Why We Fight,” documentary filmmaker Eugene Jarecki tells the story of the rise to dominance of the so-called “military industrial complex,” and why and how the nation goes to war. Named for Frank Capra’s famed series of Defense Department films (

Vin Diesel makes 'Find Me Guilty' memorable and funny
03-17-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

Back in 1987, when Rudy Giuliani was a grandstanding prosecutor crusading against the mob, an extensive investigation into the activities of the Lucchese crime family led to charges being filed against most of the key members of the gang, leading

Kabaretti Takes Symphony Baton
03-17-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

The Santa Barbara Symphony has a new young music director, Nir Kabaretti, who will succeed 12-year veteran Giselle Ben-Dor, starting this July.

Kabaretti, 38, was introduced Saturday night at the gala Symphony ball, themed “M is for Maestro,” at Montecito Country Club. The tall, energetic maestro was brought to the podium and introduced to the more than 30

'Libertine' is memorable, but so is its squalor
03-17-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

He is John Wilmot (Johnny Depp), Second Earl of Rochester, and he does not want you to like him.

Indeed you won’t, but if you can get past all the grunge and vulgarity, you might begrudgingly admire the bad boy of King Charles II’s (John Malkovic

Synthetic ‘Spitfire Grill’ moves to real tears
03-17-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

“The Spitfire Grill” began as a film by Lee David Zlotoff, starring Ellen Burstyn, Alison Elliot and Marcia Gay Harden. It won the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival in 1996. In 2000, James Valcq and Fred Alley transformed the film into a stage musical, and it is this which has received an exciting, moving production by the City College The

‘V for Vendetta’ holds a funhouse mirror to our present
03-24-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

It’s dystopian, it’s subversive, and it’s uncomfortably timely: “V for Vendetta,” the Wachowskis’ newest film, finally got released last week, and it hits like a ton of bricks.

Religiously zealous, power-hungry politicians rule a future England, u

‘Heart of Gold’ is gold clear through
03-24-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

“Neil Young: Heart of Gold” is the great singer-songwriter’s provisional last will and testament. After being diagnosed with a brain aneurysm, and before the procedure that would mend it, Young wrote enough songs for a new album, to be calle

Symphony paints Finnish darkness, Czech joy
03-24-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Gisele Ben-Dor returned to the podium of the Santa Barbara Symphony last weekend with a slightly off-beat program that made the most of the orchestra’s polished sound.

The keystone of the program was Antonin Dvorak’s exuberant love song to America, the Symphony No. 9 in e minor, Opus 95, “From the New World.” The great Czech composer came to the United Sta

Arts & Entertainment previews
03-24-2006
Reports of Twain’s death are exaggerated

Hal Holbrook returns to the Lobero in his now legendary one-man show, “Mark Twain Tonight,” featuring the wit, wisdom and downright cantankerousness of America’s greatest humorist, Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. “Mark Twain”). Twain was “politically inc

‘Inside Man’ delivers suspense and drama without gore
03-31-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

Spike Lee’s “The Inside Man,” is a long and complex thriller about a bank robbery, hostages, a shameful deed from the past, and the efforts of a police detective under a cloud to redeem himself and make “Detective 1st Grade.” Race is only a small

‘Ask the Dust’ looks better than it is
03-31-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Director Robert Towne brings out the dry, gritty, bleachingly sunlit world of Depression-era southern California in his adaptation of John Fante’s novel, “Ask the Dust.”

It’s beautiful in that sort of stark, depressing, everything-is-dying-slowly kind

Mother Russia’s Own Rachs the Arlington
03-31-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

The Russian National Orchestra, which came into being just as the Soviet Union was collapsing, brought its thundering Slavic fervor to the Arlington on Saturday night.

The program, under the auspices of the Community Arts Music Assn. (CAMA), was prototypically Russian, two selections by Sergei Rachmaninoff and one by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The Russian National

‘Mark Twain Tonight’ still good as gold
03-31-2006
By Gabe D' Annunzio, Special to the Voice

Hal Holbrook’s one-man show “Mark Twain Tonight” has now been on the boards for more than 50 years. As the performance of it last Friday at the Lobero made abundantly clear, it is just as wonderful and spellbinding now as it was then, as it has been a

‘Sophie Scholl’ reminds us of the peril of dissent
04-07-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

The film opens with Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch, “Downfall”) and her friend surreptitiously listening to the radio. It’s jazz, that crazy subversive music prohibited by Nazi Germany, and she’s singing along quietly but happily.

That’s virtually the

‘Canto General’ a stirring call to arms
04-07-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Songs of resistance and social change were the flavor of the Santa Barbara Master Chorale’s performance last Sunday afternoon at the First Presbyterian Church. Blending the words of Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda with the music of Mikis Theodorakis, the politically active film composer behind “Z,” and “Zorba the Greek,” “Canto General,”

‘Lonesome Jim’ finds poetry in the everyday
04-07-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

“Lonesome Jim” is Steve Buscemi’s third run at directing a feature film, after 1996’s “Trees Lounge” and 2000’s “Animal Factory,” though in the meantime he directed the famous “Pine Barrens” episode of HBO’s “The Sopranos” before joining the

State Street Scores A Coup
04-07-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

State Street Ballet last weekend introduced Artistic Director Rodney Gustafson’s new work, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and it proved to be an absolute delight.

Gustafson chose Felix Mendelssohn’s exquisite music, rather than the annoying score of the same name by Benjamin Britten. The work premiered in two performances at the Lobero Theatre.

Silvia Rota

‘Crossing the Bridge’ is a bass-player’s Istanbul
04-07-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

“Crossing the Bridge - The Sound of Istanbul” is a tour of the great world city of Istanbul through the glass of its popular music scene. Film-maker Fatih Akin, born in Hamburg to Turkish parents, made a name for himself as a director with the film, “Head On,” but he announces on the sound track during the opening moments of this documentary, that he

Arts & Entertainment previews
04-07-2006
Young wizard pianist to wow audience at UCSB

At 8 p.m. next Tuesday, April 11, UCSB Arts & Lectures will present a recital by 25-year-old wonder-pianist Yundi Li, the 2000 International Chopin Piano Competition top honors winner (youngest ever to take that prize). The Frederick Chopin

‘Joyeux Noël’ a hymn to a lost world
04-14-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

Christian Carion’s “Joyeux Noël” (Merry Christmas) is a movie to break your heart.

It was good to be reminded that the so-called “Christmas Truce” of 1914 was not a sentimental legend but a well-documented historical fact. Hundreds of Fren

Ben-Dor’s last tango on the South Coast
04-14-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Giselle Ben-Dor, in her penultimate appearance as conductor of the Santa Barbara Symphony, last Sunday led the orchestra in a charming program reminiscent of English promenade concerts.

In her long-standing tradition of bringing Latin American music to the Arlington Theatre, Ben-Dor invited bandoneon virtuoso Raul Jaurena to perform Astor Piazzolla’s C

Morlan Higgins makes ‘Hughie’ unforgettable
04-14-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

We are in the lobby of a small hotel near Broadway, in Manhattan. It is a little after 3 a.m., on a day in the summer of 1928. The Night Clerk (Gregory Sanders) is having trouble keeping alert, but then “Erie” Smith (Morlan Higgins) comes in

‘Mambazo’ fills Campbell with joy
04-14-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Ladysmith Black Mambazo is one of those groups you wish you could hang out with because they look like they’re really having a good time. Since the roughly 900 of us couldn’t all be on the stage with them at once, we were fortunate to have them spread their a capella message of “peace, love, and harmony” at Campbell Hall last April 6th.

“Emotional,”

Arts & Entertainment previews
04-14-2006
SB Chamber Orchestra gets back to Wolfgang

The Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra has been dedicating their whole 2005-2006 season to a celebration of the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who turned 250 last January. They called the season “Mostly Mozart,” however, and last month they offered a concert with Beethoven and Brahms but no Mozart.

In next Tuesday’s concert in the Lobero Theate

Sonic Spotlight
04-14-2006
By Carter Yarbrough, Special to the Voice

Longtime local rock family, “Villalobos,” especially Rey on guitar, is a major player in this band which also features Duncan Wright on “lead and ambient guitars”, James Garza on Bass and Matthew Talmage covers drums and percussion. Their ten song CD “Volcano and Heart” is definitely worth having. Rumor has it their doing both a European and a U.S.

‘La Mujer’ cheats and pouts so stylishly
04-21-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

In “La Mujer de mi Hermano,” the sexy new Mexican film, Barbara Mori stars as Zoe, a housewife bored with her ultra-successful metrosexual husband’s (Christian Meier) inattentiveness, and decides to embark on an affair with his just as hunky but definitely more deshabille younger brother Gonzalo (Manolo Cardona).

Every aspect of every shot in this f

‘Dublin Carol’ follows a family’s path to redemption
04-21-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

Despite the word “Carol” in the title, and the fact that the protagonist has a series of Christmas Eve encounters which transform his life - what’s left of it - Conor McPherson’s “Dublin Carol” is not really an updating of Dickens’s cl

'Friends With Money' tells all about rich, empty lives
04-21-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Editorial Director

Writer-director Nicole Holofcener managed to keep me interested and sympathetic through her new "Friends with Money," but it was a near thing. Holofcener is a keen and insightful observer of the affluent white middle class in Los Angeles. Tell

Ohyama, Dick, SBCO do Mozart proud
04-21-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

Confirming that there can never be too much of a good thing, the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra provided a full feast of Mozart Tuesday night at the Lobero.

Who better to celebrate the 250th birthday of music’s golden child than this orchestra? An

‘Akeelah’ casts spell
04-28-2006
By Gabe D’Annunzio, Special to the Voice

If you are in search of a movie to see with your kids — a movie that your children can enjoy without forcing you to endure several kinds of Hollywood torture — then you simply cannot do better than to take them to “Akeelah and the Bee.” It is about a

‘Chiaroscuro’ short on highs and lows
04-28-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Managing Editor

For a concert billed as “Chiaroscuro, Music of the Heart,” the program played by violist Helen Callus on Sunday at the Lobero was short on romanticism, even while technically superb.
Callus, who teaches at UCSB, is undeniably a master of her instrument, as she demonstrated in a program of works ranging from Prokofiev to Brahms. Robert Koenig, who was as r

‘Silent Hill’ creeps when it doesn’t crawl
04-28-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

1. Never leave the group.

2.Under no circumstances should you follow anything that runs into any dark enclosed space of any kind.

3.Refrain from driving in bad weather to a place everybody says is haunted.

Break all these rules and you’ve got “Silent Hill,” the newest video-game-to-movie translation to hit the screen.

Despite the cliched but well-

Diemer, Mozart honored in Music Club benefit
04-28-2006

The Santa Barbara Music Club will present a concert at 3 p.m.Sunday in the Unitarian Society Sanctuary, 1535 Santa Barbara St.

The twin focuses of Sunday’s concert will be the composers Emma Lou Diemer and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Diemer, who is Professor Emeritus of Composition at UCSB and longtime principal organist of First Presbyterian Church, will participate in the concert as a perform

A bitter ‘Hard Candy’
05-05-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Revenge isn’t as sweet as it should be in director David Slade’s “Hard Candy.”
Part psychological thriller, part slasher, this film revolves around 14-year-old Hayley (Ellen Page), a kind of avenging angel who turns the tables on 30-something Jeff (

‘Lola’ longs to be in pictures
05-05-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Arts-Lifestyle Editor

The current production of the Santa Barbara City College Theatre Group, “Lola Goes to Roma” is directed as well as it could be by Katie Laris, and acted with genial charm by the young cast, who all gave better performances than the material deserves. That is about the best I can say for the show, however, and the fault rests squarely and unmistaka

Lithuanian pianist takes the high road
05-05-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Staff Writer

Egle Januleviciute is so remarkable an artist that reviewing one of her performances is a genuine challenge; serial superlatives are embarrassingly inadequate.

A sizeable crowd of her admirers assembled at the First Methodist Church on Tuesday night to hear her play three works: the Partita No. 2 in c minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Vari

‘Mission’ improbable, but highly accomplished
05-12-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

It’s ballistic, over the top and barely clings to reality, but “Mission: Impossible III” is the kind of junk-food movie that actually manages to fulfill our less than healthy cinematic cravings.

Tom Cruise ("Ethan Hunt") has maybe three settings,

Ben-Dor goes out in a blaze of glory, style
05-12-2006
By Margo Kline, Voice Staff Writer

Along with musical virtuosity, Gisele Ben-Dor has a sure sense of showmanship, brilliantly displayed in her farewell concert with the Santa Barbara Symphony on Saturday night.

Ben-Dor, not one to shrink from a challenge, chose as her final offering Beethoven’s towering Ninth Symphony. The orchestra, which has sounded better with each concert this season, was

‘United 93’ celebrates desperate courage
05-12-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Arts-Lifestyle Editor

“United 93” will almost certainly prove to be the finest feature film ever made about the events of September 11, 2001 — not the intelligence or policy failures, not the terrible consequences for America and the world, but just the hijackings and the crashes. It’s like a film about Watergate that dealt only with the burglary itself.

Writer-direc

‘Art School Confidential’ ties a sloppy, brilliant knot
05-12-2006
By Gerald Carpenter, Voice Arts-Lifestyle Editor

Terry Zwigoff’s third feature – fourth, counting the fascinating and unsettling feature-length documentary, “Crumb” – continues to explore America through the eyes of comic book artists – which is what Zwigoff himself started out as. His new film is loosely adapted from a story in Daniel Clowes’s comic book, “Eightball.” Clowes, who also collabora

A teacher in time with his students
06-02-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Anyone who’s fallen in love with a musical instrument understands the joy in even the most grueling practice sessions. The most determined of musicians will endure bruises, aches, personality conflicts and just about any inconvenience to get to the mome

A year old and grown up
07-28-2006
Young theater company tackles a mature musical in its second production

By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

It’s art imitating life for the kids of Y-Not Student Productions, as they offer their second musical theater show this summer, a presentation of Stephen Sondheim’s “In

It’s a bird, it’s a … noir paradox
09-22-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Erstwhile TV director Allan Coulter jumps into the grownup pool with his first feature film “Hollywoodland.” And what a big splash he makes.

Tackling the often trite and clichéd genre of noir, a risk-taking Coulter takes on one of Hollywood’s paradoxes: the “suicide” of someone who seemed to have it all — a superhero, no less.

Most of us will rem

The groove tubers of Ch. 18
11-10-2006
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Flummoxed by fungus? Irritated by irrigation? Overwrought by overgrowth? Check out the wise guys. The Garden Wise guys, that is.

The brainchild of Santa Barbara city water conservation coordinator Alison Jordan, Christy Zwicke of Santa Barbara C

The Bookworm Sez: Getting what you want - and more
12-15-2006
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“My Penguin Osbert”
by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel,
illustrated by H.B. Lewis
Candlewick Press
$16.99, 40 pages

Time’s running out.

You’ve probably already counted the days til Christmas, so you know you can’t waste any more time writing your letter to Santa. You want to give it plenty of time to get to the North Pole.

Just be careful what you ask for

2006: Looking back
12-29-2006

Two major figures in world music lent their talents to musicians and fans in visits to UCSB. In December, Syrian singer Abboud Bashir, left, performed with the UCSB Middle

The Bookworm Sez: Adventures, near and far
12-29-2006
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Forty Acres and A Fool”
by Roger Welsch
c.2006, Voyageur Press
$21.95, 326 pages

You are sick of the Rat Race.

Crowded neighborhoods, crowded stores, and crowded schedules make you claustrophobic. Rush hour ruins your day before it even starts and you’re so overworked that you don’t know what relaxation is any more.

This year, you’ve made a resol

The Bookworm Sez: Picked-on singles, young thrill junkies
01-05-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Singled Out”
by Bella DePaulo, Ph.D.
c.2006, St. Martin’s Press
$24.95, 325 pages, includes notes

So another wedding invitation came in the mail today. You also got a flier from a health care club; it’s a two-join-for-the-price-of-one offer. Your employee benefits package came in the mail, too, along with some form you have to fill out and return. It

The Bookworm sez: A summer to remember and the ultimate girly read
01-12-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Adventures in Darkness”
by Tom Sullivan
c.2007, Nelson Books
$24.99, 240 pages

As you get older and the days begin to move at the speed of light, it’s natural to long for the endless days of your summertime childhood.

Remember making lying on the ground, watching ants? Making forts and pretending you were a spy? Remember rainy afternoons spent playi

The bookworm sez: Horror and humor in pair of true stories
01-19-2007
“Fall”
by Ron Franscell
c.2007, New Horizon Press
$24.9, 272 pages

They say that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

For instance, staying out past curfew when you’re 16 equals being grounded. Driving fast and getting caught means loss of license. Innocent things, the repercussions of which last only a short time.

But some events can resonate for deca

The Bookworm sez: An implausible thriller; the dish on celebs
01-26-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“The Successor”
by Stephen Frey
c.2007, Ballantine Books
$25.95, 283 pages

Did you ever wonder, “What if …”

What if you took a different route to work once this week? Would your whole day be affected?
What if Al Gore had become president, or Bob Dole or even Thomas Dewey?

What if there was major trouble brewing south of Miami? President Jesse Wo

IV becomes eclectic
01-26-2007

It won’t be long before Isla Vista becomes known for more than just the drunken debauchery of Halloween on Del Playa. UCSB’s Multicultural Center, in partnership with IV LIVE and the Office of Student Affairs, is launching a series of programs under the banner MCC in IV.

This pilot program

‘Great Yokai War’: Discard at your peril
02-02-2007
Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Writer

Don’t you hate it when you settle into what you think will be a fairly uneventful summer and you wind up in the middle of a colossal war in the spirit world and you have to fight for the very survival of humanity?

That’s what young Tadashi Ino (Ryunosuke Kamiki) winds up having to do in Takashi Miike’s “The Great Yokai War,” a remake of 1968’s “Yokai Daisens

"Ghost of Mae Nak' a Thai nightmare
02-02-2007
Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Writer

“The Ghost of Mae Nak” opens with a nightmare — the really eerie kind you have where you wake up, get out of bed, horrible things happen … and then you wake up. For real this time. Maybe. It’s the feeling of those first few seconds where you don’t trust your reality that British director Mark Duffield tries to spread out over the film.

For the most part, it

The Bookworm Sez: On being an ‘only’ and an updated ‘Mouse’
02-02-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Only Child: Writers on the Singular Joys and SolitarySorrows of Growing Up Solo”

edited by Deborah Siegel
and Daphne Uviller
c.2006, Harmony Books
$23, 257 pages

“I’M TELLING MOM!!”

How many times a day did those words echo through the halls of your house when you were a kid? How many transgressions — real or imagined — were tearfully recounted to

For jazz man, live is life
02-09-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

“I think there’s a shift in the culture,” said saxophonist Colter Frazier. “People don’t go out that much anymore to listen to music.” The reason, he speculates, is the fact that audio toys and gadgets are getting better and more widely available.

“

Throat singers come to UCSB
02-09-2007
Khoomei, the throat singing of Tuva, comes straight from the steppes of Siberia to the Multicultural Center at UCSB, thanks to the group Tyva Kyzy.

While we in the West marvel at the tenor’s high C or the diva’s pure note, the folks in the East who’ve mastered throat singing have found ways to incorporate three or four tones in the same sound, with different qualities and different textures, dep

The Bookworm Sez: 20 tales of ‘Mr. Wrong’and a Renaissance man
02-09-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Mr. Wrong”
edited by Harriet Brown
c.2007, Ballantine Books
$24.95, 259 pages

Right about this time of year, you’re going to find all sorts of “helpful” suggestions for men for Valentine’s Day. Here’s a sample:

Get her roses. No, they’re trite. Get her orchids. No, carnations.

Burn “your” song on a CD. No, that’s cheap. Hire a band to play the

In his musical life, the tempo is vivace
02-16-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

On Monday it’s rehearsals with Mama Pat’s Inner Light Choir at Goleta Presbyterian Church. Tuesdays it’s a gig down at Fess Parker’s Doubletree. Wednesdays he’s at the Carrillo Rec Center. Friday is saved for jazz seminars at Westmont College. He als

The Bookworm Sez: A horrific ghost story and a horror-less retirement
02-16-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Heart-Shaped Box”
by Joe Hill
c.2007, William Morrow
$24.95, 384 pages

Every collector knows what must be done when one acquires a prized item for the collection.
You display it.

Maybe the new Crown Jewel goes in a glass case with a special light box, or perhaps it just goes on a shelf somewhere for everyone to admire.

So what do you collect?

Review: Where life unfolds step by steppe
02-16-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

“Cave of the Yellow Dog” does not seem to be so much a drama as it is a series of connected vignettes following the life of a nomadic family on the Mongolian steppe. Nansaa (Nansal Batchuluun), the oldest daughter, finds a dog, and against the wish

Embracing the tango in Old Town
02-23-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Here in Goleta we don't have the urban, tango-filled streets of Buenos Aires, but for a few hours at the end of the week with Andres Amarilla, we can think that we do.

For the past few Fridays, Amarilla and a tight cadre of local tangueros and tan

For local diva, ‘It was always opera’
02-23-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

“You don’t pick your voice. God gives you your voice and then you work with what you are given,” said Tihana Herceg over coffee one afternoon.

If that’s the case then Herceg, a vibrant, enthusiastic woman, is certainly both blessed and wise. Not onl

The Bookworm Sez: The dish on Oscar night; a ‘Taxi’ for tiny car fans
02-23-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Made for Each Other”
by Bronwyn Cosgrave
c.2007, Bloomsbury USA
$29.95, 308 pages, includes notes and index

Ah, the glamorous life of a Hollywood star. Makeup call at 5:30 am. Run a few lines with a hunky co-star while somebody dresses you in an outfit that rivals anything the average person would ever find at a local discount store. Go out and act li

The Bookworm Sez: Prowling for Mr. Right; baseball then and now
03-02-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Manhunting”
by Jennifer Crusie,
read by Renee Raudman
c.2007, Brilliance Audio
$29.95, 6 CDs / about 7 hours

Every good business has a plan, and every businesswoman knows how a plan works. Without one, how would she know where she’s going and how could she focus on getting there?

But is there value in having a plan for everything? Kate Svenson’s

Trading Stories on the Silk Road
03-09-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Writer

Before we could really introduce ourselves, before we could greet each other, the music began. The song was Mey- E- Eshgh, a Persian piece the UCSB Middle East Ensemble had been rehearsing for the concert Saturday, and we were swept up into the swing

Review: ‘Climates’ of shifting moods and lives
03-09-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

A moody Turkish film that moves along at a measured pace, “Climates” dwells on the parts of relationships we’d rather skim over in real life.

Isa (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who also wrote and directed this film) is a middle-aged professor whose relationships with women are often strained and usually less than fulfilling. There’s Bahar, (Ebru Ceylan) his young

'Nunsense' shivers the Timbers with laughter
03-09-2007
By Rochelle Rose, Special to The Voice

The musical “Nunsense” graced the small stage in the revamped Timbers Supper Club, as its premier production. Don’t miss it!

The book, music and lyrics by Dan Goggin (with special permission of Samuel French Musicals) was the perfect offering for the venue’s small stage. Director Peter McCorkle did a wonderful job casting the five nuns who make up the ent

The Bookworm Sez: The rise of Obama, the fall of Barbaro
03-09-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Hopes and Dreams: The Story of Barack Obama”
by Steve Dougherty
c.2007, Black Dog & Leventhal
$9.95, 128 pages

According to a Gallup survey taken last month, 94 percent of Americans queried said they’d be willing to vote for an African American candidate for president next year, which leads politicians from both sides to wonder:

Will 2008 be the Year

The Bookworm Sez: Our credit nightmare; meet our First Ladies
03-16-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Maxed Out”
by James D. Scurlock
c.2007, Scribner
$24.00, 248 pages

Retail therapy is a wonderful thing.

One trip to the store, one peek at saws and suits, diamonds and dresses, and you go home with lots of new possessions, some of which you didn’t even know you needed.

And what do you do when there’s only dust in the wallet and pockets full of lin

The Bookworm Sez: ‘The Clapper’ slacker;a family mystery
03-23-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Eddie Krumble is The Clapper”
by Dito Montiel
c.2007, Thunder’s Mouth Press
$14.95 paperback, 240 pages

Don’t you wish you could do nothing all day and get paid for it?

Imagine having a job that required little-to-no physical toil. No Ph.D required, no major stress, no dealing with nasty customers. And imagine getting money for this non-job that “so

The Bookworm Sez: An ‘Untouchable’ thug and a wise coming of age tale
03-30-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Mr. Untouchable”
by Leroy “Nicky”
Barnes and Tom Folsom
c.2007, Rugged Land
$24.95, 352 pages

For most of us, life is pretty normal, even a little boring.

We get up every morning, eat breakfast and go to work. We do chores on the weekends. We raise families, know our neighbors, and eke out a living. The closest we ever get to committing a crime i

A helping of jazz,with vitamin B-3
04-06-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

When bad knees took Al Tagatac off the golf course a couple of years ago, the retiree suddenly found a lot of time on his hands. Luckily, he had his Hammond B-3.

“I had to keep myself active,” said Tagatac, 66, the kind of man for whom sitting qui

The Bookworm Sez: Mantle, dead and dirty; the prom experience
04-06-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“7: The Mickey Mantle Novel”
by Peter Golenbock
c.2007, The Lyons Press
$24.95, 286 pages

It’s a parlor game that’s been around forever: if you could have dinner with five people, living or dead, who would you choose?

For many baseball fans, the name at the top of the list would be Mickey Mantle. A guy who played baseball when baseball was everything;

The Light Fantastic: Spring brings rain of performances
04-13-2007
By Stephanie Shenkman

Spring is a great time for dance in Goleta. If you enjoy watching performances or participating in dance, you don’t want to miss the following events and classes:
Coming all the way from the Netherlands, the members of Emio Greco|PC will leap, slide and split t

The Bookworm Sez: The genius of mess; a bitter memoir
04-13-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“A Perfect Mess”
by Eric Abrahamsonand David H. Freedman
c.2006, Little, Brown
$25.99, 304 pages

The boss is waiting.

He asked you yesterday afternoon for something you finished last week.

It’s somewhere on your desk, you know it is. In some pile. Maybe on the credenza. Or did you take it home? Well, if you did, you’ll never find it again. Your

A special voice in 'Special Topics'
04-20-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

Part noir, part coming-of-age, part mystery novel and peppered with enough literary allusions to validate the existence of almost every English major in the world, Marisha Pessl’s “Special Topics in Calamity Physics” marks her astonishing debut.

“Nabokovian” is the hundred-dollar word being bandied about with regards to this book. And it is — dense, ske

The rat race, darkly; horse racing, lightly
04-20-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Then We Came to The End”
by Joshua Ferris
c.2007, Little, Brown
$23.99, 387 pages

In the average year, you spend some 2,000 hours at your job. That’s well over 100,000 minutes of toil with a bunch of people you’re supposed to be nice to, some of which — if you didn’t have to work with them — you’d never even want to know them.

So in this age of corpo

The Day Tripper: A voyage to our coastal past
04-27-2007
Say “Santa Barbara” and people think of a vacation destination that’s also home to the rich and famous. While that’s true today, for more than 10,000 years it’s been a gathering spot for a variety of people with one thing in common: a dependence and interaction with the sea.

Our coastlin

Test-tube music, born of curiosity
04-27-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

The late great improvisational musician Derek Bailey once said, “Improvisation is a muddy ditch: it’s where things can grow.”

Mucking around in that ditch these days are three musicians at the core of the twice-monthly Experimental Music Night

The Bookworm Sez: Wrestling with gender; a killer of a thriller
04-27-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“She’s Not the Man I Married”
by Helen Boyd
c.2007, Seal Press / Avalon Publishing Group
$15.95 paperback, 290 pages

Ask any eager mother- or father-to-be about the gender of the new baby, and you can nearly guarantee that their eyes will light up. Ask what they “want” the baby to be, and you might hear that they want a boy or they may want a girl, or t

Editor's Pick
05-04-2007
The "Lightning in a Bottle" music festival at Live oak Camp is one of the wildenst events in the county. Think three days of Solstice, but wrapped around music and performance. The Marchinf Fourth Marching Band will be there. Will you?

The writing life, chapter and verse
05-04-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Reporter

National Poetry Month has come and gone. In case you didn’t make it downtown for all the events last month, here are a couple of local bards to give you a few lines.

Marsha Truman Cooper has been a poet for about 50 years “with time off to pursue other interests.” While it was a crush on a boy that started her writing poetry when she was eight, poetry h

Culture on the inside
05-04-2007
By Stephanie Shenkman

Springtime brings June Gloom and allergies to Goleta. If you find yourself sniffling on a sunny day, it might be time to get inside.

On Wednesday, “Pan’s Labyrinth,” winner of Academy Awards for cinematography, art direction and make-up, is playing at UCSB’s Campbell Hall at 7:30 and 10 p.m. for only $6. The film is a gothic fairytale filled with monsters and magic seen t

The Bookworm Sez: Freaks, geeks, anti-heroes and outed superheroes
05-04-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey”
by Chuck Palahniuk
c.2007, Doubleday
$24.95, 288 pages

Doesn’t it seem that, when a celebrity dies, his or her myth grows?

Think Anna Nicole Smith. Think Marilyn Monroe. Think Elvis. Think Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Cobain, John Lennon or Bob Marley.

Think Rant Casey.

All the Party Crashers are talking a

Editor's Pick
05-11-2007
Local jazz vocalist Kimberly Ford is having a CD/DVD release party for "Songs in the Key of Sea" on Thursday from 6:30 - 9:30 p.m. at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum. For information and tickets, visit www.kimberlyford.com.

The Day Tripper: Solvang - more than windmills
05-11-2007
By Tony Galvan

Towns and cities in California can generally trace their histories back to early Indian villages or Spanish settlements. Solvang’s history, however, is much more unique. In 1910 three visiting Danish educators purchased nearly 10,000 acres of land in the Santa Ynez Valley with the idea of creating a Danish folk school. Their purchase of the Rancho San Carlos de Jonata, once a Mexi

The Bookworm Sez: The Earth mother and the Mars moms
05-11-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“The Penny Tree”
by Holly Kennedy
c.2007, New American Library
$14.00, 330 pages

You know how it is. The alarm doesn’t go off, which makes you late. You missed your ride, got a run in your pantyhose, spilled coffee down your front, the boss is peeved, and you’re having one of Those Days.

Did you ever have a whole lifetime of Those Days?

For Annie H

Rapper Coval keeps it positive
05-11-2007
By Stephanie Shenkman

Kevin Coval is a well-known personality on HBO, a poet, creative writer and an English teacher — a sophisticated up-and-coming artist who is nothing less than a gentleman. He’s also part of a movement that many people associate with sex, drugs and violence.

Coval is a white Jewish rapper from Chicago who is paving the way to a safer America through hip-hop.

He graced U

Editor's Pick
05-18-2007
"Encroachment: Interpretations of a landscape," a photography exhibit by Kate Connell and Larry Mills, kicks off Saturday at Art Resources with an opening reception from 5 - 9 p.m. Many scenes of Goleta, including Connell's "Mustard Blossoms on a Curve," above, are in it. The show, at 512

Lost Boys of Sudan open UCSB film festival
05-18-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Writer

Back in the late 1980s and early ’90s, when the most of the rest of us were ohhing and ahhing over a new show called “The Simpsons” and swooning (or gagging) over New Kids on the Block, some 27,000 boys were fleeing the horror of civil war in their native Sudan.

Traumatized by the killings and separated from their families, the “Lost Boys,” wandered thous

The Bookworm Sez: Dusty cowpokes and frazzled brides
05-18-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Texas Showdown”
by Elmer Kelton
c.2007, Forge
$24.95, 319 pages

Do you sometimes think you were born too late?

Would you have wanted to be a pioneer who settled the land from a log cabin? Maybe you’d have been a great gangster or a bob-haired flapper. Perhaps you wish Medieval life wasn’t just something in a history book to you.

Or maybe you wish

Editor's Pick
05-25-2007
New Plays Festival by Theater UCSB, including "Trivial Pursuit," right, "Cowgirl," "Rice Pudding" and the musical "Tomorrowland," written and directed by UCSB students, is at the campus' Performing Arts Theatre through tomorrow night.

SB Theaters to accept tickets printed at home
05-25-2007
Metropolitan Theaters in downtown Santa Barbara will begin accepting advanced tickets today purchased through MovieTickets.com and printed at home.

The bar-coded tickets can be presented directly to takers at the Arlington, Fiesta Five, Metro Four and Paseo Nuevo theaters.

Goleta's two Metro movie houses - Camino Real Cinemas and Fairview Theaters - are not participating in the program.

Davi

The Bookworm Sez: A grisly task laid bare; a gender revolutionary
05-25-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Aftermath, Inc.”
by Gil Reavill
c.2007, Gotham Books
$25.00, 304 pages

Over the years, you’ve watched enough TV to know what happens at a murder scene.

An investigator comes in and pokes around. Then somebody totes the body away, nice and neat in a big grey bag strapped to a gurney. The police arrive to dust for fingerprints while the MEs do the

In time with the rhythms of the Arabian Peninsula
06-01-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Writer

If you ever find yourself in the Arab Gulf States (that would be in the area of Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia), get an earful: it’s likely you’ll hear some of the most syncopated, driving and funky beats around.

The music is called Khaliji, w

An unvarnished look at Pollock
06-01-2007
By Stephanie Shenkman

Art mavens have the opportunity to get the inside scoop on one of the most infamous art personalities of the 20th century. Bruce Clarke’s play “Fifteen Rounds With Jackson Pollock” at Victoria Hall Theatre portrays the nasty side of Jackson Pollock, the artist who put Abstract Expressionism on the map.

Pollock was critically acclaimed for pouring paint onto a canvas secur

The Bookworm Sez: Women who grow things; a buffalo tale of love
06-01-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Women of the Harvest”
by Holly L. Bollinger
and Cathy Phillips,
foreword by Maryjane Butters
c.2007, Voyageur Press
$24.95, 160 pages

Every year, you wait, eagerly.

Trips to the mailbox at Christmastime hold cards and presents, but that’s not what you’re looking for.

You can barely wait for the promise of spring in the form of gardening cata

The Bookworm Sez: Summer reading delights for the whole family
06-08-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“The Camel Bookmobile”
by Masha Hamilton
c.2007, HarperCollins, $24.95 / 320 pages

Are you satisfied with your life as it is?

Does the routine of your week – driving the same route, eating at the same restaurants, doing the same work – give you comfort? Are you delighted with how each day is nearly identical to the one before? Are you happy with the

Editor's Pick
06-15-2007
"Songs for Africa," a benefit for Direct Relief's International's Global Health Journey 2007 in Africa this summer, rocks with Headless Household, right, Gove County Philharmonic and MamaJama Jazz on Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Center Stage Theater

The Bookworm Sez: The royals, in living color; a pig, in need of sleep
06-15-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“On Royalty”
by Jeremy Paxman
c.2007, PublicAffairs
$26.95, 70 pages, includes index

Picture this: a much-beloved princess, a “breath of fresh air” to the British throne, dies. There is an immediate outpouring of grief as conspiracy theories buzz all over England. Tributes are hastily made. Songs are devoted to her memory.

Sound familiar? Then yo

Editor's pick
06-22-2007
The Itals, reunited Jamaican roots reggae legends, will be in concert with DJ Fredo Thursday night at SOho in a benefit for the Santa Barbar Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.

The Bookworm sez:The once and future Hillary; race, death and Texas
06-22-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“A Woman in Charge”
by Carl Bernstein
c.2007, Knopf
$27.95, 628 pages

Remember the ’90s?

Sure you do. The “Rachel” haircut, Furbys, the Macarena, Beanie mania and Depeche Mode? How about Pogs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Zubaz, Animaniacs and Crystal Pepsi?
How about the Clinton administration? Remember that?

Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Bernst

The Bookworm Sez: The big day in a girl’s life; the women behind lifers
06-29-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Fifteen Candles”
edited by Adriana Lopez
c.2007, HarperCollins Rayo
$14.95, paperback, 332 pages

Dewy-eyed and clad in a white dress that surrounds her like a lacy cloud, the young woman swirls around the dance floor, waltzing with her father. The daddy-daughter dance always brings a tear to the eye of the sentimentalist — indeed, the young woman’s fat

Editor's Pick
07-06-2007
More than 100 images by members of f/nine, including Kate Connel's "barbed lemons," are on exhibit at the Goleta Library in the group's last show. A reception will take place tomorrow, 2:30 - 4:30 p.m.

The Bookworm Sez: Gritty life on the "Street'; goofy life in the words
07-06-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“The Last Street Novel”
by Omar Tyree
c.2007, Simon & Schuster
$24.00, 401 pages

To what lengths would you go to keep your word?

Even if it was illegal, dangerous or immoral, would you do everything you could to keep a promise? Or would you retreat when the going gets rough?

Shareef Crawford made a lot of promises to a lot of people, and in the new

The Bookworm Sez: Women warriors, close up; a dead woman, too close
07-13-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Band of Sisters”
by Kirsten Holmstedt
c.2007, Stackpole Books
$27.95, 325 pages, includes index

Think of a warrior, and what comes to mind first?

A loincloth-clad athlete with arrows and slings, defending himself in hand-to-hand combat? A robust knight in armor, riding his horse into the maelstrom of battle? Maybe a solidly-muscled foot soldier

Editor's pick
07-20-2007
"Offside," an Iranian film described "as funny as it is sharp," follows several young women as they boldly endeavor to sneak into a soceer stadium to see their team's World Cup qualifying match in a country where young women are banned from attending men's sporting events. "Offside" will scree

The Bookworm Sez: A dog of a recycled story; a story of a dog, recycled
07-20-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Drop Dead Beautiful”
by Jackie Collins
c.2007, St. Martin’s Press
$24.95, 500 pages

They say that whatever goes around, comes around.

Call it kismet. Call it mojo, Karma, or “vibes.” Whatever you call it, doesn’t it seem like the universe pays you back for the things you do?

Did you ever notice that what goes around can come around generations la

The Bookworm Sez: Earth, as we’ve never seen it; a life we can only imagine
07-27-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“The World Without Us”
by Alan Weisman
c.2007, Thomas Dunne Books
$24.95, 304 pages

Take a quick peek outside your window and check out the scenery.

Are there trees and grass all around, or do you see lots of buildings? Does the land gently slope here, or are there craggy rocks over there?

Now, think a minute. Can you imagine what your corner of th

Editor's Pick
08-03-2007
"Pump Boys and Dinettes," a rock 'n' roll country & blues musical out on Hwy 57 somewhere between Frog Level and smyrna, is plaing in the old barn of the Circle Bar B Dinner Theater weekends through Sept. 9.

A dickens of a mystery
08-03-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Writer

In 1870 Charles Dickens wrote his final story, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.” Unfortunately for the readers of the highly popular author, Dickens died before he could complete the story, and no one ever found out who killed poor Edwin.

What was a traged

The Bookworm Sez: The thrill of chasing bad guys; the chills of riding motorcycles
08-03-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Armed & Dangerous”
by William Queen
and Douglas Century
c.2007, Random House
$23.95, 225 pages

The perfect place to hide was never in the broom closet.

When you were a kid playing Hide and Seek, you knew better than to hunker down in a place that was easy to find. Everybody, including you, went for the perfect hiding spot until it was safe to snea

Editor's pick
08-10-2007
The Salt Martians will be playing their fine bluegrass in a free outdoor concert for "Music at the Ranch" Tuesday evening on the grounds of Stow House.

Photo by Judith Geiger

The Bookworm Sez: When call girls attack; when Harry met Voldemort
08-10-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Sweeter Than Honey”
by Mary B. Morrison
c.2007, Dafina Books
$24.00, 264 pages, includes book group guide and more from the author

What would we do without friends?

Your friend watches your drink at the bar, watches your kids in a pinch, and watches your back, always. You can tell her anything and you know she’ll understand. You have plenty of other

Editor's Pick
08-17-2007
Hot Lava, known for its lively rock n' roll for kids and families, will perform a free outdoor concert on the grounds of Stow House on Tuesday evening

Documentary takes a look at art ‘In Plain Sight’
08-17-2007
You may not know it as you walk around Santa Barbara, but it’s all around you. You might have just passed it. It might just have offended you, or sparked some conversation. You might even be sitting on it.

It’s public art, an institution in Santa Barbara since the 1920s. Not only does it make a statement about the space it’s in, but it’s a marker of the area’s history.

“In Plain Sight,” a doc

Group sings praises of barbershop for women
08-17-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Writer

When someone says “barbershop quartet,” what do you think of? Four men with handlebar mustaches belting out a close four part-harmony, right?

Well, ABC Harmony is proof that women do barbershop too. The ladies of this recently formed local women’s barbe

The Bookworm Sez: A silly parable of Daditude; a pioneer’s sobering tale
08-17-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“CEO Dad”
by Tom Stern
c.2007, Davies-Black Publishing
$19.95, 169 pages

You are a supremely busy executive.

You’re the heart-and-soul of your company, the go-to-it person, the one who moves and shakes in the corporation. You thrive on ninety-hour workweeks. Sleep is overrated in your house. Your business couldn’t survive without you and your up-to-th

Editor's Pick
08-24-2007
Flutist and singer Rebecca Kleinmann, with the New Quartet, will be fusing music from Spain, Brazil, the Middle East and the U.S. at the Mercury Lounge in Old Town Tuesday night.

A moveable feast of art
08-24-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Writer

Alexandra King stands out — way out — in her Persian court costume of red dress with green veil and sequined cap and slippers as she waits on the sidewalk on Pardall Road in Isla Vista. Despite the fact that groups of college kids are zooming by in their

The Bookworm Sez: A love letter to New Orleans; a yawner of a mystery
08-24-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“1 Dead in Attic”
by Chris Rose
c.2007, Simon & Schuster
$15.0, 364 pages

Some anniversaries are worth celebrating.

A 15th wedding anniversary is definitely reason for a big party. You have to agree that, today, even a 25th anniversary is a milestone.

You might hope for a raise on the anniversary of your first day on your job. Maybe you commemorate

Editor's Pick
08-31-2007
There are only 10 days left to be delightfully grossed out by "Grossology: The (Impolite) Science of the Human Body" at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Above, young visitors climb the Skin Wall. Eeew.

Open Studio Tour to benefit DRI
08-31-2007
Goleta artists will play a prominent role in an Open Studios Tour this weekend benefiting Direct Relief International, headquartered in the Goleta Valley. The sicth annual event by the Santa Barbara Studio Artists will take place tomorrow, Sunday and Monday. Goleta Valley Artists Mary LaFond, An

The Bookworm Sez: A fresh look at quinceañeras; a canine tale of love
08-31-2007
“Once Upon a Quinceañera”
by Julia Alvarez
c.2007, Viking
$23.95, 278 pages

When it comes to traditions, what rituals are demanded in your household?

Perhaps you decorate a Christmas tree, light a menorah, or discuss ujama. Maybe a crown of candles is worn by a girl in your family, perhaps you wear green shamrocks, perform a tea ceremony, or send fireworks heavenward.

But wh

Editor's Pick
09-07-2007
"In the Berkshire Hills, Massachusetts 1941," by John Collier is among the photographs in "Ordinary to Extraordinary: FSA Photographs from the 1930s," an exhibit on display in the Channing Peake Gallery of the County Administration Building, through late October.

The Bookworm Sez: A wonder of a memoir; work through the ages
09-07-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Do Me Twice: My Life After Islam”
by Sonsyrea Tate
c.2007, Atria
$15.00 , 288 pages

“To our children we give two things: one is roots; the other, wings”.

When a baby is born, the adults in its life see possibility. The child can be so many things; can do so much in the years ahead, if only he or she is furnished with a good foundation and a nudg

Editor's Pick
09-14-2007
Northwest singer-songwriter Kasey Anderson brings his alt.country/roots/folk-rock sound to the Mercury Lounge on Saturday night in support of his latest CD, "The Reckoning." It's good music (we liked the CD) and the show should be sweet.

The Bookworm Sez: ‘Band’ hits all the right notes; ‘Obituary’ flawed and odd
09-14-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“American Band”
by Kristen Laine
c.2007, Gotham Books
$26.00, 324 pages

Seen any parades lately?

In most of the country, it’s hard to miss ‘em. Starting early-early summer and running almost every weekend, you can catch floats with lazy-waving princesses; politicians shaking hands; and local service groups dressed in costumes they wouldn’t wear any o

Editor's Pick
09-21-2007
Noted singer, guitarist and author Judy collins - and the inspiration for Stephen Still's "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" - will be performing at the Marjorie Luke Theatre on Wednesday evening at 8.


A ‘Hack’ in the city; a diva from Motown
09-21-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“Hack”
by Melissa Plaut
c.2007, Villard
$13.9, 256 pages

Remember how excited you were to start your last job?

Remember the day you were hired and how absolutely thrilled you were? How your head was swimming with the names of new coworkers to memorize, the layout of a new building to learn, and the jargon you had to know to do your fantastic new job?<

Celebration of a silent art
09-28-2007
By Sonia Fernandez, Voice Staff Writer

As William Shakespeare would have it, “Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.” While we’ve all had our fair share of foolish wit, Boxtales Theater Company’s gearing up to give us a gang of witty fools.

Called “Festival of Fools,” the event is a three

The Bookworm Sez: One’s a slimy predator, the other has tentacles
09-28-2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

“If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer”
with exclusive commentary “He Did It” from the Goldman Family
c.2006 / 2007, Beaufort Books
$24.95, 256 pages, plus commentary from the Goldman Family, prologue from Pablo F. Fenjves, and afterword by Dominick Dunne

No doubt that you’ve watched enough television in your life to know that when a murder is committed

The dark side of ghosts; a light on Halloween
10/19/2007
20th Century Ghosts
by Joe Hill
c.2007, William Morrow
$24.95, 317 pages

The lights go on at your house sooner than they did a few months ago and you hate the early dark.
This premature twilight feels disturbing; wrong, somehow. You’ll be used to it more next month and by December, a long night won’t seem so creepy. But for now, every little branch scraping across the wind

Dengue Fever spreads infectious sound
11/09/2007
By Lara Cooper
Voice Staff Writer
Dengue Fever is coming to Goleta and there’s nothing you can do about it — except maybe catch it at the Mercury Lounge on Sunday night.
That would, naturally, be the band whose front woman sings in Khmer, not the nasty virus spread by m

The Bookworm Sez: The real dirt on bacteria; the loving scoop on Jennings
11/09/2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Good Germs, Bad Germs
by Jessica Snyder Sachs
c.2007, Hill and Wang
$25.00, 290 pages, includes index

You brushed your teeth this morning after breakfast. You showered and washed your hair, scrubbed yourself down, put on some antibacterial handcreme, spritzed on deodorant and put on newly-laundered clothes.
There. Ready for today, fresh and

SBCC Jazz Band stretches out
11/16/2007
By Lyndsey Taylor
Jazz is like chicken pot pie. Not everyone likes it, but with the right set of chops and a flaky crust, it might just become a favorite.
Adding be-bop, swing and a pinch of samba may put jazz at the top of your CD rack after you see Santa Barbara City College’s Jazz Band performance Monday at SOhO.
The Jazz Band’s style is a mix of different styles, including be

The Bookworm Sez: Unraveling a genetic history; sex, intrigue and faerie politics
11/16/2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

The Genetic Strand
by Edward Ball
c.2007, Simon & Schuster
$25.00, 288 pages

Imagine this: long before you were born, before Mom even knew you existed, your adult height was already determined.
Your hair and eye color were both set. The possibility of baldness and illness was there within you. The length of your fingers, the hue of your skin,

The Bookworm Sez: A stunning 'Hearts’; a provocative 'Them’
11/23/2007
Terri Schlichenmeyer

The Hearts of Horses
by Molly Gloss
c.2007, Houghton Mifflin
$24.00, 289 pages

If you could live out your dreams, what kind of job would you want to have?
Would you find employment in traveling the world and seeing places you’ve only read about? Or would you work with people who need you and your expertise?
In her imagination, 17-year-old Mart

Leading off with a homer
11/23/2007

Authors use Game 1 of the 1988 World Series to launch what they hope is a series of books for kids

By Martha Lannan
Voice Community Editor
As the father of a 2-year-old, Tom Garcia was in the groove of reading bedtime stories to his son, but often he felt some

Tense, terrifying 'Mist’ a visceral experience
11/23/2007
The first two times Frank Darabont adapted and directed a story by Stephen King — “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile” — the results were dramatically compelling and duly acclaimed, but they didn’t leave you tensed up and terrified in your seat.
They weren’t trying to. “The Mist” i

Film Clips
11/23/2007
August Rush
There are precious movies and then there are movies about 11-year-old orphans following “the music.” In this respect, “August Rush” is on another level. We need to break out a whole new definition of cheesiness for a film like this, augmented by fake tears and vomit gestures. It begins with a boy (Freddie Highmore) standing in an open field where the surrounding sounds — the

The Bookworm Sez: Christmas and Chanukah, with wisdom and warmth
11/30/2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Christmas: A Candid History
by Bruce David Forbes
c.2007, University of California Press
$19.95, 179 pages, includes notes

So, every year about this time, you tramp out to a forest or a lot downtown, drag a tree back inside and hang shiny things on it. You tell the kids stories about Kings and stars, and you encourage them to talk to a large stra

Film Review: Living and growing up in 3/4 time
11/30/2007
Estranged brother and sister Jon and Wendy Savage (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney) are screwed-up and self-absorbed, but they certainly seem realistic. Sometimes they’re shrill, sometimes they’re scared, often they’re incredibly thoughtless and have no qualms about lying to each othe

Film Review: Beautiful dreamer, awake
11/30/2007
Astonishingly beautiful and self-consciously so, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” about the stroke that paralyzed French Elle Editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, never ceases to remind you that it is a work of art.
The imagery from painter-turned-director Julian Schnabel (“Basquiat,” “Before Night Falls”) is so arresting, and yet so artificial, it calls to mind the kind of advertising spread you’d

The Bookworm Sez: Just in time for Christmas, a fruitcake and a boot
12/07/2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

A Little Fruitcake
by David Valdes Greenwood
c.2007, DaCapo Press
$14.95, 182 pages

For eleven months of the year, you barely think about it. But every Christmastime, the memory of it fills your brain with the same kind of feelings you had that holiday way back when.
Maybe that morning, Santa brought you what you wanted more than anything else.

Film Review: 'Atonement’ flawlessly crafted for grown-ups
12/07/2007
Those ruby-red lips puffing away at a delicately hand-rolled cigarette, those shoulder blades jutting like weapons from a knockout of a backless, emerald-green gown — Keira Knightley would seem to be starring in an elegant period drama, one that’s predictably and self-consciously reserved.
“Atonement” is anything but. It changes again and again, lulling us in with its glamorous trappings before

Film Clips
12/07/2007
The Golden Compass
Nicole Kidman’s presence in this elaborate fantasy flick is emblematic of the movie itself: aesthetically lush but ultimately cold to the touch. This adaptation of the first novel in British writer Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy has some fanciful moments but never achieves the sense of awe-inspiring wonder of the “Lord of the Rings” films, to which compa

The Bookworm Sez: A dirty story told cleanly; kid lessons the hard way
12/14/2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

The Dirt on Clean
by Katherine Ashenburg
c.2007, North Point Press
$24.00, 355 pages, includes index

How many times a day do you wash your hands?
Let’s add them up.
An average of six to eight times in the bathroom each 24-hour period. Once before each meal, that’s 11. Technically, while you’re in the shower… that’s 13 times. And probably

Film Clips
12/14/2007
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Are singing chipmunks really so different from Britney Spears? In “Alvin and the Chipmunks” our furry, little singing friends have been turned into something like tiny Justin Timberlakes. They say “’sup playa,” perform with Madonna-style headset microphones and even suffer from that chronic tour-canceler: “exhaustion.”
By placing somewhat realistic-looking, CGI

Film Review: A 'Legend' and his splatter-fest
12/14/2007
So if we must watch the last man on Earth wander aimlessly, it may as well be someone who can hold our attention like the charismatic Will Smith, star of “I Am Legend.”
(Vincent Price and Charlton Heston took on the role with less success in previously cheesy adaptations of the Richard Matheson sci-fi novel, 1964’s “The Last Man on Earth” and 1971’s “The Omega Man,” respectively.)
While Smit

The Bookworm Sez: Two tales of grace: one poignant, the other an audio mess
12/21/2007
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Grace After Midnight
by Felicia “Snoop” Pearson and David Ritz
c.2007, Grand Central Publishing
$22.00, 233 pages

Sometimes, all anybody ever needs to succeed is a break.
Just one good chance, that’s all. A helping hand, a leg up, a little faith. Sometimes, all anybody ever needs to succeed is loving support.
Or, as you’ll see in the new m

Film Review: A giddy ride to 'Charlie Wilson’s War’
12/21/2007
“Charlie Wilson’s War,” a crisp, biting satire that confidently mixes sex and politics, glides along so smartly and smoothly, it makes you wonder how it’s possible that director Mike Nichols and writer Aaron Sorkin have never teamed up before.
Based on the true story of a congressman (Tom Hanks), a Houston socialite (Julia Roberts) and a CIA operative (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who conspired to a

Film Clips
12/21/2007
P.S. I Love You
You can sort of see the allure this might have held for Hilary Swank. It’s a rare opportunity for her to play a romantic comedy heroine but it also has its heavy moments to demonstrate her dramatic range. After making her name (and winning Academy Awards) for tough-girl roles in “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Million Dollar Baby,” here she gets to show off her lean, toned body in

The Bookworm Sez: Adventures of a wage slave; confessions of food slave
01/04/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee
by Alex Frankel
c.2007, Collins
$24.95, 222 pages, includes index

So the other day, you stopped for your newspaper, a donut, chips for lunch and coffee on your way to work. You were in a good mood — until you went to pay for your purchase.
The clerk was surly and your change wa

The Bookworm Sez: A heavyweight 'Confession’; a lightweight 'Cheapskate’
01/11/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Confessions of a Carb Queen
by Susan Blech with Caroline Bock
c.2008, Rodale
$15.95, 346 pages

So, how well are your pants fitting these days?
I mean, sure, you put on a few pounds over the last month, but are you seriously regretting that extra big holiday party binge?
Consider, now, what would happen if binging was a way of life. Author S

The Bookworm Sez: The mystery of a book; the reality of looks
01/18/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

People of the Book
by Geraldine Brooks
c.2008, Viking
$25.95, 372 pages

The next time you hold something old — an antique, an heirloom, an artifact — imagine the stories it could tell if it could talk.
Someone bought that item new, or made it for a beloved. Maybe it was carried across continents or states, tucked in a backpack or spirited ben

With film festival, the A-list rolls into town
01/25/2008
The flood has begun, and it’s not from the rain. That would be the cinephiles and actors pouring into town for the 23rd annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival that began Thursday and runs through Feb. 3.
This year’s festival features a whopping 215 films, including 20 world premieres and 22 U.S. premieres.
SBIFF has grown to one of the top 10 film festivals in the U.S., consistentl

The Bookworm Sez: The college killer app; a knockout for kids
01/25/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Acing the College Application
by Michele A. Hernandez, Ed.D.
c.2002, 2007, Ballantine Books
$14.95, 262 pages

Welcome to Fat Envelope Season.
Never mind winter. Forget about spring. The important season for the Class of 2008 is now. It’s the season where high school seniors practically sit on the mailbox, waiting for an envelope from the Colleg

The art of pride, contribution
02/01/2008
SB African Heritage Film Series opens today for a month of movies, events

By Lyndsey Taylor
If you feel yourself needing an arts fix as the big film festival winds down, the 9th annual Santa Barbara African Heritage Film Series is just the ticket.
Opening today and runnin

Live, from the Merc, it’s Thursday night
02/01/2008
By Lyndsey Taylor
Thursday nights in Santa Barbara’s drunk and disorderly zone are notorious for its crazed college scene, but now there’s something for those who are over the keg-sucking and shot-tossing atmosphere.
Thursday Night Live, a relatively new acoustic experience at

Around Town: Film fest draws stars, cinephiles
02/01/2008
By Rochelle Rose
The 23rd Santa Barbara International Film Festival opened last weekend to sizeable audiences despite torrential rains and blustery winds. Widely anticipated by locals and out-of-towners, the 11-day festival brings millions of revenue and tourist dollars to our region

The Bookworm Sez: A lusty tale of surprises; a look at the presidents
02/01/2008
Terri Schlichenmeyer

Something On the Side
by Carl Weber
c.2007, Dafina Books
$24.00, 394 pages

You know how much you like to read, and sharing your most-loved books with your friends is one of your favorite things to do.
So many books, so little time is your motto. Everybody knows your favorite places to be are at the bookstore and the library. And now you’re

The Bookworm Sez: A poetic horror tale of dogs; a dinosaur brought to life
02/08/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Sharp Teeth
by Toby Barlow
c.2008, HarperCollins
$22.95, 320 pages

Dog lovers are a special breed of people.
We spoil our canines, and give them designer collars, gourmet foods, and boutique-bought toys. We carry our pups in quilted bags, or give them their own spot in the car. They’re primped, meticulously groomed, and dressed in tiny clothe

Return of the zombie king
02/08/2008
Director George Romero gets back to basics in 'Diary of the Dead'

Bitten by a zombie, his fate sealed, a character in George Romero’s new film mutters to a friend, “Shoot me.” The friend first points a video camera at the man, then a gun.
Romero’s latest zombie film uses the same h

Nothing glitters in 'Fools Gold’
02/08/2008
Film Review

There’s a moment in “Fool’s Gold” when Matthew McConaughey, as a flaky treasure hunter, finds himself stranded in the middle of the ocean, bobbing up and down as he clings to an ice chest, baking in the stillness of the sun and praying that someone will come by and rescue h

Film Clips
02/08/2008
The Hottie and the Nottie
Really, there’s no point in paying to see a movie starring Paris Hilton — she of the platinum blonde extensions and the nonexistent acting range — because you can get exactly what she has to offer for free by turning on a TV infotainment show or clicking on any number of gossip Web sites. Here, she once again essentially plays herself, or at least the version of

The Bookworm Sez: The dogs that love, heal us; a companion to freedom
02/15/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Paws & Effect
by Sharon Sakson
c.2007, Alyson Books
$24.95, 231 pages, includes resources

The second you come home, you’re greeted by your furry roommate. Whether it’s a kitty rubbing against the cuff of your pants or the shake of a tail that’s wagging at the speed of light, you know you’re loved and needed and someone couldn’t wait to have you ho

Film Review: 'Spiderwick' shines by keeping it real
02/15/2008
“The Spiderwick Chronicles” may not be in the same fantasy league as the tales of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling. Yet the family flick based on the books of Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black is an all-around class act, even if its world of ogres and goblins is a bit stale in the

Film Clips
02/15/2008
Definitely, Maybe
Surely it’s not too early to feel nostalgic for 1992. After all, it was 16 whole years ago. No iPods yet — and those clunky cell phones! Kurt Cobain was still alive and Bill Clinton hadn’t even met Monica Lewinsky, much less have sexual relations with that woman. Thankfully, writer-director Adam Brooks doesn’t wallow in the not-so-distant kitsch, and mainly uses the per

The Bookworm Sez: A cad’s tale, beautifully told; a monster of an audio 'read’
02/22/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Now You See Him
by Eli Gottlieb
c.2008, William Morrow
$22.95, 262 pages

There comes a time in everyone’s life when a friend is lost.
No, not the kind of loss where words cause angry footstomping and slamming doors. I mean the kind of loss where funerals are held and there’s a friend-shaped hole in your heart forever.
In the new novel, “Now

Film Review: A clever idea wrapped in cutesy fluff
02/22/2008
“Be Kind Rewind,” the latest fantasy from the exceedingly fertile imagination of writer-director Michel Gondry, contains a wonderful nugget of an idea that will appeal to both regular moviegoers and hardcore film geeks alike.
The frantically useless Jerry (Jack Black) gets zapped by an elec

Film Clips
02/22/2008
Charlie Bartlett
This offbeat teen comedy makes you feel as if you’ve just watched three episodes of a new TV series you can’t wait to see more of — one that’s so funny and smart and unpredictable, it would probably only survive one season on the air, if that, then gain a cult following on DVD. Anton Yelchin, who’s had leading roles in the little-seen “Fierce People” and “House of D” and

Night Life: At 3 for the price of 1, an acoustic bargain
02/22/2008
By Lyndsey Taylor
Thoughtful lyrics and the sweet sounds of acoustic guitar meet Saturday’s night at the Mercury Lounge, featuring artists Tom Brosseau, Daniel Ahearn and Tall Tales.
With a mix of sounds, they’re set to bring their folk-acoustic vibrations to the stage for individ

Night Life: Indie grooves, in triplicate
02/29/2008
The Coral Sea, The Spires, The Western States Motel to play Mercury

By Lyndsey Taylor

Rey Villalobos, vocalist and guitarist for The Coral Sea, doesn’t think much of trying to pigeon-hole a band’s sound. Especially his, because how do you define magic?
“I think classifying bands into genres takes away from the music itself, but if I were to describe our sound it would sound li

The Bookworm Sez: Training your mate, training your memory
02/29/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage
by Amy Sutherland
c.2008, Random House
$18.00, 168 pages

Some days, it seems like nobody listens any more.
You nag your spouse yet again to pick up clothes that have been discarded on the floor. You holler at the kids to finish chores, but they’re suddenly hard-of-hearing. You remind your mot

Film Review: 'Penelope' a sweet, smart babe without an ounce of fat
02/29/2008
No offense intended, but a pig snout is very becoming on Christina Ricci.
The actress is lovably adorable in the adorably lovable “Penelope,” a fairy-tale romance that’s a perfect mix of Ricci’s oddball sensibilities and her inherent sweetness.
The film further establishes the tremendo

Film Clips
02/29/2008
The Other Boleyn Girl
The clever casting alone had promise: the role reversal of the va-va-voomy Scarlett Johansson playing sweet country girl Mary Boleyn and the pixieish Natalie Portman playing her scheming vixen of an older sister, Anne. Add hunky Eric Bana to the mix as Henry VIII, jumping back and forth between these two contrasting beauties in his fiery youth, and the possibilities

The Bookworm Sez: A profile in greatness; tales of great leaders
030708
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Standing Tall
by C. Vivian Stringer
c.2008, Crown
$24.95, 291 pages

You’ve already said your farewells to the family.
You’ll miss them, but what you have to do is important. There will be no running the kids to parties this spring. No weekend getaways, no impromptu excursions. Even though this happens ever year, they understand.
You

Film Review: A slice of history best left forgotten
03/07/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
A mix of vast CGI spectacle and small, silly moments, the prehistoric saga “10,000 BC” is an epic in name only.
Rather, the latest mind-numbing extravaganza from director Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day,” '’The Day After Tomorrow”) fee

Film Clips
03/07/2008
The Bank Job
This is a solid, no-nonsense heist thriller, yet one that ultimately fails to distinguish itself from the many others of the genre. It has none of the cinematic pyrotechnics of a Guy Ritchie picture, but it also lacks the stylish cool of a “Sexy Beast,” for example. Australian director Roger Donaldson has crafted a respectable mix of fact and fiction inspired by the 1971 ro

The Bookworm Sez: Leading with feminine wiles; another slog to Venus, Mars
03/14/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Seducing the Boys Club
by Nina DiSesa
c.2008, Ballentine
$25.00, 221 pages

Mama tried to shield you, but it didn’t work.
When you were small, she tried to keep you from playing with the Big Boys because they were rough and they played hard. Big Boy games were no place for Mama’s little girl.
But you grew up, and now you can’t wait to reach t

Film Review: Vibrant 'Horton’ stretches story thin
03/14/2008
Horton may hear a Who, but the rest of us may hear a lot of hoopla, and it’s not all the charming sort you expect from a benign Seussian world.
“Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!” succeeds to a point in putting the Hollywood spin on Theodor S. Geisel’s beloved children’s book about an elephant d

Film Review: 'Stop-Loss’ sways from serious to silly
03/28/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press

For her first film since 1999’s “Boys Don’t Cry,” the raw drama that earned Hilary Swank the first of her two best-actress Academy Awards, Kimberly Peirce initially wanted to make a documentary about soldiers who had fought in the Iraq w

Film Clips
03/28/2008

Chapter 27
Jared Leto put on some 60 pounds to play John Lennon assassin Mark David Chapman, a feat that some have likened to Robert De Niro’s transformative weight gain for “Raging Bull.” Well, there’s nothing raging about this feature debut from writer-director Jarrett Schaefer, a

Film Review: Clooney’s 'Leatherheads’ lacks winning game plan
04/04/2008
By David Germain
Associted Press

Maybe the best offense in a real football game is a good defense. Not so in a movie about the early years of the sport, when pro football was a poor cousin to the college game. George Clooney’s “Leatherheads” plays everything safe, offeri

Film Clips
04/04/2008
Shine a Light

It’s impossible to walk into Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stones concert film without decades’ worth of expectations. We simply know too much about the filmmaker and the rock stars and their previous music-doc outings. Seeing Mick Jagger thrusting and flailing abou

The Bookworm Sez: A swell-told sleuth-fest; all dressed up for Purim
04/11/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Where Are You Now?
by Mary Higgins Clark
c.2008, Simon & Schuster
$25.95, 289 pages

Did you ever have one of those days where you just want to step away from the world and maybe disappear for a minute?
We all go through times when we’re just better off left alone. Some people, though, take that to an extreme.
When Carolyn MacKenzie’s brothe

Film Review: 'Smart People,’ recycled into a zinger-fest
04/11/2008
“Smart People” isn’t as smart as it thinks it is, despite some wickedly snappy dialogue. Novelist-turned-screenwriter Mark Poirier gives the capable, eclectic cast some real zingers to play with, but he also loads his script with some plot contrivances that are simply too hard to accept.
Denn

Film Clips
04/11/2008
Street Kings
The cliches and laughably hammy dialogue are scattered about just as liberally as the spent bullet casings in this ultraviolent but tired bad-cop yarn — which is surprising and disappointing given that it comes from a story by “L.A. Confidential” writer James Ellroy, who also co-wrote the script. Director David Ayer pretty much remakes “Training Day,” which he also wrote, co

Folked up in Old Town
04/18/2008
By Kellie Ragusano
You could have called it local boy meets Aussie girl in Old Town. But it was no cheesy romance story. It was an entertaining night at the Mercury Lounge a week ago when folk rockers Jesse Rhodes and Natalie D-Napoleon played separate sets.
Rhodes’ songs were six years in the making, a span occasioned after his relationship with his former record label, Warner, went

The Bookworm Sez: Tracing Daddy Dearest; the American Dream, done up
04/18/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Son of Scarface
by Chris W. Knight
c.2007, New Era Publishing, LLC
$18.95, 291 pages

Ah, dear old Dad…
He taught you all about fishing and football. He introduced you to your first engine, and he showed you how to fix it. He was Master of the Grill and he passed the legacy to you. He took you to his favorite hangout and introduced you to his fr

Film Review: 'Forgetting’ a movie to remember
04/18/2008
So perhaps the rumors of Judd Apatow’s demise were greatly exaggerated.
Following the disappointing performance of “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” and the flop that was “Drillbit Taylor,” Apatow is back in classic form with his latest production.
“Forgetting Sarah Marshall” is yet another

The Bookworm Sez: Mom-daughter pathology, cutely; how green is your kid?
04/25/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Certain Girls
by Jennifer Weiner
c.2008, Atria
$26.95, 386 pages

Practically since the beginning of time — or at least in the last couple hundred years — mothers who give birth to daughters have looked at those scrunchy newborn faces and into the future, with thoughts of playing dolls, making cookies, sharing secrets and wearing mother-daughter dr

Film Review: A grunt-level look at Abu Ghraib
04/25/2008
Errol Morris doesn’t condemn the soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison, the ones who shot and posed for those photographs that shocked the world nearly five years ago, though it would have been easy for him to do so.
But the veteran documentarian doesn’t exactly let them off the hook, either.


Film Clips
04/25/2008
Baby Mama
Tina Fey didn’t write this pregnancy comedy, though you’d be forgiven for walking into it and assuming she did. After all, her face appears prominently on the movie’s ubiquitous posters, alongside that of co-star and former “Saturday Night Live” cast mate Amy Poehler. The script actually comes from first-time director Michael McCullers, who previously wrote the second and third

The Bookworm Sez: Eating meat without guilt; a Native American epic
05/02/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

The Compassionate Carnivore
by Catherine Friend
c.2008, DaCapo Lifelong
$24.00, 256 pages

This weekend, it’s time for a family splurge. There’s a restaurant that just opened nearby, and you’re dying to sample the cuisine.
Friends who’ve been there say the prices are just right and the servings aren’t skimpy. Most of all, you’ve heard this place serve

Film Review: 'Iron Man’ a blockbuster with a brain
05/02/2008
Much of the allure of “Iron Man” comes from the fact that we are indeed talking about a man — a real man who has lived a life and made mistakes and experienced regret — not some scrawny, teenage boy who received his superhero powers through a bite from a radioactive spider.
No offense to Spid

Film Clips
05/02/2008
Made of Honor
The whole point of a romantic comedy is the comfort of the ritual — the familiarity of it all, as if you’re wrapping yourself in a warm, snugly blanket of knowledge that the two attractive, charming leads will surely end up with each other in the end. The outcome is never in doubt, despite the various contrived obstacles that pop up along the way. This is especially true of

The Bookworm Sez: The problem with God; the magic of branding
05/09/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer
by Bart D. Ehrman, read by L. J. Ganser
c.2008, HarperAudio
$39.95, 8 CDs / 10 hours

This morning, while you enjoyed your coffee and your newspaper, hundreds of children died of starvation.
As you drove to the office, sipping from your water bottle, women i

Film Review: 'Speed Racer’ goes nowhere in a hurry
05/09/2008
The Wachowski brothers have tumbled into a matrix of their own with “Speed Racer,” one which has rendered them completely out of touch with the outside world.
In adapting the 1960s Japanese anime television series, writer-directors Larry and Andy Wachowski have created a noisy, overlong, mind

Film Clips
05/09/2008
The Fall
This whacked-out fairy tale for grown-ups is as stunning in its beauty as it is in its lack of logic. Indian writer-director Tarsem Singh, who just goes by the name Tarsem, knows how to create some sumptuous visuals, as he did with his similarly gorgeous but pretentious 2000 thriller “The Cell” starring Jennifer Lopez and Vincent D’Onofrio. He has quite an imagination, all right

The Bookworm Sez: A truly creepy thriller; pratfalls of a single dad
05/16/2008
Island of Lost Girls
by Jennifer McMahon
c.2008, Harper
$13.95, paperback, 255 pages

Who was your childhood imaginary friend?
He was the pal you who got you in trouble and the one who caught the blame for all your mischief. He rode in the seat next to you and shared your bed. If you had a really good imagination, you made your Mom set a place at the table for her, or you warned Dad

Film Review: 'Garcia Girls’ low budget but lovely
05/16/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press

Before she tried on a pair of magical pants or transformed herself as the award-winning star of “Ugly Betty,” America Ferrera appeared in the indie charmer “How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer.” The movie’s been kicking around at festivals since 2005 and is just now being released theatrically, but it further reveals Ferrera’s naturally lo

Film Review: New 'Narnia’ takes darker, funnier turn
05/16/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press

More is more in “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” the follow-up to the 2005 fantasy hit “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.” It’s simultaneously darker and funnier, more substantive and more engaging,

The Bookworm Sez: Domestic drama, overdone; the insurance game, undone
05/23/2008
Searching for Paradise in Parker, PA
by Kris Radish
c.2008, Bantam
$22, 352 pages

Remember when you and your Better Half met? Perhaps you had been dating others but when you saw him, you knew he was “it.” Or maybe you’d seen her around town and were totally floored that she would date someone like you. And the thing is, over the years, with kids and jobs, mortgage and chores and ever

Film Review: Indiana Jones and the lumbering screenplay
05/23/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press

You see the hat before the hero — that famous fedora, the one that stays put through every tricky situation, or at least at arm’s length for a hasty getaway. And of course he still has the whip, the paralyzing fear of snakes and the catchy Jo

Film Clips
05/23/2008
Postal
How does Uwe Boll keep getting work? Seriously, this is not a rhetorical question — someone, somewhere surely must know the answer. The German director has built a career, if you can call it that, on taking video games such as “Alone in the Dark,” '’House of the Dead” and “Blo

DP to host jazz vocal group
05/30/2008
The pop-jazz vocal group m-pact will be featured at a concert of the Dos Publos High Jazz Choir and Combo next Friday night at the school’s new Performing Arts Center.

Respected internationally as cutting-edge in the realm of vocal music, m-pact has performed with Sheryl Crow, Boyz II Men, K

The Bookworm Sez: A beautiful reflection; the Civil War in verse
05/30/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

After River
by Donna Milner
c.2008, HarperCollins
$24.95, 320 pages

Remember your high school crush?

Do you recall the first time you saw him, the way his hair curled, the carefree way his jacket sleeves were pushed up, the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled? For months, you secretly wrote his name with “Mrs.” in front of it.

He might not

Film Review: For its hard-core fans, 'Sex’ satisfies
05/30/2008
The clothes! The shoes! The magical depiction of Manhattan and the promise of finally finding true romance!

It’s like porn for women. And we haven’t even gotten to the sex part of the “Sex and the City” movie yet.

Fans will be thrilled to see their old friends — Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte an

Film Review: 'Foot Fist Way': Comedy as a swift kick to the groin
05/30/2008
Fred Simmons, the doughy anti-hero of “The Foot Fist Way,” could be the kid brother of Ron Burgundy or a not-so-distant cousin of Ricky Bobby.

He’s basically a low-rent version of the well-honed Ferrell persona: a swaggering fool who is totally deluded about his power and intelligence, a guy almost too obnoxious to bear. Yet there’s something so obviously pathetic and insecure about him beneath

Film Review: 'Kung Fu Panda’ hits the funny bone
06/06/2008
Ah, the panda.
There’s no cuter member of the animal kingdom, so why has he taken so long to land a starring role in Hollywood? The truth is, we like our cartoons to be the less attractive eccentrics: mice, rats, whatever Gonzo is.
But in “Kung Fu Panda,” Jack Black’s panda isn’t cuddly; h

Film Clips
06/06/2008
You Don’t Mess With the Zohan
For all its perceived shock value, all the concern that a comedy about conflict in the Middle East would offend just about everyone imaginable, “Zohan” is really rather conventional and familiar. At its core, it’s just “Romeo and Juliet,” wrapped in Adam Sandler’s trademark raunchy humor. Sandler stars as the titular character, an Israeli commando who fakes

The Bookworm Sez: Working the Golden Years; raising kids Mama’s way
06/06/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Encore
by Marc Freedman
c.2007, Public Affairs Books
$24.95, 255 pages, includes index

Why do you work?
For most of us, we hold a job down so we can pay bills, have a home, buy stuff. Some of us work because we like the social aspect. For others, it’s the challenge we love most about working.
And still, we think about retirement. After all, isn’t

Film Review: It’s 'Happening’ in Dullsville
06/13/2008
For a movie called “The Happening,” not much happens.

M. Night Shyamalan effectively delivers the usual broody air of foreboding that has been a trademark of his hits (“The Sixth Sense” and “Signs”) and misses (“Lady in the Water” and “Unbreakable”).

And this fear-mongering story of an

The Bookworm Sez: A crazy year on the road; the years down the aisle
06/13/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Queen of the Road
by Doreen Orion
c.2008, Broadway Books
$13.95, 272 pages

Since way last summer, you’ve been planning your dream vacation. It was always going to be a road trip, somewhat reminiscent of the ones your parents took you on 40 years ago. You envisioned the fun: you, the family, the open road and a few kitschy tourist traps before the Big D

Film Review: Sound and fury, sure, but little heart in 'Hulk'
06/13/2008
The fanboys will probably be happy with the latest incarnation of “The Incredible Hulk.” At least we can say that much for it — and that’s something we most assuredly could not say about Ang Lee and James Schamus’ somber, introspective and largely derided take in 2003 on the beloved Marvel Comic

Film Review: Who loves the 'Guru?’ He does
06/20/2008
In “The Love Guru,” Mike Myers must come to love himself before he can love others. From the credits of this scattershot comedy sketch stretched and strained to movie length, Myers clearly loved himself to the point of narcissism going in.
Besides starring, Myers is a producer and co-writer.

Film Clips
06/20/2008
Get Smart
What began life on TV as a classic sitcom that cleverly satirized Cold War espionage has been transformed for the big screen as just another standard action picture. Pity, too. Because Agent Maxwell Smart himself would have made a more entertaining movie, just by picking up a camera and bumbling his way through it. You certainly can’t complain about the casting of Steve Carell

The Bookworm Sez: Black America’s political future; history’s courageous presidents
06/20/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Last Chance: The Political Threat to Black America
by Lee A. Daniels
c.2008, PublicAffairs
$22.95, 223 pages, includes index

Right now, as you read this article, history is being made.

For the first time ever, an African American candidate is campaigning for president and whites are widely supporting him.

One of the country’s most popular and powerf

Film Review: 'WALL-E’: Made of metal, but all heart
06/27/2008
Within the rumbling, stumbling hunk of junk that is WALL-E beats the sweetest, warmest heart — a robotic representation of humanity’s highest potential.

And within the sci-fi adventure “WALL-E” lies an artistic truth: that Pixar’s track record remains impeccable.

Following high-concept movie

Film Review: Kickin’ booty with a beauty
06/27/2008
The movie is called “Wanted” and the star is Angelina Jolie. No, it is not a documentary.

It is, in fact, a super-stylized, wildly outlandish action flick that will pick you up, throw you around, drop you back down on the ground and leave you begging for more. It’s the ideal, mindless summer thrill ride — one you can never take too seriously, even when it starts to take itself too seriously.

B

The Bookworm Sez: A gritty piece of 'Cake’; A 'Bonk' to remember
06/27/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Cake
by D
c.2008, The Armory / Akashic Books
$14.95, 139 pages

Who do you trust?
It’s an easy question, the answer of which is probably your Mama, family, maybe a friend or two.

But what if you had little-or-no family and you knew nobody in your new hometown? Who do you trust?

In the new book “Cake” by D, you can’t trust anyone. Seems like they’

'Car Talk’ guys throw a 'Wrench' into TV
07/04/2008
The Tappet Brothers of NPR reluctantly 'star’ in new
animated show on PBS

By Kinney Littlefield
Associated Press
Tom and Ray Magliozzi, aka Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers of NPR’s “Car Talk” fame, are just two low-ego lugs. That’s why — familiar self-deprecatin

Film Review: 'Gonzo’: No fear, little loathing
07/04/2008
“Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson” is a remarkably balanced look at a man whose creativity sprang from his perpetual state of imbalance.

Hunter S. Thompson was, of course, a brilliant writer but also famously self-destructive; he ended his life, a never-ending orgy of booze and drugs, when he shot himself in 2005 at age 67. But his death was an event that the Kentucky gentleman

Film Clips
07/04/2008
Hancock
Will Smith has owned Fourth of July weekends with huge debuts for some passable but not-so-great movies, and he’ll likely do it again with this foul-mouthed-misanthrope-as-superhero flick. The movie has a crisp, entertaining set up: Smith is a superhero who hates everyone and is hated in turn for the chaos he causes. With nowhere to go after that, the filmmakers let the story dev

The Bookworm Sez: A sweet, outlandish novel; true tales of blue pride
07/04/2008
Terri Schlichenmeyer

Made in the U.S.A.
by Billie Letts
c.2008, Grand Central Publishing
$24.99, 355 pages

When you were a teenager and living under your parents’ medieval rules, you probably couldn’t wait to grow up, get an apartment, and have a life of your own.

Once you grew up, got an apartment, and had a life of your own, you realized that things weren’t really much diff

Hollywood’s twisted world
07/11/2008
Secret, strange plot turns are a movie staple; here’s a look at some of the more memorable

By David Germain
Associated Press
A Will Smith movie packs in millions of people over Fourth of July weekend. No surprises there.
Yet Smith’s “Hancock,” the tale of an

Film Review: Misfits and monsters and 'Hellboy,’ oh my!
07/11/2008
Words don’t really do justice in attempting to describe the wondrous array of misfits and monsters Guillermo del Toro has concocted in “Hellboy II: The Golden Army.” Truly, his is a world you have to experience for yourself to appreciate it fully — if you dare, that is.

In following up the ori

Film Clips
07/11/2008
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The three-dimensional digital imagery used in Brendan Fraser’s subterranean adventure nearly defies Hollywood wisdom that no technological innovation can ever turn a bad movie into a good one. In 2-D, as it will play at most theaters for lack of sufficient cinemas equipped to project digital 3-D, the movie probably will come off as a lame bit of hokum t

The Bookworm Sez: The fluid truth about water; moaning with displeasure
07/11/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Bottlemania
by Elizabeth Royte
c.2008, Bloomsbury
$24.99, 248 pages, includes notes and index

It’s summer, and the thermometer reads between the 70s and Hades.

Pavement shimmies, shade is at a premium, and you can almost see the air. Every movement is an effort; even using your brain sends another river of sweat along the back of your neck.

And on t

Film Review: The 'Dark Knight’ of twisted souls
07/18/2008
By Roger Moore
The Orlando Sentinel
This “Dark Knight” is much more than simply “Batman 2.0.” It’s a re-tooling, a re-load of the franchise Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale revived three summer’s ago.

It is crammed with great actors, with a delicious and bittersweet f

Film Review: Streep a blast in goofy 'Mama Mia’
07/18/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
ABBA songs are, of course, evil in musical form.

Just try getting “Dancing Queen” out of your head once it’s burrowed its way in there. “Waterloo,” too, is especially pesky. But “Mamma Mia” might be the most tenacious tune in the 1970s

The Bookworm Sez: Real tales of the dead; surviving freshman year
07/18/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Skeletons in the Closet: Stories from the County Morgue
by Tobin T. Buhk and Stephen D. Cohle, M.D.’
c.2008, Prometheus Books,
$27.95, 408 pages, includes index and notes

You try to do everything right.

You eat from all the major food groups. You hit the gym regularly. You read the labels to make sure you’re not ingesting bad-for-you things. Bedtime is

Film Clips
07/25/2008
American Teen
Nanette Burstein’s documentary doesn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know about high school. It can be a rough time, even if you’re pretty and popular. Kids divide themselves into cliques. They can be mean to each other. Pressure can come from all sides — from parents, coaches, fellow students and mostly from within. But the intimate way in which Burstein tracks the

The Bookworm Sez: A steamy look at magicians; an election primer for kids
07/25/2008
Terri Schlichenmeyer

The Secret Life of Siegfried and Roy
by Jimmy Lavery, Jim Mydlach and Louis Mydlach as told to Henrietta Tiefenthaler
c.2008, Phoenix Books
$25.9, 247 pages

Remember that goofy trick your Uncle Ralph did, where he pulled a nickel from your ear? Or the one where he pulled his thumb apart?

Remember “got your nose” and pick a card, any card? Guess which h

Film Review: 'X-Files’ makes it hard to believe
07/25/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
The makers of the new “X-Files” movie have done themselves a disservice in coming up with the elongated title, “The X-Files: I Want to Believe.” Really, it just invites a whole bunch of bad jokes which, unfortunately, are justified.

It’s e

Film Review: Time for 'Mummy’ franchise to wrap it up
08/01/2008
By Jake Coyle
Associated Press
The third “Mummy” installment dutifully sends its characters to China where they participate in international competitions of zombie fencing, yeti vaulting and synchronized senselessness.

“The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” finds Rick O’Co

Film Clips
08/01/2008
Man on Wire
Philippe Petit is alive. Alive and quite well, in fact, nearing 60 but exhibiting the strength and enthusiasm of a man half his age. That in itself is a bit of a miracle, considering the myriad death-defying acts the French high-wire artist has pulled off over the past four decades. “Man on Wire” focuses on his most dangerous and dazzling feat of all, the one that made him an

The Booksworm Sez: Titans of industry and Madonna, from the inside out
08/01/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Good Guys & Bad Guys
by Joe Nocera
c.2008, Penguin Portfolio
$25.95, 292 pages, includes index

Want press?

In today’s business world, there are two simple ways to get it: do something daringly, unexpectedly, incredibly great; something that nobody else thought of doing, and if they did, they aren’t. Put on an aw-shucks face and humbly accept kudos.

Film Review: A 'Pineapple’ with a hint of lemon
08/01/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
The formula is pretty familiar by now in these Judd Apatow-produced comedies. A couple of buddies get into trouble, and as they try to bumble their way out of it, their friendship only grows stronger.

Some clever linguistics guru some

Film Review: 'Traveling Pants’ feels a bit worn
08/08/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
Yes, the pants still exist, but now they’re covered in patches and jewels and etched with the memories and dreams of the four young women who’ve been wearing them. And they still travel — to New York and Vermont, Turkey and Greece, and vari

The Bookworm Sez: Tales of the undocumented; trashy fun in the Hamptons
08/08/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Underground America
compiled and edited by Peter Orner, foreword by Luis Alberto Urrea
c.2008, McSweeney’s Books
$24, 379 pages, includes appendices and glossary

Let’s imagine for a minute, the unthinkable.

Let’s imagine the U.S. government has been overthrown and a powerful, armed group of soldiers has taken over. Chaos ensues. Inflation rises. Educat

Film Clips
08/15/2008
Fly Me to the Moon
A well-intentioned exercise at blending education and family entertainment, this 3-D animated tale ends up being only mildly educational and not all that entertaining. The story of three flies that tag along with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on Apollo 11’s moon shot is reminiscent of the moment in “Apollo 13” when the TV networks decide against airin

Film Review: Allen rediscovers his touch in 'Barcelona’
08/15/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
You should hate these people, really, these smug American yuppies chatting gaily about golf, tennis and boating over red wine on a sun-splashed Spanish afternoon.

You’re also free to abhor the painters, poets and musicians who populate Bar

The Bookworm Sez: A life-and-death mystery; lessons in living, dying
08/15/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Swan Peak
by James Lee Burke
c.2008, Simon & Schuster
$25.95, 402 pages

When you go on vacation, you want to see the countryside, maybe travel a little. You want to sleep in, wear sloppy clothes, do things you don’t normally do, and have thoughts that don’t tax your brain, right?

Which means you never want to do anything that remotely resembles work.<

Film Review: 'Hamlet 2’? Much ado about nada
08/22/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
The play’s the thing in “Hamlet” and it is in “Hamlet 2,” as well. It’s just about the only thing that makes this intentionally cringe-inducing theatrical parody worth watching.

Sure, Steve Coogan has his hilarious moments as a delusional

Film Clips
08/22/2008
The House Bunny
Just in time for back-to-school comes a comedy that won’t teach you anything new or useful, but it will prepare you for sorority rush. Well, its depiction of Greek life isn’t all that accurate either, but that’s beside the point. Its entire purpose is to serve as a showcase for Anna Faris, star of the “Scary Movie” franchise, whose sunny disposition and solid comic timing

The Bookworm Sez: A supernatural fairy tale; lessons in natural dangers
08/22/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

The Gargoyle
by Andrew Davidson
c.2008, Doubleday
$25.95, 480 pages

You drive into a town that you’ve never visited and suddenly, without a smidge of doubt, you know there’s a diner around a certain corner. You walk in, squeeze into a booth and look at a menu that’s so familiar you barely need to read it. You’ve been there before, but that’s impossible.

Film Review: 'Frozen River’ a raw, riveting original
08/29/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
When the two women first cross the river together — in the dead of winter, in a rickety Dodge Spirit — Melissa Leo’s character, Ray, says what the audience is thinking: “This is so ... stupid.”

Well yes, it is, considering that each time s

Film Review: 'Traitor’ can’t keep allegiances straight
08/29/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
“Traitor” is the kind of movie so many of us yearn to see: It’s intense and intelligent, has something to say without being pedantic and presents complicated issues without condescending.
It even boasts a solid cast, led by Don Cheadle (

The Bookworm Sez: Football fun, just in time; a Loon Lake whodunit
08/29/2008
Terri Schlichenmeyer

The Football Uncyclopedia
by Michael Kun and Adam Hoff
c.2008, Clerisy Press
$15.95, 256 pages

Duck.

For a few weeks each year, your friends and family get good at that.

It’s not that you’re a violent person. Really, it’s not that at all.

The thing is, at some point, your team will do something boneheaded. A coach will make a bad decision. A ref will

Film Review: 'Babylon’ talks its way into mediocrity
09/05/2008
By Roger Moore
The Orlando Sentinel
Here’s what happened to Vin Diesel, the subject of so many “The action hero for the New Millennium” cover stories back when “Pitch Black,” '’The Fast and the Furious” and “xXx” were hot. Vin never learned the Eastwood Rule.

Back in the da

The Bookworm Sez: Truth, 'Lies’ and murky thrills; the truth in 'Angel Girl’
09/05/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

The Book of Lies
by Brad Meltzer
c.2008, Grand Central Publishing
$25.99, 352 pages

How much did comic books cost when you were a kid?

Remember the smell of comic book paper, and the “win this bike” ad on the back? Begging for the latest Archie or Spiderman issue, promising to share with your younger siblings but secretly intending to hoard it for your

Film Review: Coen brothers score another with 'Burn
09/12/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
It’s a total goof, of course. A lark, a one-off.

“Burn After Reading,” the latest offering in the eclectic filmography of Joel and Ethan Coen, is not to be taken seriously — one look at Brad Pitt’s blond-streaked pouf of hair tells you tha

Film Clips
09/12/2008
Righteous Kill
It’s not that this crime thriller is spectacularly awful. It’s just thoroughly mediocre — a standard police procedural, a long episode of “Law & Order,” unremarkable but for the pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. But really, shouldn’t we expect more from these two, considered among the greatest actors of our time? Well, we might have been justified in having high hop

The Bookworm Sez:Don’t quit your day job, Willie; a peek inside the waiter’s life
09/12/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

A Tale Out of Luck
by Willie Nelson (with Mike Blakely)
c.2008, Center Street Publishing
$21.99, 256 pages

Let’s say someone wronged you. They cut you off in traffic. Stole from you. Backed into your car and didn’t leave a note. Hacked into your computer and left a virus.

Things like that make you mad, and you probably plot all kinds of revenge ranging

Film Review: 'Ghost Town' a funny idea that dies in the middle
09/19/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
“Ghost Town” is a great idea that doesn’t have very far to go.

A guy dies for seven minutes while under anesthesia, then when he comes back to life, he sees dead people. And they see him, and talk to him, and follow him around Manhattan al

Film Clips
09/19/2008
Appaloosa
Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen are both on the right side of the law this time, but the chemistry they shared as adversaries in 2005’s “A History of Violence” remains. Good thing, too. Aside from the some striking scenery, their comfortable dynamic is just about all that makes “Appaloosa” worth watching. Harris, as director, producer, co-writer and star, has come up with an old-

The Bookworm Sez: Irresistible 'Irrational Behavior’; an obsessive look at Sammy
09/19/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior
by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman
c.2008, Doubleday
$21.95, 206 pages

You’re about to enter a building. You push the door, but nothing happens. You push again. You look straight at a sign that says “PULL,” but you push one more time.

The batteries on the remote control are dead, but you jam on the buttons

Film Review: 'St. Anna’ close, but no miracle
09/26/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
In Spike Lee’s long and eclectic career, “Miracle at St. Anna” is easily his most technically ambitious film.

After acclaimed character dramas (“Malcolm X,” '’Do the Right Thing”), some ill-fated comedies (“Bamboozled,” '’She Hate Me”) and

Film Clips
09/26/2008
Choke
As disappointing book-to-film adaptations go, this isn’t quite as bad as “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” but it’s up there. The novel from “Fight Club” writer Chuck Palahniuk, about a sex addict who pretends he’s choking in restaurants to make money to pay for his demented mom’s hospital care, wasn’t exactly great literature. But the characters had a depth beneath the weirdness and

The Bookworm Sez: A hustler on the make; a cat that touched lives
09/26/2008
Terri Schlichenmeyer

Pecking Order
by Omar Tyree
c.2008, Simon & Schuster
$24, 495 pages

The lights dim, the room is quiet, and then you hear the muddied first sounds as the movie starts.

You’ve got your large-size soda between your knees and popcorn on your lap, and you’re excited because your favorite star is in this movie. Yeah, it seems dumb, but you wonder what he’s like

Film Review: Through the looking glass, sweetly
10/03/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
Someday, Michael Cera will show us what else he can do.

He surely must have someone else inside of him besides the poignantly verbal but sweetly awkward nerd we’ve come to know and love in movies such as “Superbad” and “Juno” and the late,

Film Clips
10/03/2008
Blindness
The blind literally lead the blind — to hell and back — in this pretentious, preposterous allegory. An unnamed disease afflicts the unnamed citizens of an unnamed city, all of which is too precious. The victims are left sightless but they see white instead of black, a sensation one character compares to “swimming in milk.” Once they’re rounded up by soldiers and quarantined in

The Bookworm Sez: A 'Lucky’ treat for readers; a thriller for listeners
10/03/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

The Lucky One
by Nicholas Sparks
c.2008, Grand Central Publishing
$24.99, 326 pages

Where did you meet your beloved?

Was he a fix-up, a down-load or a sideswipe as you ran for the elevator? Did you notice him from afar and hope for an introduction? Or was he the passion perpetrator, actively angling to meet you?

Cupid ain’t stupid and now you’re to

Film Review: 'Body of Lies’: Thrilla in vanilla
10/10/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press

“Rendition.” '’Redacted.” '’The Kingdom.” '’In the Valley of Elah.” '’Lions for Lambs.”
They’re all movies about the war on terror that nobody has wanted to see, either because the topic is too daunting or too much of a downer, or it

Film Review: 'City of Ember’: Dystopia 101

By Roger Moore
The Orlando Sentinel
Heads up, all you tweens out there in Let’s Go to the Moviesland. Today’s word is “dystopia,” as in the opposite of “utopia,” often used to describe works of science fiction that depict an Earth that has been polluted (“Blade Runner”), globally warmed (“Waterworld”), or Big Brother’d (“1984”) into slavery.

“City of Ember” is a not-quite-cla

The Bookworm Sez: Ghost tales, grounded; a diva’s life, revealed
10/10/2008
Lore of the Ghost
by Brian Haughton, illustrated by Daniele Serra
c.2008, New Page Books
$14.99, 192 pages, includes index

Your neighbor has things hanging from her tree, but they’re not fruit. She put up a few rags and some gauzy stuff to make her house look haunted. There are cardboard skeletons in her window and carved pumpkins on her stoop. Her kids love it, your kids love it, and

Film Review: Don’t misunderestimate Stone’s 'W.’
10/17/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
All he wanted to do was watch baseball and drink beer all day. Sounds like a reasonable request.

Instead, George W. Bush ended up being chosen as leader of the free world. Twice.

That’s Oliver Stone’s surprisingly fair and balanced asses

Film Clips
10/17/2008
Happy-Go-Lucky
Poppy, our perpetually sunny heroine, finds that her beloved bicycle has been stolen from outside a London bookstore at the film’s start. Not only is she not angry when she makes this discovery, but rather she says to herself, wistfully and with a wry smile, that she never even got to say goodbye to it. The bully who torments his fellow students in the elementary-school cl

The Bookworm Sez: A look at presidential gaffes; illustrating the White House
10/17/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Failures of the Presidents
by Thomas J. Craughwell with M. William Phelps
c.2008, Fair Winds Press / Quayside Publishing
$19.95, 320 pages

Why is it that you only spill, fall, splat or otherwise make a fool of yourself when everyone in the world is looking?

When things are perfect, of course, nobody’s ever around to notice. But capture the eyes of jus

Film Review: 'Changeling’ could have used touch of gray
10/24/2008
By David Germain
Associated Press
Something more than a child goes missing in Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” his tale casting Angelina Jolie as a real-life single mom whose young son vanishes in 1928.

On the surface, “Changeling” has all the rich atmosphere and evocative de

Film Clips
10/24/2008
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
omeday, Troy and Gabriella will actually open their mouths when they kiss. Someday, Sharpay won’t have backup dancers magically appear out of nowhere during her self-glorifying production numbers. But for now, everything about the “High School Musical” series remains safely wholesome and intact, even as it makes the leap from TV to the big screen. All t

The Bookworm Sez: Primers on Obama, McCain; a delight from Breathed
10/24/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

McCain: The Essential Guide to the Republican Nominee
by Mark Silva
Obama: The Essential Guide to the Democratic Nominee
by Naftali Bendavid
Both c.2008, Triumph Books,
$14.95 each, both: 127 pages

Got change?

If you’re undecided this November, you’ll need it. Heads, you vote for this duo. Tails, you vote for that one. Both candidates hav

Film Review: A 'Porno’ with a sticky touch of sweetness
10/31/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
The extreme opposites within Kevin Smith’s filmmaking personality coexist in “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” to hit-and-miss effect.

Yes, there is a ton of sex as the title would suggest, including one scene that is so incredibly wrong, word

Film Clips
10/31/2008
RocknRolla
For better and for worse, this is a pretty typical Guy Ritchie movie — intentionally convoluted plotting, eccentric underworld characters, hyperstylized editing and, of course, a killer soundtrack. It’s a blast, with wildly sexy visual flourishes that harken to the best of his work — “Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch” — but since the trailers alone make “RocknRol

The Bookworm Sez: A corker of a mystery; the buying impulse, demystified
10/31/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Red Knife
by William Kent Krueger
c.2008, Atria
$25.00, 310 pages

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of something you wish you’d never gotten involved in?

You know how it goes. A problem is presented and you say you’ll help. You’re eager to get to work. You dig in and things go well. Then you’re asked to do more.

And more.

Pretty soon, you

Film Review: 'Role Models’ turn genre upside down
11/07/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
The premise is completely formulaic and potentially cheesy: A couple of go-nowhere buddies get arrested and, for their community work assignment, must serve as big brothers to a pair of misfit kids.

You know from the beginning that many ne

Film Clips
11/07/2008
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
This family drama depicts the Holocaust through the simplistic eyes of a child: all the brutality, all the absurdity, crystallized by the innocence of an 8-year-old boy. The lad is the son of a Nazi commandant, and he befriends a Jewish boy his age who is being held in the concentration camp his father oversees. Sounds mawkish, but the relationship between

The Bookworm Sez: A gripping murder mystery; a geek’s life in D&D
11/07/2008
Terri Schlichenmeyer

In the Night of the Heat
by Blair Underwood, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes
c.2008, Atria
$25.00 / $28.99 Canada, 447 pages

Remember all the dumb stuff you used to do when you were younger?

Remember slipping out the bedroom window for fun, while your parents thought you were asleep? Sneaking into grown-ups-only places? Drag racing down a straightaway,

DP to present gripping 'The Visit'
11/14/2008
“The Visit,” a tragicomedy by Freidrich Durrenmatt, set in a time of high unemployment, shuttered factories, home foreclosures and people mired in debt, mirrors what is going on economically today, although it was originally written in Europe in the mid-1950s.

With the return of a hometown g

The Bookworm Sez: The new First Lady; moms who returned to work
11/14/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Michelle: A Biography
by Liza Mundy
c.2008, Simon & Schuster
$25.00; 217 pages, includes notes

They say that behind every great man is a woman who’s willing to give him a goose in the posterior when he needs it most.

Marc Antony had his Cleopatra. Henry VIII had his Catherine, Kathryn, Katherine, two Annes and a Jane. Harry would have been lost withou

Film Review: 'Quantum’: A Bond with little heft
11/14/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
“Casino Royale” came along just as the James Bond franchise was sinking into a lazy rehash of all that had gone before. It jump-started 007 with its seamless mix of action and emotion, and now “Quantum of Solace” keeps it humming along — in

Film Review: 'Slumdog’: Joy amid the squalo
11/14/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
Despite the exotic nature of its foreign locale — the teeming, impoverished streets of Mumbai, India — “Slumdog Millionaire” is every inch a Danny Boyle film.

The hope within the squalor, the humor within the violence, they’re all thema

Film Review: 'Twilight’: The joyless angst of toothy love
11/21/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
Teenage girls will surely squeal with delight throughout “Twilight,” the feverishly awaited adaptation of the hugely selling vampire novel by Stephenie Meyer.

Just the very sight of the title on the screen inspired piercing screeches o

Film Review: 'Bolt’: Sweet, if neutered, mutt story
11/21/2008
By Christy Lemire
Associated Press
Harmless as a puppy, “Bolt” comes bounding into theaters, stumbling over its big, goofy paws, wagging its fluffy tail and begging to play ball.

It’s sweet and eager to please but, sadly, nothing terribly special: Girl finds dog, girl loses

The Bookworm Sez: Grief and 'Mercy’ in 1690; dishing on Grand Ole Opry
11/21/2008
By Terri Schlichenmeyer

A Mercy
by Toni Morrison
c.2008, Alfred A. Knopf
$23.95, 176 pages

In the natural order of things, parents sacrifice for their children.

If there is hunger, a mother will feed her child and go hungry herself. If it’s raining, a father will be drenched while the child stays sheltered. Parents work long hours to make sure the child has a good education a

Children’s author hits hot streak in cold
11/21/2008
By Jeff Baenen
Associated Press
Kate DiCamillo recalls the first time she pumped gas in 10-degree weather, without gloves.

“I remember sitting in the car, looking at my hands thinking, 'I’ve permanently damaged myself,’” she says.

Spurred by a “pre-midlife crisis,” D