Reviewer grade: B Although the scripting is often nothing to cheer about, writer/director Robert Collector hits an emotional three-pointer or two in “Believe in Me,” a story of girls basketball in Western Oklahoma in the Sixties. The film, based on Harold Keith’s novel “Brief Garland,” tells the fictionalized story of real-life coach Jim Keith, Harold […]
Arts & Culture
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A political appeal to the Finnish Klingon community
A political appeal to the Finnish Klingon community A political appeal to the Finnish Klingon community … Plus, insurance against paper cuts, preferring babies with abnormalities, Egyptian Muslim women’s re-virginization, and more in this week’s News of the Weird. -Democracy in Finland: The Intopii computer firm of Helsinki announced in February that it has installed […]
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Touring the World’s Greatest Slums
Touring the World’s Greatest Slums The Kibera neighborhood in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Dahravi section of Mumbai, India, are two of the planet’s most appalling slums, but residents have recently discovered well-off international visitors roaming their toxic, fetid urban hells as voyeurs on travel agency-arranged tours. “(T)hey want to come and take pictures … tell […]
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Borat: Cultural Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
2006 After seeing “Borat” in theaters, I thought it was one of the five funniest movies I’d ever seen. But at home? Still one of the five funniest movies I’ve ever seen. Fresh off an Oscar nomination, “Borat” still plays like a brave and ballsy (sometimes literally) work of guerilla comedy. Sacha Baron Cohen […]
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The Illusionist
2006Magic gets the girl in this romantic Vienna-set period piece staring Edward Norton as illusionist Eisenheim. Written and directed by Neil Burger (“Interview with the Assassin”), this film is paced and ambient enough to seem truly magical. Eisenheim works his charm to woo Sophie (Jessica Biel), a well-off woman from his childhood, from the […]
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Cocaine Cowboys
2006With the past few years having witnessed a renaissance in socially conscious documentary filmmaking, “Cocaine Cowboys” marches to its own politically incorrect drummer. Director Billy Corben (“Raw Deal”) zeroes in on the cocaine trade that flourished in Miami throughout the late Seventies and early Eighties, an era when that city’s murder rate skyrocketed right along […]
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A California School’s Racial Pep Rallies
A California School’s Racial Pep Rallies Mount Diablo High School (Concord, Calif.) students met in racial groups in February to prepare for upcoming statewide tests, to motivate them to improve their race’s “team” score from the year before. Principal Bev Hansen defended the strategy of dividing whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians, pointing out both its […]
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Muslims Find school Kosher
Muslims Find School Kosher About half the students who attend the Jewish primary school King David, in Birmingham, England, are Muslims, and in fact, their parents work hard to get them in because they so respect the school’s ethos and its halal-like diet. All students learn Hebrew, recite Jewish prayers, and celebrate Israeli independence, but […]
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Snakes on a Plane
2006 If you love this kind of silliness as much as you should, “Snakes on a Plane” is more fun than any of summer 2006’s overproduced blockbusters. Just don’t ask it to make sense. Director David R. Ellis (“Final Destination 2,” “Cellular”) seems to be fashioning a career out of turning highly implausible material […]
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Extras: The Complete First Season
2005 If you wondered about the level of expectation for Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s follow-up to the critically adored “The Office,” it’s right there in the title of a behind-the-scenes featurette: “The Difficult Second Album.” A show doomed to failure before most had even seen it, the choruses of “overrated” were considerable, but somehow, […]