Arts & Culture

  2006 Nearly 50 years since her radiant smile and razor-sharp bangs last graced a girlie mag, Bettie Page still holds an inexorable mystique over popular culture. Her “naughty but nice” persona “? the Fifties pin”?up queen was as comfortable projecting sunny sexiness as she was posing in bondage garb “? is at the heart […]

  2005 Billed as Singapore’s first “homegrown” horror movie, “The Maid” is an intriguing blend of ghost movie staples with superior acting and a fascinating background which will be unknown to most Western viewers. A pretty Filipina (Alessandra de Rossi) arrives in Singapore on the first day of the seventh month of the Chinese calendar, […]

2006 Amid the journey from rap and hip-hop to the red carpet and Hollywood, one of the more promising personalities to make the switch is Tip Harris, better known in music circles as T.I. The Atlanta rapper stars in “ATL,” an engaging coming-of-age picture that successfully manages to rejuvenate a shopworn formula.   Harris plays […]

Relapse Most would only recognize the gawky Brian Posehn from his work on TV’s “Just Shoot Me,” a fact the comedian readily acknowledges. Lumping him in with other sitcom schlubs does his sly, patiently observational humor a disservice, particularly when you consider his membership in the cracked fraternity of “Mr. Show” and “The Comedians of […]

  2006 Perhaps my biggest complaint about the Wachowski brothers-scripted “V for Vendetta” is that it reduces the ideas of rebellion and terrorism to prosaic speeches, delivered just before punching the detonator; passionate concepts about change are espoused but they’re empty theatrics “? you’re not incited to do much beyond crunch some more popcorn. It’s […]

  2005 Nihilism, not rebellion, tended to guide the punk rock that exploded on the West Coast in the Eighties. But three guys from San Pedro, Calif., had something different in mind. Forming a band called the Minutemen, the trio of D. Boon, Mike Watt and George Hurley cranked out angular art-punk stuffed with tasty […]

2006 Forget Blu-ray or HD DVD “? the most staggering digital images I’ve yet seen this year originated over 100 years ago. Thought to be lost to the ages, the astonishing recovery of footage shot by pioneering English filmmakers Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon has been described as the cinematic equivalent of discovering Tutankhamen’s tomb. […]