2007 Ten legendary (well, mostly) horror directors are given their due in “The Fearmakers Collection,” a three-disc documentary set from Elite Entertainment. The package is a bit misleading in promoting the 10 docs as “full-length,” since each runs just under half an hour, but that still amounts to a lot of bang for the buck. […]
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Posted inArts & Culture
Deliver Us from Evil
2006 “Deliver Us from Evil” might sound like a schlocky horror flick, but this 2006 Oscar-nominated documentary actually wades through realities far scarier than any B-movie. Director Amy Berg examines the Catholic priest sex scandal by zeroing in on disturbing saga of one pedophile priest, Father Oliver O’Grady. A serial predator whose youngest victim […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Ironies
So many U.S. executives want to visit India to make deals to outsource their companies’ jobs that in March, India’s Washington, D.C., embassy said it was forced to outsource the job of processing the executives’ visa applications. Yet another U.S. job was outsourced to India in May, that of “local government reporter” covering city hall […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Litigious Society
In lawsuit-friendly Madison County, Ill. (termed “the promised land” by some trial lawyers), a judge awarded $311,700 to Amanda Verett for a long series of painful injuries that her courtroom-veteran chiropractor has been treating. Verett said she was holding a door open at a Pizza Hut when an employee yanked it open farther, and calamitous […]
Posted inMusic
Fountains of Wayne
Traffic and Weather Virgin In the fourth and latest offering from the Fountains of Wayne, the band doles out more of the amusing storytelling and blimp-sized hooks that have made them America’s reigning deities of power-pop. And yet the approach is starting to wear thin. It starts out promising enough. “Someone to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Valet
Reviewer’s grade: B Francis Veber, the French writer/director who wrote “La Cage aux Folles” nearly 30 years ago, has sent us a new farce, this time about a parking valet who is hired by a billionaire to pretend to be the boyfriend of the rich guy’s mistress so the rich guy’s wife won’t find out […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Shut Up and Ride
Reviewer’s grade: B A documentary about the eight seconds that separate “the cream from the crap,” “Shut Up and Ride” follows four men chasing bull-riding glory to the world finals in Oklahoma City. Jamie Davis battles a broken leg, Danell Tipton is only 19, Dale Stowe drags his family along on the small-town rodeo […]
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‘The King and I’ plays in Edmond
Since its Broadway debut in 1951, “The King and I” has been an enduring hit, and songs like “I Whistle a Happy Tune,” “Hello, Young Lovers,” and “Something Wonderful” have become toe-tappingly familiar. In Summerstock Productions’ staging of the musical in Edmond, Billie Thrash directs and choreographs her sprawling cast with a sure hand and […]
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OKC Arts Spectacular raising funds for art education
A score of artists, musicians, students and community members will ply their skills for the sake of improving arts education for Oklahoma City Public Schools students Sunday at Stage Center. The eighth annual OKC Arts Spectacular features songwriter Jimmy Webb, Ballet Oklahoma, Lyric Academy and other acts. It’s an “entertaining” evening, said Ann McNellis, communications coordinator […]
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The Fountain
2006 Darren Aronofsky’s “The Fountain” is one of those movies that predictably went nowhere upon initial release, yet whose rep only will strengthen over time. In jumping between three time periods and exuding a trippy, Zen vibe that makes “2001” look lucid by comparison, the film seems as if it were designed deliberately not to […]