"Getting pretty wild around here," Sidney said. "Young knuckleheads," Jude said. -- from Jervey Tervalon's Living for the City (1998) Today, Joshua Villas is downright boring. A few dudes stand on a second-story balcony of an orange-colored building. Another pair stand near a violet-colored one. A kid drops two trash bags in a Dumpster and [...]
They were laughing, and back-slapping, and eating, and drinking, and watching as souped-up cars, their chrome rims gleaming in the sunlight, cruised down the streets, providing a stark, colorful contrast to the otherwise drab neighborhood. It was May 28, 2006, and about 200 people -- white, black, Hispanic -- had gathered at this annual Westside [...]
When I get pulled over by the police one afternoon while driving down the most notorious stretch of road in Las Vegas with Eric "Picc" Jackson, the man who worked for the devil for 20 years, I know I have nothing to fear. If this had been anytime before March 8, 2001, man, forget it. [...]
Presumably, the person who sent letters to 11 gay-friendly bars in the tight-knit Seattle neighborhood of Capitol Hill threatening to poison patrons with ricin wanted to scare everyone into staying home. It didn’t work. If anything, it proved a boon to business in harsh economic times. Word spread among bar owners, bartenders, promoters, DJs, and [...]
Since boxing is big business in the Silver State, the recent appointment of Reno businessman Theodore Day to the Nevada Athletic Commission by Gov. Kenny Guinn may seem like a smart move. If nothing else, Day is a damn good -- and damn important -- financial wheeler and dealer. In addition to serving as chairman [...]
SO much of commercial culture and the 24-hour news cycle it supports are based on images and certainty. The former lend credence to the latter, rendering our ability to see the truth in both senses of the term impossible without completing an extra-credit assignment. That's why we feel so grateful at the end of the animated movie/documentary hybrid Waltz with Bashir: It celebrates the power and primacy of images while calling into question those who create them.
THE temptation to lavish praise on Clint Eastwood is tough to deny, even when he delivers so bungled a film -- both as director and actor -- as his latest, Gran Torino. No other contemporary filmmaker works as hard as Eastwood at understanding the American character, whether during war (Flags of Our Fathers) or wandering [...]
From the fractured narrative to the torture fetish, writer-director Larry Bishop's jambalaya of soft-core porn and bloody revenge Hell Ride has its producer Quentin Tarantino's gory sneer smeared all over it. Set in the dust-choked glare of the American Southwest, this spare (in terms of length and plot) exploitation flick tracks across the open highway [...]
"IF I GREW UP ON A FARM and was retarded, Bruges might impress me." That's antsy and immature Irish hitman Ray's (Colin Farrell) impression of the gloomy medieval Belgian town he and his older, wiser partner Ken (Brendan Gleeson) have been banished to for unknown reasons by their psychotic boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes). It also [...]
HAS MICHAEL MOORE STARTED AN UNHOLY TREND of inserting personality politics into documentary filmmaking? It's a habit that not only tends to undermine whatever argument he's pushing (if they hate the messenger, they aren't listening to the message) but bastardizes a genre whose tried-and-true tactics work just fine without all the oversized ego obscuring the [...]