Orbitals
Sore Loser, Part I Instead of relying on the whose-name-sounds-like-a-judge's method of selection, which we suspect many voters use in low-profile judicial elections, the sniping between incumbent Cheryl Arena and challenger Anthony Arena earned them news coverage and actual name recognition. Unfortunately for Arena, most voters recognized the Tampa lawyer as the person they wouldn't…
A Brief History of Banned Music
http://ericnuzum.com/banned/index.html I was listening to the radio the other day while some yahoo went off the deep end about the supposedly satanic messages in Harry Potter books. (The writer would like to state no opinion on the positive or detrimental value such satanic messages would have on the youth of the world. She would, however,…
More Independents on Parade
By the time you read this, it may already be too late to catch the Education Channel's Best of the Ninth Annual Independents Film Festival. The evening of screenings and awards takes place at Tampa Theatre on Sept. 19, but since this edition of Weekly Planet won't even hit the stands in many neighborhoods until…
Four on the Floor: Dillinger Four
To their more attentive fans, Minneapolis’ punk ’n’ roll quartet Dillinger Four is a maverick outfit that manages to combine passion, melody, brute force, integrity, intellect and humor like few groups ever have. To a ton of pedestrian underground scenesters, on the other hand, they’re that band with the long, witty song titles and the…
Outtakes
24 Hour Party People (NR) One of the better rock 'n' roll movies of the last few decades, and certainly the definitive film about the Manchester music scene of the punk and post-punk era (actually, it's the only one). 24 Hour Party People is a sly, self-mocking ball of pomo energy that should be as…
Crime and Precedence
A pointed, well-made documentary, Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election reveals no surprises, no smoking guns, but does provide a disturbing look at an election marred by suspicious irregularities. Filmmakers Richard Ray Perez and Joan Sekler set out to examine modern America's most controversial political contest, and trace the battle for the presidency in Florida, making…
Juice Injunctions, Part I
Back during Prohibition in the 1920s, Americans were forced to pay homage to seedy, toothless bootleggers to get a buzz. When Prohibition ended, the regulation of all alcohol fell into the states' laps. Some states — Georgia, Florida, and South and North Carolina included — established a complicated patchwork of liquor laws, known as the…
Books
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer Houghton Mifflin Co./$24 The cover of Jonathan Safran Foer's debut novel, Everything is Illuminated, is striking. One side of the dust jacket is black with the novel's title in white letters. The other side is exactly the opposite (white background, black print) and upside down. Foer has effectively…
Cover
Weekly Planet Best of the Bay 2002 Hello, loyal subjects. Herewith is the best stuff in the Tampa Bay area. We're dealing out a royal flush of food and drink, goods and services, arts and entertainment, people, news, media and more. This year, we've plucked a few Best of the Bay winners to give the…
Sudan Impact
The story begins in 1875, at a time when the British Empire and its armies occupied a full quarter of the planet. That inescapable fact is implicit in all of the many versions of The Four Feathers, but Kapur's movie brings the problematic colonialist aspect right up to the surface, where it's rubbed repeatedly in…
