Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Pacino thriller is bloody nonsense

If someone tells you he intends to kill you in exactly 88 minutes, what would you do?

Personally, I’d dash to the nearest police station and hang around for an hour and a half or so.

But not Dr. Jack Gramm. This professor is a forensic psychologist with a lucrative, admirable sideline: He testifies against murderers so they are put away for good. In “88 Minutes,” one such criminal is about to be executed when a fresh victim turns up — trussed and bled the same way the convicted one killed his prey. Did Dr. Jack mess up? Or is there a copycat on the loose? And what’s with the threatening phone caller who promises to end Gramm’s life in, as we said, 88 minutes?

Red herrings and dopey twists fill this homicidal thriller, which apparently sat on a shelf for a while before being released in the U.S.

Al Pacino fans won’t care. In a rare excursion into genre flicks, the master thespian turns Gramm into an unflappable investigator who seems to ignore obvious threats while trusting all the wrong people.

Sloppy writing and incomprehensible exposition dull this macabre excursion. Messy murders punctuate the action, while we wonder who the real villain might be.

Suspects abound. Gramm’s gorgeous assistant (Alicia Witt) seems too good to be true, while one of his prize students (Leelee Sobieski) is too devoted for words. Could it be his secretary (Amy Brenneman), his university colleague (Debra Kara Unger) or maybe his pal on the police force (William Forsythe)?

And there’s the leering but possibly innocent man on death row (Neal McDonough), who never misses a chance to embarrass the man who helped put him away. How does he do it?

It’s fun to wonder, but the solution is such a letdown that you might be disappointed or even angered.

The film is rated R and runs a long 105 minutes.
We grade it a C.
Find more film fun at BobRossMovies.com

Like most of my friends and co-workers, my family and I are feeling the pain of rising gas prices, higher grocery bills and not to forget the utilities constantly going up. I have always been one to clip coupons, sign up for contests, and I shop at the local consignment shops; but now that is not always enough.

We have cut back on going out to dinner, we try to run all the errands we have in the best route possible and we stay in more than we used to. I have mentioned before that if it’s FREE it’s for ME.  Well Tampa Bay area offers a lot of FREE events.

Take a look at the following list I pulled from TBO.com.  Remember, these are just the events that piqued my interest; you may find several more that pique yours!

Remember to stay happy and healthy - we need to get out and have fun, so don’t stay indoors just to save money.  I encourage you to utilize what our city offers and enjoy.

Friday April 25, 2008 will be a good night, there are FREE concerts to go to, one on each side of the bay:

• Q-Fest Classic Rock Concert in Coachman Park, Clearwater. This concert is part of the 55th Annual Clearwater Fun ‘N Sun Festival This part of the event is from 4pm-11pm on Friday and is for all ages. Featuring: Starship starring Mickey Thomas, Rare Earth and Invasion. Admission is free but you can buy reserved seating for $20. You can go to www.myclearwater.com for the entire weekend line up!
• Friday Extra Concert Series in Lowry Park, Tampa. Sun City Swing Band with The Smokers Band will play in the bandshell outside of the Zoo grounds and they begin jamming at 7pm.  Admission is FREE!   I have been to this event when the JGLB has played and what fun! People take blankets, chairs, coolers, food and just have a blast. Make sure to have some bug spray though, summer time in Florida gets a little “creepy.”

Saturday, April 26, 2008 has a lot to offer. I have found FREE events all across the bay:

• Children’s Board 20^th Birthday Party, 1002 E. Palm Ave., Ybor City. My family and I have been to this facility several times working with the foster families of Hillsborough County and have seen some of the work they have done for our community. If you don’t know much about them you should head out for this FREE party. The event runs from 10am until 1pm. There will be a brief program at 10:15am and then the fun begins!   This is all for the children, with face painting, moon walking, balloons, arts & craft activities, and ongoing student performances. You can go to www.childrensboard.org for more information. Don’t forget to visit the Ybor City Fresh Market on your way home.  It will be open until 3pm!
• The Biggest Beach Party Ever, 1507 Bay Palm Blvd, Indian Rocks Beach. Normally you can not truly “party” on the beach, but Indian Rocks has a night set aside for just that! This event runs from 6pm until 11pm.  It’s an evening of beer, wine, and food (cash bar and no coolers allowed). Music will be supplied by DJ Terry Newman and they also plan on having a big bonfire (if weather permits). Sounds like something I would really enjoy! This is a sponsored event and all the proceeds go back to the community through the Rotary Club of Indian Rocks.
• Pops in the Park with the Florida Orchestra, Al Lopez Park, Tampa. The Florida Orchestra will begin at 7:30pm, and there is no listed ending time - it may go all night long!  You can bring coolers, chairs, blankets, and picnic baskets!  Here in Tampa Bay, springtime is the best time to sit outdoors.  Go enjoy the fact that you live in a beautiful community!
• Tampa Theatre’s Traveling Picture Show, River Tower Park in Sulphur Springs. We learned of this event when we visited the Tampa Theatre for the History of Seminole Heights movie debut. The movie will begin at 8pm and will end well, when it’s over! The movie this Saturday is “The Princess Bride” Gates will open at 6pm and you may bring coolers, chairs, blankets, and picnic baskets! They have another movie scheduled for May 17 at Cotanchobee Park in Downtown Tampa, for all the info go to www.tampatheatre.org

After all this you will need to rest on Sunday, or like my house will be… More Spring Cleaning!

Get out and have fun!

Jackie-Jet show filled out with mumbo-jumbo and splashy effects

A fantasy-adventure-comedy geared for mass audiences, “The Forbidden Kingdom” is a sort of kung-foolish paella, with a little of everything thrown in so that everyone can find something to like.

For kung-fu fanatics, there’s the first-ever pairing of legends Jet Li and Jackie Chan. For youngsters, there’s a teen heartthrob (20-year-old Michael Angarano). And the script borrows from all over: “The Wizard of Oz,” “Crouching Tiger” and “The Karate Kid” come easily to mind.

A pleasant pastiche from family-friendly director Rob Minkoff (”Stuart Little,” “The Lion King”) and writer John Fusco (”Hidalgo,” “Young Guns”), “The Forbidden Kingdom” relies on all manner of made-up prophecies, myths and magic spells to get its young hero from modern America to ancient China and into a movie’s worth of trouble. The portal to the past is the armed robbery of an old shopkeeper (yes, that’s Chan in heavy makeup). Somehow, our young hero finds himself whooshed into the past, where he encounters a drunken master (Chan again) and a whole raft of evil tidings. We particularly liked the whip-wielding wicked witch Ni Chang (Bingbing Li).This film’s universe is one of mystic transformations, of warriors turned to stone (and back again) and epic, special-effects confrontations.

But the highlight is human. That’s when Chan’s drunken master confronts Li’s Monkey King. Watching these two old pros go at it is indeed a treat — one that makes the rest of this lightweight epic more tolerable.

The film is rated PG-13 and runs 113 minutes.
We give it a B-.
Find more reviews at BobRossMovies.com

Stones, Scorsese team up for Imaximum exposure.

Shine a Light: We love the Rolling Stones, as much for their longevity as for the great albums they made in the ’60s and ’70s.

The material never seems stale in this startlingly close-up concert film from director Martin Scorsese. He’s a Stones fan, too, as anyone who knows “Mean Streets” or “GoodFellas” can tell. Now in their 60s, Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ronnie haven’t lost a lick of stage presence or musical power. Scorsese’s cameras get right in the guys’ wrinkled but joyous faces, and you really ought to catch this flick on an Imax screen, both for the visual detail and the kick-ass sound system.

If you aren’t a fan, you probably shouldn’t bother. If you are, this is a guaranteed delight, a mix of hits and surprises that never lets up.

We give it a B+

More movies, movies, and movies at bobrossmovies.com

On Thursday evening, wifey and I were part of a sold out crowd at Tampa Theater that watched the World Premiere of Seminole Heights:  An Intimate Look at the Early Years, a documentary with a self-explanatory name.  The movie was preceded by another Cigar City Pictures film, Ybor City:  A Passage in Time

On Saturday evening, fantastic local filmmakers Pete and Paul Guzzo are debuted a part of The Ghosts of Ybor.  The documentary about Tampa mobster Charlie Wall will be shown at HCC Performing Arts Building as part of the Ybor Festival of the Moving Image.  That show sold out, too.

This coming weekend, Hillsborough Community College will put on performances of  Anna in the Tropics (not to be confused with a recent production at a different HCC).  The Pulitzer Prize winning play is set in a 1920’s Ybor City cigar factory, where it’s owners, the factory workers, and the lector (reader) are involved with each other on multiple levels.  Great play, and great local angle, too.

Meanwhile, the St. Pete Times ran two stories related to local history last week.  Lane DeGregory reminds us that Panfilo de Narvaez landed in St. Pete 480 years ago (April 15, 1528), and Jared Leone decided to figure out just who that Dale Mabry fella was.

For those of you who are looking for a DVD version of the Seminole Heights documentary, you can find one at Sherry’s YesterDaze, 5207 N. Florida Af., or at Tampa Antiquarian Books, 6116 N Central Av., both in Tampa.  Cigar City’s Ybor City documentary can be purchased at the Ybor City Museum.

The Ghosts of Ybor will be playing in various venues and film festivals over the next year or so, and we’ll let you know when a DVD becomes available.

An “Island” only young children can love

Nim’s Island: Oh, Lord, please make Abigail Breslin grow up before she has another chance to play an insufferably precocious, spoiled child.

After her splendid, unaffected work in “Little Miss Sunshine,” she did the cloying, cute-kid bit in “Definitely, Maybe” and now she’s starring in a juvenile fantasy-adventure that insults the intelligence of even its youngest potential patrons.

Breslin plays Nim, the spoiled daughter of a widowed marine biologist (Gerard Butler of “300″ fame). These two live on one of those impossibly well-appointed uncharted islands, where their house is an exotic treetop structure and the food is as friendly as the local creatures. A pelican and sea lion are Nim’s best friends, and when her dad is missing while off on a scientific study, Nim is understandably worried.

This is the kind of movie where a sudden storm can tear up the house but in the next scene all is dry and tidy. It’s a fairy tale for adventurous little girls — girls so young that they won’t look for logic and they’ll be surprised by the most obvious of twists.

My question is this: What is Jodie Foster doing in this simplistic tale? She plays Nim’s favorite novelist, creator of a grand action hero (also portrayed by Butler) whose character is the exact opposite of his author. The writer, we soon learn, is an agoraphobic weirdo who never goes out. But of course she winds up headed for Nim’s island before the story slogs to its finish. This one’s fine for the very youngest (it’s rated PG), but grownups will find their patience strained.

It gets a C-.

As always, find lots of movie reviews by Bob Ross at bobrossmovies.com

Prison-camp drama raises tough questions about actual event.

The Counterfeiters: Just when you think you’ve seen every Holocaust story possible, along comes “The Counterfeiters,” this year’s Oscar-winning foreign-language film.

Yes, it’s in German and set largely in a concentration camp, but this drama — based on the memoir of a Jewish survivor — raises issues that the other World War II stories don’t. That’s because instead of pure black-and-white good-and-evil, we get disturbing shades of gray.

Specifically, we get a cynical, selfish forger named Salomon (Karl Markovics) who gets caught and imprisoned — and then gets a better deal from his captors when he agrees to help the Nazis attack the Allies in a unique fashion.

The German commanders think they can destroy the English and American economies if they can flood both lands with fake currency. Salomon becomes a sort of captive team leader, with his crew getting special privileges — you know, like edible food — and we get to see how an ill-equipped genius can improvise clever counterfeits. But one of the fellow prisoners tries to sabotage the effort: He would rather be hanged than help the Nazis get ahead in a war they are losing (this part of the story is set in 1944-45).

Is he right? What would you do? It’s the sort of question that explains the film’s Oscar and makes the movie more than just another atrocity tale.

We give it a B+

As always, find lots of movie reviews by Bob Ross at bobrossmovies.com

Attention Local History Geeks!!!

Tonight at 730, The Tampa Theatre and
OSHNA [Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association] presents SEMINOLE HEIGHTS: An Intimate Look at the Early Years:

THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 2008 7:30 PM [DOORS 6:30]
GENERAL ADMISSION ~ $5
FREE ADMISSION for anyone who lived in Seminole Heights before 1945. These free tickets will be available at the box office on the evening of the event.

Discover Seminole Heights’ part in the Civil War. See the development of the neighborhood in the early decades of the 20th Century. Hear tales of growing up during the Great Depression when material goods were scarce, but the abundance of backyard vegetable gardens and warm camaraderie kept bellies full and spirits high. Co-sponsored by Eric Krause Designs and Quillian Craftsman, the film is written, directed and filmed by award winning film makers Gene and Krissy Howes of Cigar City Pictures, Seminole Heights residents.

The documentary was filmed last year, and includes stories from long time residents, historians, and other aficionados.

Check the OSHNA website for more info, see Creative Loafing for a preview, and visit Cigar City Pictures for their information. Wifey and her local history geek hubby (that’s me!) will be at the show tonight - make sure you say hello.