Daily Loaf

Today marks the beginning of a three-day interactive multi-media art event, 11:11 – Let There Be Light, Art, Sound, a celebration of the creativity that molds our communities and keeps us from falling prey to the everyday tedium of mainstream mediocrity. The star of the event is Alex Grey, who, along with his artist wife Allyson, leads today’s psychedelic/spiritual/visionary/postmodern art movement. Alex’s most well-known works are his glowing “x-ray” paintings of human bodies, which offer detailed, anatomical-style examinations of his subjects’ physical and metaphysical anatomy. On Thursday, Alex stages a reading from his book, Art Psalms. Afterwards, he’s joined Allyson for the first two hours of a six-hour painting demo, which is paired with video projection painting by Johnathan Singer, and live multi-sensory music by Scott and Anne Kennedy. During the Friday night “Alex Grey Gala Event,” Soulful Arts Dance Academy presents a program of moves, Alex and Allyson take four hours to finish their painting demo, and attendees take part in a “Paint Your Plate Dinner” while being treated to a series of Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. John’s stage persona (pictured), “The Night Tripper,” is as big and colorful as the Big Easy — he embodies the culture and heritage of his hometown of New Orleans, and his latest project is a tribute to Duke Ellington and Johnny Mercer. Dr. John and the Lower 911 take the stage with “The Sauce Boss” Bill Wharton. Visit mypalladium.org for more info. Thurs., Nov. 5, 8 p.m., Palladium Theater, $45.

This week’s installment in the Dalí and Beyond Film Series of shocking and surreal cinema is  5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, a live-action Dr. Seuss adaptation about Bart, who hates his piano lessons with Dr. Terwilliker and is dragged to a dream world where his piano professor is ruler and the students become his subjects. Visit salvadordalimuseum.org for more info. Thurs., Nov. 5, 6 p.m., Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, $5 after 5 p.m. Read the rest of this entry »

Submission#4: Chris Dvorscak | My Eckerd: “Party Time, Excellent”

Chris Dvorscak
Eckerd College
Senior, Anthropology (major), Management (minor)
21, Crystal River
My Eckerd is: “A tropical vacation spot.”

Chris is a baseball player, an anthropology major and an underwater archaeologist, so his tour of Eckerd naturally takes us to the ballfield, the dorms (where we learn something about the anthropology of party animals) and the swimming pool.

Video:

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Loyal fans of the influential writer – who is remembered as being the father of the beat generation – are bound to be moved by The End of the Road: An Evening with Jack Kerouac on the 40th Anniversary of his Death, an After Hours Series production at American Stage. The one-man play by Steve A. Rowell and David A. McElroy begins in July 1969, several months before Kerouac died. The audience will get a look into Kerouac’s mind as he neared the end of his life and reflected on the work he created, his life and other events that unfolded during his time. Even the most hardcore Kerouac fans might be surprised at Read the rest of this entry »

Eckerd College’s new exhibit, The Jim Crow Effect: Drinking From the Fountain, includes artifacts from that tension-fraught era in American history. Today, Dr. Cody L. Clark, an artist, musician and collector of Jim Crow memorabilia and Professor Randolph Lightfoot, President of the African American History Museum Board, discuss the importance of the images for understanding the past. (Pictured: memorabilia on display in The Jim Crow Effect) Weds., Oct 14, 3 p.m., on display Oct. 9-16, Eckerd College, 4200 54th Avenue S., St. Petersburg, eckerd.edu/events.

Under the steady baton of conductor Jack Heller, the Tampa Bay Symphony performs selections from the German masters, including Mendelssohn’s “The Beautiful Melusine Overture,” Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 “Eroica,” and French Horn soloist Kurt Klotz offers Strauss’ Horn Concerto No. 1. The symphony visits several locations this week, including: Sun., Oct. 11, 4 p.m., Ferguson Hall, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa; Weds., Oct. 14, 8 p.m., Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Rd., Clearwater; and Fri., Oct. 16, 8 p.m., Mahaffey Theater, 400 Firs St. S., St. Petersburg; $20, tampabaysymphony.com. Read the rest of this entry »

A quick breakdown of this holiday weekend’s most worthy concerts. For a more comprehensive schedule, check out our Upcoming Events page.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24
JJ Grey & Mofro w/Shooter Jennings/Earl Greyhound [pictured] A good ol’ boy from the backwaters of Jacksonville, JJ Grey is the creative force and frontman of Mofro, their music swamp-stomping, finger-licking, funked-out rock ‘n’ roll with a solid R&B groove marked by Grey’s husky soulful drawl. LA alt-country rocker Shooter Jennings (the sole spawn of country singers Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter) just released his first compilation, Bad Magick: The Best of Shooter Jennings and the .357’s, which includes select tracks from his first three studio albums, a few live recordings and a cover of Hank Williams Jr.’s 1976 single, “Living Proof.” And NY’s Earl Greyhound features afro-thrashing bassist/singer Kamara Thomas, who brings charismatic energy to the power trio’s fiery, heavy-handed blues rock. 8 p.m., The Ritz Ybor, Ybor City, $20.

Tom Goss w/Mara Levi Goss is an out-of-the-closet singer-songwriter who abandoned seminary school and impending priesthood to pursue social justice issues and his love of music. His vocals are high and pleasantly emotive, his acoustic pop touching and uplifting. He’s currently touring in support of his 2009 release, Back to Love.  4:30-6:00pm, Eckerd College, St. Petersburg,  free (students only). Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a college student, in case you hadn’t guessed from the headline, and I have recently been wondering what exactly it is I’m paying for with my college expenses. It seems that every corner I round, there’s another expense just lurking in the shadows (or standing right in front of me with a club), but I have yet to decide whether I am actually reaping the benefits of these expenses.

Let me explain:

This semester I took a class with a professor who shall remain nameless who has done literally nothing. He assigned us a book to buy (cha-ching) and basically said “read these chapter, then take this exam,” with a lot of anecdotal teaching in between that served no purpose whatsoever. So, I have paid for the class, I have paid for the book – but what have I gotten in return? A whole lot of stress and no education. Outrageous, I say!

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Happy Earth Day to you, Happy Earth Day to you…. The ED celebrations have been going on for a while now and will continue for many days hence, but listed below are some of the events scheduled for today’s observance (plus some of today’s non-green-themed happenings). For more coverage of green events, visit CL’s new Green Community site.

Eco Fest and Trashy Fashion Show. Largo’s “reduce, reuse, recycle” Earth Day party opens with a green expo and spotlight on “green” designers of all ages. Official participants use a minimum of 75 percent recycled materials, and show off their wearable “green” designs during the runway show that follows. (Above: A fanciful Publix frock from last year’s show.) Wed., April 22, Expo 5 p.m., Fashion Show 7 p.m., Largo Cultural Center, Largo, $7, 727-587-6793. Read the rest of this entry »

Talk about timely. Not only green, but free!

Entering its 11th year, Eckerd College’s Environmental Film Festival may not be the most renowned film festival in the area. However, the festival’s achievements and program lineup remain simply stellar, and its themes more than ever appropriate for our times.

The officially titled Environmental Film Festival ‘Visions of Nature/Voices of Nature’ was started many years ago under the direction of Professor Cathy Griggs as the Native American Film Festival, but expanded years later to focus on environmental issues and all humans’ connection to nature.

Past luminaries have included Victor Nunez (Ulee’s Gold), but this year the festival’s connection to the Sundance Film Festival pays great dividends with  the screening of Dirt! The Movie!, along with an appearance from director Gene Rosow.

(Did I mention the festival is free?)

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Eckerd College’s International Cinema series is back this week with a double feature, loosely tied together around the theme of Asian hit men.

Ashes of Time Redux

The free action starts at 7pm at Eckerd College’s Miller Auditorium. Wong Kar-Wai’s wuxia delight Ashes of Time was redone for the big screen as Ashes of Time Redux and it’s astonishing how gorgeous it looks. As long as you don’t get all obsessed with minor details (like what exactly is going on and who is pining for whom), you will be blown away … this is a must-see on the big screen, playing in a new 35mm print!

At 9pm don’t miss Hiroyuki Tanaka’s inventive, intense and amusing Postman Blues: Sawaki is a postman, bored with his way of life until it all changes when his old schoolmate, who has just joined the Yakuza (Japanese mafia) smuggles a few items into his friend’s bag. Now the police are after him, and a series of coincidences convince them that this seemingly mild-mannered postal worker is a seriously dangerous man.

Warning: if you come to the series you may get hooked and have your Friday nights during the regular school year booked for the next decade. The series has been running for five years now and there are a number of folks who have been there every week for the last several. Come and bring your friends!

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All films in the series are free and open to the public, and screen in the Miller Auditorium of Eckerd College (4200 54th Ave. So., St. Petersburg). Tickets and reservations are not required.

For more information on the International Cinema Series, and to see upcoming films, go to www.eckerd.edu/ic

Questions? Contact the Eckerd College Office of Communications at 727-864-7979 or events@eckerd.edu.

The International Cinema Series is coordinated by me: Nathan Andersen, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Eckerd College.

Voted “Best Local Film Series” by Creative Loafing’s Best of the Bay 2007.

The St. Valentine’s Massacre of Pretty Paul Parsons at Side Splitters Comedy Club is billed as “12 comics and 1 dirty, perverted, ugly old man.” Parsons ain’t pretty (see photo), but this roast by his fellow comedians should offer ample evidence to back up his status as Tampa’s dirtiest old man. Wed. Feb. 11, 8:30 p.m., Side Splitters Comedy Club, 12938 Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, 813-960-1197.

Bill Walker had never even spent the night outdoors when he set out to hike the entire 1,275-mile Appalachian Trail in one season. Earning the nickname Skywalker because of his height (6-11), the middle-aged businessman also amassed a lifetime’s worth of yarns to tell around the campfire. He’ll spin some tonight at a general meeting of the Tampa Bay Sierra Club. Skywalker: Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail, Wed. Feb. 11, 6:30 p.m. social time, 7 p.m. meeting. Children’s Board of Hillsborough County, 1002 E. Palm Ave., Tampa (Ybor City), gated parking behind building. Free admission. Public invited.

And here’s a lecture that sounds like just what the doctor ordered: “A Cure for Money Madness” by “wealth advisor” Spencer Sherman (author of a book by the same name), who promises to help us overcome “distorted childhood perceptions of money.” Like the perception that we don’t have much and we’re even gonna lose that? Ask him that and other questions tonight. Wed. Feb. 11, 6 p.m., Miller Auditorium, Eckerd College.

Every year for the past several, Eckerd College’s “International Cinema” series has been offering up exciting and innovative films from around the world to anyone who wants to show up, most Fridays (7pm) during the regular school year.

Mind Game (plays THIS Friday, Feb. 6, 7pm)

Maybe this is shameless self-promotion, since I run the program, but it is free and open to the public and there are usually some empty seats in the Miller Auditorium that are nearly as comfortable as the couch you’ll need to vacate in order to make it down to south Saint Pete and check out what we have to offer. For the past few weeks, my students and I have been bragging about the great time we were having in Park City at the Sundance Film Festival, so now we’re giving you a chance to see some of the cool things that tend not to play in the local multiplexes. Nearly everything we screen is from a 35mm print (the real thing!), and our theater is very nice – no sticky floors and loud teenagers (unobnoxious teens are of course welcome)!

This week’s film (Fri, Feb. 6, 7pm) is a strange one: a mind-bending and innovative Japanese animation focusing on Nishi, a loser with a crush on his childhood girlfriend, on a psychedelic journey to heaven and back, chased by Yakuza. Mind Game is definitely not for children! Read the rest of this entry »

The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle

The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle

Kaye Breeman

I’ve just left the theater after seeing the Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle, and would go to sleep, however I’m too… well… excited. This film was great, not that “great” even comes close. Odd. Puzzling. Emphatic. Ambiguous. Invigorating. Hilarious. Unique. Well, I guess those are closer. But seriously, at what other time in your life could you feel your stomach churn with empathy, or anything at all for that matter, for a man sitting on his kitchen counter staring into the sink at a little blue fish that has recently exploded out of his butt?! This is one of the many feats that director David Russo accomplishes with this film. You are drawn to investigate emotions, implications, and ideas in a story so far-fetched and unrealistic, and yet are so entirely immersed that you hardly have time to doubt.

The film starts when Dory, a strangely religious man, loses his temper at his cubicle job and subsequently loses his job as well. After a fruitless job search, he falls in with a group of misfits that work at Spiffy Jiffy’s Janitorial Service. Late at night, while blasting heavy metal music over the loud speakers, the team cleans, investigates, and sometimes fornicates in the office building. However, this all gets messy when a product testing company decides to use them as guinea pigs for their new product: cookies that emulate oven freshness by warming in your mouth (because god forbid you actually bake your own cookies!). The cookies have some strange side effects though, including being completely addictive, inducing hallucinations and extreme sodium consumption, and quasi-pregnancies that result in the birth of a small blue fish.

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Sunday’s premiere midnight screening of Black Dynamite had the audience laughing and cheering as its inscrutable tough guy hero saves the world from “the man.”  The film was among the first to be picked up by a distributor at Sundance, when Sony Pictures bought the film for an estimated $2 million after intense overnight negotiations that closed at 6 a.m. following the premiere.  From what I saw, expect the film to be a breakout hit – this is very likely not the last film we’ll see starring Michael Jai White as Black Dynamite.

I met the director (along with editor and incredible music director Adrian Younge) the night before – when nobody knew who he was – while moving in line to see another highly anticipated comedy (Mystery Team). Luckily I had my Flip Video Camcorder in my pocket, as he agreed to answer a few questions on camera. The following clip combines elements of the trailer with parts of that interview:

Created by Scott Sanders and Michael Jai White, Black Dynamite tells the tale of a righteous brother, who’s got kung fu skills and knows just how to please the ladies. Read the rest of this entry »

The film festival is just a few days away and we’re all getting ready. We’ve been reading about and watching some of the independent classics, posting our takes on some of the indie icons and legends, and putting together wishlists of the films we will be sure to catch when we get to Park City, Utah.

Meanwhile, here’s a quick introduction to most of us – shot on a little Flip video camera – that may help those who read these pages to see more than a snapshot of who we are. Below that, I’ve posted some short films that some of the students in this class made during the fall semester as part of my “Film and Philosophy” class. They’re not quite to the level of getting into Sundance – though in all honesty I find some of them more entertaining and thoughtful than some things I’ve seen at major festivals – but at least some of them can truly say they are “independent filmmakers” too.

Here’s a very recent spoof on Steven Soderbergh’s independent classic sex, lies and videotape, made by several of our Sundancers:

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Editor’s Note: Nate Andersen’s Eckerd College film class is preparing for their trip to Sundance, during which they’ll be blogging for Creative Loafing. Former student Ryan Conrath, who’s now in film school, sent them this open letter:

Sundance is for many just an idea. It’s something that looms over countless student productions. It’s a running joke in film school: “When we get into Sundance…” In another sense, it’s also taken very seriously. It was a big deal when a colleague’s film got into Slamdance. The same guy’s movies have even been shown at Harvard and Cannes. But to my knowledge, Sundance still remains for him the elusive beast that it is for thousands upon thousands of expectant students and professionals.

Again, as an idea, Sundance is probably the most powerful force in American film today. It is almost more of a bragging point to say that your movie got into Sundance than it is to say it was optioned by Hollywood. Read the rest of this entry »

I will never be the same person again. Sundance marked a transition in my life, and there is no turning back. I cannot escape the vortex into which I have fallen. I have always liked movies (I rarely ever saw one I did not like) but never realized that they would be my life’s ambition. And that is how Sundance changed my life: It opened my eyes.

I did not try to go star gazing. I did not try to make it into any fashionable parties. I threw away all the bull that goes along with Sundance and got to its essence. I completely immersed myself into each film I saw. So much so that I do not know if I could remember all the films I saw. Some stuck in my mind: a gay zombie movie [Otto, or up with Dead People], a great baseball flick [Sugar], and a documentary outlining the country’s economic collapse [IOUSA] (”hate to say I told you so” comes to mind), but the entire experience changed me. I thought, “wow, not only is this the greatest thing that has come into my life, but I can do it too.” And so it began, my rocky but enthused trip into trying to make films. How will it all turn out? We will see.

Algenis Perez Soto plays a Dominican pitcher in Iowa in "Sugar"

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A girl plays by the rapidly eroding shoreline, in Everything's Cool

Sundance has had a green streak for a long time. It goes deeper than the new line of organic cotton festival wear, and the reliable influx of hybrid vehicles into town for the week. Films like An Inconvenient Truth, Blue Vinyl, Everything’s Cool, The Unforeseen, Who Killed the Electric Car, Fields of Fuel, Flow, Manufactured Landscapse, Up the Yangtze all premiered at Sundance over the last few years and all focus heavily on themes of environmental change and of connections between people and their environments. The festival’s related commitment to Native American stories goes back to its beginnings.

I always pay close attention to such films because of my involvement with Eckerd College’s “Visions of Nature, Voices of Nature,” Environmental Film Festival, that I have co-directed along with its founder Cathy Griggs for the past three years, and that began as a Native American film festival. For several years, we have tried to supplement the February lineup with at least one film that had just shown for the first time at Sundance. Last year it was Up the Yangtze and The Unforeseen (which played Sundance in 2007), and before that we screened Everything’s Cool. It goes beyond documentary. We have also screened fictional feature films from Sundance, films in which place plays a prominent role, such as Chris Eyre’s Edge of America, Jake Mahaffy’s War, and Kevin Wilmott’s CSA: Confederate States of America. (Kevin Wilmott is back again this year, with a western that I discuss below). We’ll see whether we can manage to pull it off again this year.

There are lots to choose from… Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the day, films like Shaft, Foxy Brown and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song styled funkalicious jazzy soundtracks, tough black heroes and heroines and corrupt white cops and politicians. A new genre was born, both celebrating and exploiting black culture, targeting urban African-American audiences with its style and subject matter. Some of the best of these films have become cult favorites, and have influenced new filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, whose Jackie Brown paid explicit homage to the genre he’d grown up on and loved.

Shaft was remade in slick Hollywood style by John Singleton (Boyz ‘n The Hood) in 2000, featuring Samuel Jackson in the title role. But for the original low budget style and campy flair you had to go to the bargain bin DVD versions, until now.

Scott Sanders’ blacksploitation spoof Black Dynamite premieres this year as one of the “Midnight” category films at Sundance. If the trailer below is anything to go by, the funky magic and excitement appears to be back. Black Dynamite looks hilarious and hotter than TNT: Read the rest of this entry »

Tromadancers on Park City, Main Street

Alongside the main festival, several other smaller film festivals have grown up in Park City during Sundance – giving the film lover a wide range of choices for films ranging from no-budget oddities to unique and compelling gems that might otherwise go unseen. Festivals with names like X-dance (extreme sports films), Tromadance (look up Troma films if you really want to know), and Nodance (taken over by Forrest Whittaker in 2002, but currently on hiatus), Roadance (that screens films on the side of a moving truck), Slumdance and Lapdance (you may be starting to see a trend), have come and gone, but the enduring alternative to Sundance has been the Slamdance Film Festival, running since 1995 and getting bigger and better every year. In fact, while Chris Nolan of Batman fame was put on the map when he played Memento at Sundance, it was Slamdance that gave him his first big break, screening his debut film Following in 1999.

Started by a group of filmmakers who, for whatever reason, couldn’t get their films into the increasingly competitive bigger-name fest, it has now become extremely competitive in its own right. One of the unique things about the festival is that in the competition screenings they show only films without prior theatrical distribution and with budgets under $1 million, from first-time feature directors… Read the rest of this entry »

Paper Heart, starring Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi

Sundance announced its lineup for the 2009 festival over the last couple of weeks, and there is much to anticipate. Of course the write-ups on films by the festival programmers are aimed to make each sound utterly remarkable and groundbreaking, but experience teaches that it’s not all good. So it’s always a bit tricky to figure out what will be worth watching.  As they say at the festival: follow the “buzz.”  But it’s not so simple.

I remember that the first year I brought a group to Sundance (in 2003) the biggest excitement surrounded an edgy street-racing film called Quattro Noza, that was billed as “Stan Brakhage meets The Fast and Furious” (apparently the director, Joey Curtis, studied with the late experimental filmmaker at CU-Boulder). Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly every year for the past several years, I’ve taken a group of Eckerd College students to the Sundance Film Festival.  The trip is the culmination of a January term course on American independent film.

This year, we will all be reporters, giving you the inside scoop on the latest information and gossip, describing our adventures and close encounters with fame in Park City, and letting you know which films to watch for and which to avoid.

We don’t exactly have the run of the festival, and we aren’t professional reporters, so you’ll get a unique look at the festival from the point of view of ordinary college students and a philosophy professor (me).

We have, however, been given a special welcome: Read the rest of this entry »

Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author/biologist/theorist/researcher/so-called father of environmentalism Edward O. Wilson (pictured at right and looking very stately) appears at Eckerd College to talk about his new book, The Future of Life, which outlines his plane for saving the Earth’s biological heritage. 7:30 p.m., Fox Hall, free admission.

Heavy intrumental post-rock foursome Pelican performs their heavy, extended jams at Orpheumtonight. Also on the bill are avant experidelic (metal meets classical) Brooklyn sextet Kayo Dot and out-there songwriter Stephen Brodsky provide support sets. 8 p.m., Orpheum, $14.

Beach Theatre hosts a James Bond double feature screening event — 2006’s Casino Royale at 9 p.m. (free) followed by the debut of the latest, Quantum of Solace, at midnight ($7 adults/$5 children, students, seniors, and active military).

Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport presents a Death Penalty Forum with live interactive audience polling. Among the panelists are defense attorneys prosecutors and criminologists, who use their own experiences and expertise to make arguments for or against the death penalty. Dinner is served at 5 p.m. with the panel to follow until 8 p.m., in the Great Hall; free admission.

Multi-instrumentalist Cody Dickinson and bassist Chris Chew (two-thirds of North Mississippi Allstars) have joined fellow Coldwater musicians Kirk Smithhart (guitar/vocals), Ed Cleveland (drums) and Daniel Coburn (vocals/harmonica) bring their Hill Country Revue of blues lickin’ rock to Skipper’s Smokehouse. Uncle John’s Band opens. 8 p.m., $10, Tampa.

See V for Vendetta for free when St. Pete for Peace stages its Wednesday night film presentation. Based on a comic about a futuristic totalitarian Britain, the film follows a meek young woman and her association-by-rescue with a masked revolutionary, who urges his fellow citizens to rise up against tyranny and oppression. 8 p.m., Cafe Bohemia, 937 Central Ave., St. Petersburg.

Spencer Seim of Hella brings his experimental instrumental side project, sBACH, to New World Brewery. Happy Valley, The Tape Delay and Uh-Oh Spades provide support. 9 p.m., $7, 21 and up.

Courtney Martin — a teacher, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body” and an The American Prospect Online politics and gender columnist — presents “Perfect Girls: How a Generation Told ‘You Can Be Anything’ Somehow Heard That They Had to Be Everything.” 7:30 pm, Fox Hall, free admission.

The weekly Wednesday Midday Market kicks off for the fall today. Find fresh produce, tasty eats, plants, flowers and arts and crafts in Williams Park, and enjoy live music. 11 a.m.-2 p.m., Fourth Street N. and First Avennue N., 727-410-5040.