Steve Cassell, assistant director of Traffic and Engineering for the city of Augusta, has been bringing art to the streets of Richmond County. The 23 painted traffic signal cabinets, aka boxes, throughout Richmond County were his brainchild, intended both as a means of bringing art to the public and creating beauty in unexpected places. “Steve’s […]
The evolution of the Melissa McCarthy comedy has stumbled ahead somewhat with “Spy,” a spook spoof in which the joke, for once, is not that McCarthy is a bumbling lout (see: “Tammy”), but rather than she’s secretly, perhaps even to her, incredibly good at her job. In this case she’s at the CIA, running support […]
What disaster highlight reel “San Andreas” lacks in wit or originality, it makes up for in scale. You could have made an entire action flick that climaxes with the Hoover Dam getting smashed up and washed away — that’s a legit catastrophe-spectacle. Instead, in “San Andreas,” that all-world disaster is just the amuse-bouche. A couple […]
When Disney sets out to retrofit a movie franchise against an existing, storyless section of it theme parks, you’d have to assume the worst — notwithstanding the vein of gold it struck with the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise. Now we get “Tomorrowland,” which despite having such reliable hands on deck as George Clooney and […]
Till now, movies have simply been going through the motions — frame, shot, action, cut, edits, whatever. All movies have been exposed as the milquetoast hackwork they are by the movie literally to end all movies, “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Cineplexes have yet to pull other films to make way for “Fury Road,” but we […]
Does location matter when it comes to finding great food? I don’t think so. In fact, two of my idols — Alton Brown and Anthony Bourdain — have built their TV careers out of seeking hidden gems in the most remote regions of our country. Heading to Sam’s Hot Dog Stand in Martinez made me […]
Knowing nothing more about “The D Train,” Jack Black’s new dark comedy, than what its trailer shows, you wouldn’t even get much of a sense that it is, in fact, dark. Black plays Dan Landsman, a hometown Pittsburgher who forgot to form a single ambition in life, who has made himself the tinpot dictator of […]
Casually elegant in concept and spookily claustrophobic in execution, “Ex Machina” plops us into the near future, when a hermit genius has devised a foxy android capable of convincing even the audience that she’s got a thing for nerds. A coder named Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) finds that he’s won some kind of company lottery at […]
The central conceit of “Unfriended,” the latest cheapo horror flick to sate you till summer blockbusters arrive, is also its motivating gimmick. Six teenagers gather online (mostly via Skype, iMessage and Facebook) and notice a strange anonymous character in the video chat room with them. Coincidentally, they’re all making plans together on the anniversary of […]