Results tagged “soi”

I have been suffering from an incredibly huge bout of writer's block lately. That means two things: another one of my fifteen ideas for television shows that "can write themselves" will have to remain unwritten and all of my fans at the Phillyist have been without reading material for too long. So since my wife and Mom steadfastly refuse to read the paper, I thought I just had to get something on the site. Who's ready for some hate!?!?

Penelope is explicitly a modern fairy tale—even to the point of opening with "Once upon a time..." and ending with "...and they lived happily ever after"—about a young woman named Penelope (Christina Ricci), who is cursed. Her family is very old and very rich, and many years ago, a male of their number thought he'd fallen in love with a washerwoman, but ultimately broke his promise to marry her. When the woman subsequently committed suicide, her mother, a witch, put a spell on the family so that the next daughter of their line would be born with the face of a pig. Penelope is that daughter, and the only way she can break the curse is to find true love with one of her own kind. Her mother, Jessica (Catherine O'Hara), is determined to achieve this for her, and so fakes her daughter's death and then locks her away in the family mansion and brings handsome blue-blooded males in one by one, always hoping the next one will be the first to look upon Penelope's face and not run away screaming in terror.

Ever since I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—the wildly imaginative, deeply moving, incredibly insightful sci-fi/romance/drama/comedy with Jim Carrey that came out in 2004—I've been pretty keen to see what else writer-director Michel Gondry can do. I found his next fiction feature film, The Science of Sleep, ultimately unsatisfying, but just as imaginative and affecting as ESotSM. So I was thrilled to hear about Gondry's latest project: Be Kind Rewind. This film—set over the bridge and up the road a piece in Passaic, New Jersey—is about one of those small, privately-owned video rental stores that are still fighting it out against the big chain stores. The shop is called Be Kind Rewind, and it's run by an aging man named Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover). His only employee is Mike (Mos Def), a young man who looks up to him as a kind of father figure. And, in fact, Mr. Fletcher has fatherly feelings for Mike, and tends to keep things from him that he knows will make him unhappy – like the fact that the shop is not doing well, the building has been condemned, and if he doesn't make a lot of money and do a lot of repairs in a very short period of time, it's going to be taken away from him to be demolished and turned into a modern apartment building. Mr. Fletcher tells Mike he's going on a trip and leaves him to take care of the store while he spies on the nearby West Coast Video in the hopes of getting the information he needs to turn his business around. Mike has been given only one hard-and-fast rule while Mr. Fletcher is away: keep Jerry out! Jerry (Jack Black) is Mike's buddy, and the local kook – a paranoid weirdo who works down at the junkyard, and lives there in a small trailer, right by the power plant. He's convinced that his mind is somehow being altered or controlled by the power plant, and so one night he convinces Mike to help him sabotage the place. Mike has second thoughts, but Jerry goes through with it – or at least tries to. Actually, all he succeeds in doing is getting himself electro-magnetized, so that the next time he walks into the video store, he erases all the tapes.

When this Phillyist gets Starbucks, he's one of those guys with the forty-seven part order. You know the ones: Grande non-fat extra hot caramel no foam extra shot latte on the rocks with a twist little bit of oil hold the mayo. There's much to be said about Starbucks, both good and bad. One of the good things that can be said, and it's the thing that leads to those comically long orders, is that Starbucks is one of the only places where you can get exactly what you want.

Meteorologist John Bolaris

Sarah in West Philly

It's that time of year folks, when we all lay down plans for the new year before promptly "forgetting" about them a month later. I'm hoping that making mine public will force me to stick to them... but check back with me in February.

I'm a music guy. I listen to a ton of music, and because of Phillyist, I've been able to hear a lot of great stuff I never would have heard otherwise. But, no matter how much of a music fan you are, there are always some great albums that slip through the cracks and you don't manage to hear, even though you really should. So here are ten albums from 2007 I really should have heard by now, but for some reason haven't. Some are on this list because of critical buzz, while others are based on my own thoughts about the artists. And I pose the question to you, dear readers: Which two or three of these albums should I use my lovely Amazon gift card to buy?

This is my first review of an 1812 Productions play, but I've long been interested in the company. They are, after all, Philadelphia's only all-comedy theatre company. And as much as I love high-brow, intellectual, Great Works of Theatre™, sometimes, I just want to laugh.

Sorry there was no Eagles Diary last week. I turned on the channel the game was supposed to be on, saw a team in a blue-and-yellow get up that a Division Nine college football team wouldn’t wear and assumed that the game got canceled. But anyway, I was wrong. The game took place and the Eagles actually scored 56 points and obliterated the Detroit Lions. So I had high hopes for the Eagles latest square-off against the hated New York Giants. And I was not disappointed. Because the Eagles gave me plenty to rag on. So back by popular demand (or at least by demand of my editors), here is the minute-by-minute account of last night’s Eagles flop.

(Figments, Inc.) (No Future Showtimes)

By Bill Hayes and Pencopal

(Elevator Repair Service) (Future performances)

(Part One) (Elevator Repair Service) (Second half and future showtimes)

to the end of the film.

, and that's still pretty much all I can say. It was one of those shows I really wish I'd had someone with me at: I just really wanted to talk to somebody after the show, but my plus-one had to cancel on me, quite literally at the last minute, so there I was, blown away by a performance and with nobody to talk to about it. So I needed some time to process the show. And let me repeat: wow.

When we told you that Andrew Bird's concert was sold out, boy did we misunderstand what sold out was. At the Fillmore at the TLA, sold out means the girl on your left doesn't have a problem rubbing up against you throughout the night, even though her boyfriend is on the other side. Not sure if he cared; I would have. It means that the girl behind you likes to breathe heavily on your...

CBS 3 Eyewitness News anchor Larry Mendte

Full disclosure: I am a sucker for Parker Posey. There's something about her impish grin and the social ineptitude of her characters that makes me heart everything she's in. So I was psyched to see her in this Zoe Cassavetes film about Nora, an anxiety-riddled 30-ish hotel guest relations expert who has horrible luck with men, until a sexy Parisian comes along and rocks her world. Posey is equal parts funny and vulnerable, and it was great to see her in a role that showed off her acting chops. French actor Melvil Poupaud totally kills it as Julian. He inhabits the role well, oozing that French je ne sais quoi, and it doesn't hurt that the dude is hot. Like "we would've been fine with his scenes if he'd just read the phone book" hot.

Bands I Caught: Fursaxa, Fan of Friends, War on Drugs, King Kong Ding Dong

: No future screenings scheduled

Dear Readers:

Last night, I set my DVR to record at least six different shows and then headed out to the North Star Bar. I was a bit irked that I had to miss Grey's Anatomy, but I knew it was still going to be there when I got home. It seems the rest of Philadelphia didn't want to risk not knowing what happened to Meredith Grey because there was no one at the North Star...

You know that saying…"Philly is the place between NY and DC?” Well, I’m starting to think that maybe it’s true. Waiting in a sea of cotton sweaters and wavy hair at World Live Café, the overdue arrival of Chris Thile and The How to Grow a Band was announced. When the emcee declared the woes of I-95 as being the reason for the late arrival, I assumed that perhaps a treacherous accident or icy conditions were to blame. Thile quickly set things straight. No, the band simply drove by Philly without noticing it.

Dear Philadelphia:

Okay, maybe not really Greek. My version of Greek. Because I'm not Greek. That's a lie, actually: somewhere far down the family tree, there are Greeks on my maternal grandmother's side of the family. But I didn't learn Greek cooking from them. So I just try to replicate and/or improve on Greek food I get in restaurants. I've made this recipe a few times, and I change it every time I do. What you see below is my most recent incarnation.

My last interview was last Friday. It was short and sweet and I thought it went well. And you know what, I bet the interviewer thought it went well, too. So I called her up today to touch base and get some idea of whether or not I should still be searching in Hardcore mode or take it down a notch or two, maybe to Average mode.

As I may have mentioned before, I am currently unemployed. I have probably been this way for, oh, about a month now. I have done a few interviews with a few places, but nothing really interesting until the hospitality industry interview I had last Friday.

I have been recording music on my computer since high school. I've been in and out of bands and writing my own stuff on and off for years. So I'm always in the market for some good audio software.

It got cold last night, so I cleared some space in my kitchen with the intention of making soup, but changed my mind when I opened my fridge and saw all of the corn tortillas I've had in there for a while and really needed to get rid of. So I decided to dip into my special store of Mexican food ingredients. I bring them back from home, whenever I'm in Texas. But I have discovered that Old El Paso Red Enchilada Sauce is available at FreshGrocer (albeit the mild variety only), and once in a while I notice that Trader Joe's is peddling red enchilada sauce of their own. (Unfortunately, any time I want green sauce, I've got to get my mother to ship it.) You're not going to be able to find the good stuff, I fear (even the Mexican grocery stores don't always have it), but you can definitely make passable chilaquiles (essentially, unrolled enchiladas) with the sauces you can find around here. The amount of each ingredient is variable, depending on how much food you want to have. What's important is that the sauce coats the tortillas thoroughly, without making them too soggy. The amounts included below are approximations of what I made last night.