Articles by Violet Glaze

56 stories found. Showing page 1 of 3.

Every Slumdog Has Its Day: Our Seventh Annual Kinda Sorta Salute to The Oscars

Film | 2/18/2009 | By Lee Gardner, Violet Glaze, Martin L. Johnson, Joe MacLeod, Bret McCabe

The Dark Knight massively raked in more than $530 million at the box office last year. Thus far, Slumdog Millionaire has emerged as the 2008 awards season's most loved movie. In the former, a bill...[MORE]

The Incident: Was Bill Clinton's Affair With Monica Lewinsky Merely The Weakness of An Inveterate Horndog--or Something Else?

Books | 11/26/2008 | By Violet Glaze

What's wrong with Bill Clinton? How could a successful, popular, shrewd, and intelligent president allow himself to be dragged into a sex scandal so notorious it would forever overshadow all the goo...[MORE]

Working Class Heel: Phillip Norman Charts John Lennon's Lifelong Path to Become a Human Being

Books | 11/12/2008 | By Violet Glaze

There's no way to put this delicately: John Lennon was a jerk. His favorite pastimes were mocking the deaf, blind, and handicapped for laughs, urinating out a window on to a cluster of nuns, cheating ...[MORE]

Meal Cricket: Some Notes On Keeping, Cooking, and Eating Our Six-Legged Friends

Eat Feature | 10/22/2008 | By Violet Glaze

I'm a vegan, but I'm not a very good one. Unlike those lucky ectomorphs who thrive airily on lentils and brown rice, my ravenous, carnivorous muscles send red alerts to my subconscious when I've d...[MORE]

World Builder: Gil Kenan Practically Created An Entire Physical Realm For City of Ember

Film | 10/8/2008 | By Violet Glaze

"In the city of Ember, the sky was always dark," begins the first page of Jeanne DuPrau's 2003 children's dystopic fantasy City of Ember. "The only light came from great flood lamps mounted on the bu...[MORE]

An Interview with Chuck Palahniuk

Film | 10/1/2008 | By Violet Glaze

Victor Mancini, the pathetic narrator of the satirical novel Choke, is desperate to be loved. Usually that means an endless quest for the anesthetizing buzz that comes from sex with strangers, but as ...[MORE]

Open Secret: Closed Caption Comics Creators Gaining Local Notice Just as Some Are Leaving Town

Comics Feature | 9/10/2008 | By Violet Glaze

Half-naked art students with access to a photocopier usually isn't a sign of great things to come, but one shirtless all-nighter in 2004 was the starting point for a big change in homegrown comics p...[MORE]

Off The Road: Arthur Jones Charts The Rocky Life of a Man Who Didn't Always Practice What He Preached

Books | 7/2/2008 | By Violet Glaze

M. Scott Peck's life was difficult. To the millions of people who read his 1978 masterwork The Road Less Traveled, that's no surprise--after all, the self-help book's very first sentence warns that ...[MORE]

Men At Work: African-American Male Exotic Dancers Protect Their Rights in Don't Hate: Strippers Fight The Government

Film | 5/28/2008 | By Violet Glaze

"I remember the first time I went to watch the male dancers," says Upper Marlboro attorney Jim Bell, talking about the conversation that convinced him watching pumped, oiled, and codpieced male exot...[MORE]

Nonconformance Performance: The Fifth Annual Transmodern Festival Pushes Its Everything-Goes Art Out of Its Safe Zones

Art | 4/2/2008 | By Violet Glaze

It's a drizzly Wednesday evening on North Avenue, and aside from a waitress catching a smoke outside Joe Squared and a few tired commuters huddled under a bus shelter outside the Family Dollar, it's...[MORE]

There Will Be Judd: Let Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis Have The Oscars--One Writer/Director/Producer/Smirker Will Settle For Everything Else

Film | 2/20/2008 | By Lee Gardner, Violet Glaze, Bret McCabe, Wendy Ward

Fact: 2007 was a great year for movies. It was such a good year, even the Oscars couldn't mess it up that bad with its nominees. Yes, as with every year there's ample room for armchair head-scratchi...[MORE]

Women of The Years: Forget SI's Vacant Swimsuit Smiles--Here's 20 Babes Whose Babeness Matters

Culture | 2/13/2008 | By Ian Grey, Emily Flake, Violet Glaze, Bret McCabe

Alas, it's that time of year again. February is when Sports Illustrated releases its annual swimsuit issue, replete with the usual oiled-up pimping of site-specific liposuction, freakish genetics, r...[MORE]

Our Corsets, Our Selves: A Journey Through The Local Pinup Revival Scene

Feature | 1/2/2008 | By Violet Glaze

In a suburban basement in Parkville, women are taking off their clothes. They're ducking behind a sheet strung up by the minibar and wriggling out of thongs and elasticized bras, only to clamber qui...[MORE]

Enoch Pratt Free Library's Telephone Reference Service

Q+A | 11/28/2007 | By Violet Glaze

Seven days a week, from 9 a.m. until 11 p.m., librarians at the Enoch Pratt Free Library are working "The Wheel"-a five-platter lazy Susan of almanacs, encyclopedias, and other reference books contain...[MORE]

Simple Twist of Fate: Dylan Miraculously Gave Filmmaker Haynes Rights to Reinvent His Life as Free-Form Cinema

Film | 11/21/2007 | By Violet Glaze

Bob Dylan may have cast himself as the vagabond heir to American poets like Walt Whitman, but a phrase like "I contain multitudes" can't begin to scratch the truth of I'm Not There. Even the title i...[MORE]

Andrew Hershberger and Arnold T. Blumberg

Q+A | 10/31/2007 | By Violet Glaze

If a flesh-eating plague crash-lands in Baltimore any time soon, you'd better have some DVDs handy while barricaded in your basement. But how are you going to know what zombie movies are worth your ...[MORE]

Can't Hardly Wraith: Elkton's Ed Okonowicz Has Turned Ghost Story Collecting Into Historical Storytelling

Arts and Entertainment | 10/31/2007 | By Violet Glaze

Fells Point at 3 a.m. might be plenty scary, but at high noon the neighborhood looks like it's gone back to normal. Storyteller and author Ed Okonowicz knows better, though. Day or night, Baltimore's...[MORE]

Where the Truth Lies: Bruce Brooks' The Moves Make The Man Dares To Take Young Adult Fiction Into The Vagaries Of Young Adult Life

Big Books Feature | 9/26/2007 | By Violet Glaze

I knew Ponyboy was a phony from his very first line: "When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home....[MORE]

Iron Men: Geppi's Museum May Preserve Comic Book Heroes in Amber, But They Don't Need the Help

Comics Feature | 9/12/2007 | By Violet Glaze

The infant Kal-El was born on Krypton, but Superman was born sandwiched between a Chuck Dawson cowboy adventure and a contest advertisement--just another adventure story filling the pages of the Dep...[MORE]

Pall in the Family: Don Diego Ramirez turns a Devastating Personal Journey Into a Gripping Documentary

Film | 9/12/2007 | By Violet Glaze

Don Diego Ramirez doesn't look like a threat to middle-class propriety. Nothing about his beefy build or twinkling eyes or even the thorny tribal tattoo sprawling across the soft underside of his up...[MORE]

56 stories found. Showing page 1 of 3.

140 reviews found. Showing page 1 of 7.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

Book review: by Violet Glaze | 5/4/2005

British journalist Jon Ronson re-emerges from the triumph of his first book, 2002's Them: Adventures With Extremists, a witty and frightening exploration of people sworn to destroy America, with The M...[MORE]

21

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 7/15/2009

21 Blackjack, so they say, is the only casino game you can win without cheating if you've got the kind of calculator brain that can tally a roster of when the choicest cards are most likely to appear....[MORE]

Millions

Event Preview review: by Violet Glaze | 6/10/2009

No zombies, dismemberments, or junkies swimming through sewage. Can this really be a Danny Boyle movie? When a gym bag full of pound notes comes careening from the sky, Damian (Alex Etel), a shy, not-...[MORE]

Sin Nombre

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 4/15/2009

El Smiley (Kristian Ferrer) probably isn't even shaving yet, but there's a zip gun in his hands, and it's pointed at the head of a bound and bleeding man. If he kills this sacrificial offering, he'll ...[MORE]

I Love You, Man

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 3/18/2009

What's the point of a nice Paul Rudd? He started his career as a puppy-dog doormat in romantic comedies such as 1995's Clueless and 1998's The Object of My Affection, as soft and inoffensive as the p...[MORE]

Watchmen

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 3/4/2009

Montage, schmontage. You wanna make a movie the Zack Snyder way? All you need are three speeds—slow, fast, and filler. Slow's for things audiences need to notice, like a man crashing through a pl...[MORE]

Valkyrie

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 12/24/2008

"We have to show the world that not all of us are like him," vows Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) to a crowded room full of his fellow Nazi officers. They've gathered to plot the overthrow...[MORE]

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 12/24/2008

David Fincher loves death and decay. All of his best movies, from Fight Club to Se7en to Zodiac, revel in how the world is falling apart, physically and spiritually--a decrepitude that even extends t...[MORE]

Repo! The Genetic Opera

Event Preview review: by Violet Glaze | 12/17/2008

Scorsese's last great movie (so far) marks the true story of Henry Hill's anti-Horatio Alger progress from small-time mob lackey to architect of the biggest robbery in history (the Lufthansa heist of ...[MORE]

Goodfellas

Event Preview review: by Violet Glaze | 12/17/2008

The Boy In The Striped Pajamas

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 11/19/2008

When young boys in short pants and sweater vests spread their arms like airplane wings and buzz through charming market squares, you can be certain you're watching a movie about World War II. The film...[MORE]

Ballast

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 11/12/2008

James (JimMyron Ross) is barelypast puberty, but there's something ancient about the Egyptian planes of his face peering out from the sheltering hood of a black down jacket. His ancestors might have ...[MORE]

The Duchess

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 10/8/2008

Georgiana (Keira Knightley) is a catch for any suitor. Pretty, vivacious, intelligent, and young, she is exactly the sort of girl the Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes) seeks to make his bride. Watch...[MORE]

Nights In Rodanthe

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 10/1/2008

The stars of Nights in Rodanthe are not Diane Lane and Richard Gere, but an endless cavalcade of desirable things: scented candles, wicker caddies, fine china, and one of a kind driftwood curios--a f...[MORE]

The Rocker

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 8/20/2008

Before the show starts, metal-never-dies drummer Fish (Rainn Wilson) has a little ritual: He gags up a mouthful of vomit into his hand, then eases the chunky puddle into the front pocket of his tourn...[MORE]

The Duchess of Langeais

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 7/23/2008

Armand de Montriveau (Guillaume Depardieu) cuts a dashing figure. Between the careless thatch of blond hair, the broad and epauleted shoulders of his military uniform, and the untrivial scar stretchi...[MORE]

Mamma Mia!

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 7/16/2008

Just as some people like Anne Geddes posters, Nicholas Sparks novels, and imitation bacon bits, some people like ABBA. For the rest of us, baffled by the appeal of its disco-diluted pop and ESOL lyri...[MORE]

The Spiderwick Chronicles

Event Preview review: by Violet Glaze | 7/9/2008

There are two extraordinary performances nestled inside The Spiderwick Chronicles, and singling them out is like realizing Elizabeth Taylor's eyes are really purple--there's plenty else surrounding t...[MORE]

Ladder 49

Event Preview review: by Violet Glaze | 7/2/2008

Jack Morrison (Joaquin Phoenix) is a rookie Baltimore firefighter trapped at the bottom of a flaming warehouse (the empty ADM silo complex in Locust Point). Smashed up in a nasty fall, he can do not...[MORE]

The Counterfeiters (Die Falscher)

Movie review: by Violet Glaze | 3/26/2008

The Holocaust is so monstrous it can't be contained inside any movie, any novel, any museum or memoir. So the only way even to begin to grapple with its hellish macrocosm is to carve out a microcosm-...[MORE]