“Clerks II” is an intensely amiable shambles of a movie from cinematic novelty act Kevin Smith (“Chasing Amy,” “Mallrats”).  It knows how to waste time and show people wasting time but it’s a little lost when it comes to its sentimental notecard-sized plot.  But the moment it clicked for me is when the two best friends (Brian O’Halloran and Jeff ( Read more... )

It’s ironic that I saw “Saraband” on Mozart’s 250th birthday. Mozart, by all accounts, was a fun-loving, giddy Catholic boy who liked carousing (lest we think of Catholicism as all dour monasticism and the word that’s always supposed to come after “repressed,” remember this is the religion that dreamed up Mardi Gras, New Orleans, and Colin Farrell ( Read more... )