Have you ever eaten at a restaurant where a new convert to healthy eating plunks an unadorned ear of corn on your plate, raving about how much more flavorful it is without the distraction of all that melted butter? Well, I have, and it’s not a place I want to…
The sign, written in marker on a dry-erase board, leans against the remaining window of Sweat Records’ store at NE Second Avenue and 23rd Street. “Dear friends and customers,” it reads. “As you can see, Sweat Records got pretty messed up by Wilma….” And you can see: Weeks after the…
Sage on Fifth opened in South Beach at the intersection of Washington Avenue and Fifth Street in August 2004, two weeks before Hurricane Frances blustered across Florida. Although the restaurant withstood the winds and rain, it couldn’t endure customer indifference and was soon boarded up for good. Fratelli La Bufala…
Joan Didion’s essays about the culture of the Sixties in Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album helped define what’s now widely known as literary journalism. She also showed how the personal and political can be wed in ways that transcend the famous feminist platitude. Her latest effort, however, is…
THU 17 Here’s a fun fact about In Her Shoes, the recent bittersweet flick starring Cameron Diaz and Toni Colette: In a pivotal scene at the Italian Market, Colette is being followed by her character’s creator. Jennifer Weiner, the novel’s author, makes a silent surprise cameo. The way her career’s…
SUN 11/20 As a young, hip opera star, Laurie Rubin must surely be a fan of Cake’s “Opera Singer,” and we agree she “sing[s] what can’t be said.” The spunky mezzo-soprano vocalizes in eight languages, and owing to amaurosis, a rare congenital disease that dissolves the retina, Rubin is also…
You could stay home and read comics all day, but you should really leave your cave and enjoy a dash of culture with your cartoons. “Art in the ‘Toon Age” opens today at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood (1650 Harrison St., Hollywood). On loan from Michigan State University’s…
FRI 11/18 Rrrrrrrace fans! Are you ready for high-speed action and pure NASCAR satisfaction? The 2005 Ford Championship Weekend is finally here, and although we’re bummed that the Ford 400 is sold out, you can still score tickets to today’s Craftsman Truck Series Ford 200 (gates open at 8:00; tickets…
SAT 11/19 While the memory of living without electricity is still fresh in your mind, take a moment to talk to a few Florida pioneers and Seminole Indians to see how life was when light and climate control were generated by flint and tinder. At Harvest, the Historical Museum of…
Elaine Lancaster’s arrival in Miami was hardly the auspicious event she’d hoped for. “I moved here on July 15, 1997, to work for the Versace family. Unfortunately that was the day Gianni was murdered. It was heartbreaking,” says the statuesque queen, who, despite the tragedy, decided to give Miami the…
We popcorn-chomping hitchhikers never know who will pick us up on the roadside. In Flirting with Disaster, it was a neurotic Manhattan adoptee on a nationwide search for his biological parents. The desert-parched heroines of Thelma & Louise brought us along as they raised hell en route to their doom…
You’d think that anyone possessed of the notion that “the Jews” are one monolithic whole that thinks and acts alike need only take a look at, say, wrestler Bill Goldberg, Hollywood hottie Natalie Portman, shock jock Howard Stern, and nebbishy right-wing scold Michael Medved to have that idea instantly dispelled…
Richard Gere? That’s the first thought that came to mind upon learning that Mr. Salt-and-Pepper-Sexy-Buddhist-WASP had been cast as Saul Naumann in Bee Season, the film version of Myla Goldberg’s best-selling novel. In the book, Saul is an oppressive and learned Jewish patriarch, a cantor and student of mysticism whose…
The nasty French villain in Mikael Håfstrom’s thriller, played with obvious relish by Vincent Cassel, is the best thing about this neo-noir rehash of everything from Double Indemnity to Cape Fear to Fatal Attraction. Whether squeezing his victim’s testicles into a knot or exchanging ironic banter with a henchman, Cassel’s…
About halfway through Get Rich or Die Tryin’, the new movie starring rapper 50 Cent (a.k.a. Curtis Jackson) and loosely based on his life, 50’s character Marcus is in prison, being visited by his girlfriend Charlene (Joy Bryant). Surprised by his inability to communicate with her, she asks the gangsta…
The part with the dragon is really cool. Might as well cut to the chase, right? It’s not as though you need anybody to tell you the basic premise of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; if you somehow missed the last three, this won’t likely be the one…
Life is more than poppin’ bubbly, clockin’ on the corner, or even riding on dubs. Life is gray days you can’t put on a billboard, capture in a video, or corral into a four-second hook. And since the sudden seclusion of Lauryn Hill, you’ve been hard-pressed to find this side…
Leslie Hall is the reigning female geek of 2005. A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the 23-year-old rapper is riding the crest of a dork-chic phenomenon that began with Napoleon Dynamite and will inevitably end with an entirely new generation of system administrators. And…
Brazilian composer and saxophonist Livio Tragtenberg has reassembled his Nervous City Orchestra and is set to take Miami audiences on a second trip around the world. And though Nervous City may ostensibly be dubbed world music — for lack of a better description — Tragtenberg’s project has more in common…
Ninja High School shoots for a middle ground between pop culture’s flash and trash and agitprop’s polemical slash and burn. The arty rap/rock band from Toronto hoists Eighties synth squeak, early No Wave sax noodling, and booty-bouncing Miami bass beats atop rapid-fire lyrical rants laced with politics, wicked humor, and…
In what will inevitably go down as one of 2005’s most unlikely collaborations, Irish songstress Sinéad O’Connor teamed up with legendary Jamaican reggae producers/musicians Sly and Robbie to make Throw Down Your Arms, O’Connor’s new album and her first release since she announced she was quitting the music business for…
The debut album from viola player and disco-dork-cum-regular-dork Kelley Polar, Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens, is a letter of acceptance to all who cut loose on the dance floor but probably shouldn’t. See, Polar is the quintessential outsider (he was kicked out of Juilliard), and Gardens’ charm is paradoxical…
