Stephanie Teele is an ethereally beautiful woman. She has ocean blue, almost translucent eyes; gentle features; and a kind, modest face etched deeply with sorrow. As she looks north from a Brickell Avenue skyscraper across the city where her husband — long Miami’s most prominent African-American politician — committed the…
Foodies Call No Lillet? Not fair: Regarding Lee Klein’s story “What’s the Matter with Miami?” (November 24): The ten points he raised about why Miami has never matured into a great restaurant city were right on the button. I would like to contribute an eleventh point for restaurateurs to consider,…
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Empire) Caterina in the Big City (Empire) CSI: Five-Season Pack (Paramount) Death to the Supermodels (Columbia/Tristar) Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (Columbia/Tristar) Empire (Buena Vista) Family Guy: Volume 3 (Fox) Formula 17 (Strand) The Frighteners: Director’s Cut (Universal) The Hives: Tussles in Brussels (Universal Music)…
If Hollywood wants to learn from the videogame industry — which outgrossed the box office last year — it should pay careful attention to Shadow of the Colossus, a game with the epic scale of a summer blockbuster but the emotional heart of an indie flick. Shadow is brought to…
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Fox) The pairing of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, both in real life and on celluloid, is so obvious as to be almost cartoonish. So even though both are better actors than they need to be, they perfectly belong in this goofy, explosiony world. Married assassins,…
THU 12/1 In the American justice system, a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. What happens if a person is sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit? Playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen face the issue of wrongful conviction head-on in their intense drama The Exonerated…
FRI 12/2 When photographer Robert Klemm began sending photographs of his new city to his family in Germany, they were so impressed by his prints of the tropical foliage and Mediterranean architecture they suggested he turn them into a calendar. Instead Klemm published a pictorial book, Landscapes of Coral Gables,…
MON 12/5 In the logo for the Seminole Tribe of Florida JT’s Ping-Pong Smash 2, a contorted caricature of Miami Dolphin All-Pro Jason Taylor shows his left foot angled behind him as the sole of his right sticks out in the forefront. Pretty funny, but also indicative of the importance…
SUN 12/4 Eleven months out of the year, elves don’t get a lot of respect. They jingle down the street in their striped tights and bell-tipped shoes, trying to keep a low profile beneath their pointy hats, but they are constantly picked on by tall bullies. “Hey! Go back to…
Like a scruffy old pirate, glass master Dale Chihuly sports a black eye patch (the result of a near-fatal car accident, not a sword fight), puffy shirts, and the jowls of a French mastiff. Chihuly has the swashbuckling swagger and feistiness down too: He’s currently fighting a copyright lawsuit he’s…
A tale of deception, betrayal, and revenge, this contemporary Greek tragedy — complete with an unwitting Medea — becomes so overwrought in the last act that it’s sure to lose your sympathies. Three likable and fundamentally decent individuals — a Hollywood studio executive, his wife, and a screenwriter whose script…
For those of us who dug Rob McKittrick’s recent comedy Waiting…, Just Friends offers up some good news: Ryan Reynolds and Anna Faris are together again as a dysfunctional couple. He’s a slick music executive named Chris Brander, still traumatized at having gotten the “Let’s just be friends” speech from…
Ask around about who is the next Miami MC to transition from a local talent to a national force, and chances are you’ll hear the name Garcia pop up more often than not. With a battering-ram flow as terse as it is rhythmic, and a sense of street bravado that…
What’s sadder: the fact that the living two-thirds of TLC sound sass-free on their career’s predeath wheeze “I Bet,” or that they’ve fashioned a song out of the incidental music from their UPN reality miss, R U the Girl? All that can be said about the series “winner,” O’so Krispie,…
The reason why the Darkness’s cock-rockin’ shtick still sounds great is that the members are truly talented musicians, as evidenced on the new album One Way Ticket to Hell … and Back. Mere amateurs will not be able to match the title track’s delicious falsetto notes, though millions will try…
Just when it looked like crunk held no more surprises, D4L shows up to yell and grunt over MIDI tracks even more twerpy and minimal than early Depeche Mode. The contradiction is equal parts baffling and intriguing; here’s hoping more interesting rappers try it sometime…
Today’s Cinderellas scrub the floors to the tropical beat of Latin Grammy nominee Bachá, whose duets inspire dreams of princes and brighter futures. Creators of the theme song for Telemundo’s Anita No Te Rajes — a popular soap opera about a poor Mexican immigrant living in Los Angeles — Bachá’s…
Whether he’s repping the Taliban, dubbing himself “human crack in the flesh,” or prefacing one of his many latently homosexual slipups with the transparently insecure caveat “no homo,” Juelz Santana is brilliantly bad. During his second verse from “Mic Check,” Santana sneezes, pauses, and declares, “God blessed me, yes that’s…
Perhaps you have been under a self-imposed no-fun curfew the past eighteen months, or maybe you simply hate anything that isn’t denser than a solid block of frozen steel, but otherwise you probably know and perhaps guiltily love some of the tracks on the new Fabric Live 24 featuring Diplo…
The glossy booklet of stills from countless bizarre Italian films that accompany this two-disc retrospective of Italian soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone only hint at the kaleidoscopic weirdness squirming beneath. With contributions to everything from Fistful of Dollars to Kill Bill (not to mention the 500 Italian titles in between), Morricone…
Bi-continental septet Nous Non Plus scares up sumptuous, blasé cool on its self-titled debut, whipping elements borrowed from the Strokes, Stereolab, and the B-52s into delectable French pastries. And so we get delights like “Lawnmower Boy,” where the band makes like Guitar Wolf on a New Wave kick; the disco…
For a leading indie-rock miserablist, Jamie Stewart possesses one of the heartiest, most boisterous laughs you’re ever likely to hear. The 33-year-old Xiu Xiu (pronounced shoe-shoe) frontman typically converses quietly, in a polite, thoughtful, self-effacing, and a bit pensive manner, and then — when you least expect it — his…
