Long Live the Blues

Sylvia Plath described it as being trapped in a jar with no good air; for David Foster Wallace, it was like every cell in his body felt as sick as a nauseated stomach. Things didn’t end well for either of them. But that’s depression; this is the blues. The blues…

Winter of Their Discontent

It’s the year 2014. No one is flying around with jet packs, but World War III is ripping a bloody path through South America. Forget the looming threats of North Korea and Iran; it’s Chile and Peru that have come to fisticuffs. When we join the cast of Diciembre, Brazilian…

Miami International Film Festival Announces This Year’s Films

The Miami International Film Festival (MIFF) has announced its program of films even though you, the general public, won’t be able to buy tickets until February 19. As usual, the ten-day festival has a strong Ibero-American focus, featuring many big-screen creations from Spain, Portugal, and Latin America. The program of…

Around Town This Weekend: Real Rodeos and Fake Elvises

Yes, that’s right. Weekend’s here. Time to drink so much you forget Monday is a mere 48 hours away. We kid! Put down the bottle and go out and get cultured.FridayYou won’t see this too often: The freakin’ rodeo is in town until Sunday. over to the Homestead Championship Rodeo…

Soft Cell Gets Softer

A French bossa nova band covering ’80s Brit New Wave hits, Nouvelle Vague has a sound that touches on something cinematic. Picture Jason Schwartzman entering stage left to the band’s woozy version of Modern English’s “I Melt With You” as his character taps into a sentimentality that’s been muted over…

A Taste of Artopian Decadence

Costumed, gyrating girls; acrobatic stilt dancing; a dizzying orbit of live music and performance art. It might feel like you woke up in Eyes Wide Shut, but it’s actually a steampunk-style Venetian carnival called Artopia. Presented by New Times and the Miami International Film Festival at the Freedom Tower (600…

Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah

At first, they did it behind closed doors. It was the baile funk of 19th-century Spain, a suggestive dance borne out of the clashing of cultures. Old World Europe thought flamenco’s racy, rhythmic handclapping, foot stomping, and hip twirling was just a bawdy contribution from those bastard Gypsies. In reality,…

Grove Is in the Art

Coconut Grove is not the sort of place that throws county fairs, where prize livestock gets weighed in and carnies send children on high-velocity amusement rides. Instead, the neighborhood has quirky haps such as a drunken bed race and the King Mango Strut parody parade, not to mention the Bahamian-themed…

Old Dog, New Tricks

Imagine always having your projects compared to The Godfather; it can’t be easy for Francis Ford Coppola to have himself to beat. His recent attempt at filmmaking, Youth Without Youth, fell flat, but there are rumors his latest production, Tetro, hints at Coppola’s genius while recapturing the freshness of a…

Do the Right Thing

Considering his 1915 film The Birth of a Nation is still used as a recruiting tool for the Ku Klux Klan, it’s no wonder that D. W. Griffith tried to redeem himself by making a film about the consequences of bigotry. The resulting work, Intolerance, presents four key moments in…

O.M.D.

Perhaps you don’t have a Valentine this year. Perhaps you’d rather pledge your love and devotion to the characters on the big screen; they never broke up with you via text message. With the money you’ll save on not buying someone flowers, you can get a ticket for the New…

Liberty City Filmmaker Barry Jenkins Interviewed on PBS

Miami-born filmmaker Barry Jenkins has been featured on PBS for his 2008 film Medicine for Melancholy, which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival, screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and at Miami’s own Borscht Film Festival. Although the film is based in San Francisco, Jenkins grew up in Miami’s…

Miami Free Times

We hereby declare that being strapped for cash is no longer a valid excuse for staying home and missing out on all your city’s cultural offerings. You can see a movie, catch an art show or two, or perhaps even have a chance to rub hair poofs with the cast…

Around Town This Weekend

Grab the weekend by its horns and ride till Monday.Friday    Tonight, Chicago’s Casiotone for the Painfully Alone (whose moving, lo-fi sound has been described as “bedroom-synth”) will play at Bar, the newly reopened, former Max Fish/PS14 space. Need more convincing? No cover. Marco Resmann and Tony Rohr bring minimalist techno…

Deal or No Deal

A train is hurtling out of control down a track where five people are tied. Fortunately, you can flip a switch that will divert the train to a different track where only one person is tied. Do you flip the switch? Nazi-era Europe was rife with such moral dilemmas. Take…

Uprooted Rock

Think of Los Lobos as an expansive oak tree — its trunk thick with decades of growth and its roots sucking up nutrients from the norteños of Mexico, the blues of Chicago, the country twang of Texas, and even Louisiana’s kooky zydeco. You might know it for the 1987 hit…

Star Invasion

If Paul Revere rode into town this week, he’d be yelling, “The celebrities are coming!” Thanks to the Super Bowl, our fine city is about to become supersaturated with the rich and famous. This weekend’s Hotel 944 party at the $170 million, recently renovated Eden Roc Renaissance Resort (4525 Collins…

Pray Ball

Instead of commercial breaks, the ancient Greeks would pause their athletic games every so often to pray and sacrifice to the gods. This would (a) keep the gods happy long enough so they could continue with the entertainment and (b) encourage the gods to send more strength and prowess their…

Not Hot for Teacher

If a Brit, not that horny Nabokov, wrote Lolita, you’d have something along the lines of the film An Education, where a precocious teenage girl turns her nose up at Oxford for a chance at nabbing and shagging a charming older man. The film, which won the Audience Choice and…

Funny Girl

There’s been a lot of back-and-forth (and even entire Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes) about the real-life inspirations for George and Kramer from Seinfeld, but somehow Elaine has escaped such scrutiny. One suspect is stand-up comic and writer Carol Leifer, who dated Jerry Seinfeld, has remained good friends with him, and…

Go for Baroque

Many a girl has lost her singlehood to Air on a G String. Friends, that’s not a track from 2 Live Crew’s reunion album but a popular wedding processional based on Johann Sebastian Bach’s Overture No. 3 in D Major. Bach wrote it, one of the most famous pieces of…