MON 3/22 Partnership Dance, now there’s a concept. Could that refer to a couple dancing together in the old-fashioned way or just a cynical business venture? Whatever it is, promoting it is the mission of a group that calls itself Miami Dance Machine. In the ambitious show Baile on the…
FRI 3/12 If Morrissey’s call to hang the DJ is carried out tonight, then his onetime Smiths bandmates Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce may be seen dangling from a gibbet. Thankfully the bassist and drummer for the legendary Manchester quartet don’t take Mozzer very seriously. Still why is the duo…
For the record, this article is NOT about Andy Warhol. I repeat: Neither Andy Warhol nor his “films” will be featured in the following story. Rather, this article is all about the filmmaker Paul Morrissey. Never mind that Andy Warhol’s name appears in large bold type all over and preceding…
In the converted garage of an old Coral Gables home just off Douglas Road, one of Miami’s top DJ/producers is busy in his studio turning the knobs on his latest creation. It’s an album untitled and sans label, set for a summer release, with thirteen pumped-up dance tracks of completely…
SAT 3/6 Miami filmmaker Juan Carlos Zaldivar laments the dearth of countercultural icons in a world rife with war, corporate greed, and disease. He bemoans the growing apathy in cities and the eerie quiet that comes with assimilation. Once-radical heroes such as John Waters, he observes, maintain a comfort in…
FRI 3/5 For some people, guarding orchid-growing secrets is tantamount to the Department of Defense protecting information about nuclear warheads. They steal, they lie, they hire spies. You wouldn’t believe it. In case you haven’t read the book The Orchid Thief or seen the film Adaptation, you should know that…
At its best, the Winter Music Conference is a sprawling six-day party in the gentle Miami winter with 10,000 of your closest friends and the greatest DJs in the world, all found on a two-mile stretch of sandy beach. At its worst, WMC is a sprawling, disorganized, and overpriced mass…
FRI 2/27 Now that Sex and the City is off the air, actor/dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov is screwed. He has to find something else to do besides playing a moody artist who beds Sarah Jessica Parker’s character Carrie Bradshaw and whisks her away to Paris. Well, it seems the 55-year-old Russian…
SAT 2/21 We all know the poem: “A Dream Deferred.” Langston Hughes wrote it, if you hadn’t heard. “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore — and then run?” One of the greatest black literary figures of the 20th Century, Hughes was…
FRI 2/20 American filmmaker Todd Haynes is an iconoclast. His 1991 film Poison was dismissed as pornography at first, but when it won prizes at Cannes it became regarded as a benchmark in nouveau queer cinema. Tonight Haynes’s 1998 feature Velvet Goldmine will be screened, along with his groundbreaking and…
THU 2/12 Long before Janet Jackson shocked the world by baring her breast on international television, we had already spent many years besieged by racy cleavage-heavy images. A lot of those provocative shots were of supermodels on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine, courtesy of fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo, the mag’s…
FRI 2/6 When jazz trumpet player Melton Mustafa blows his horn, people listen — on local and national levels. One of Miami’s favorite musicians, Mustafa for the last 8 years has even run his own jazzy celebration that attracts some of the biggest names in the biz. This year’s Melton…
MON 2/9 You can call it a local equivalent to the Oscars. There will be goddesses working the red carpet and glamorous gowns, but be on the lookout for the freaky styley. Shelley Novak, Miami’s hairy-chested drag wonder, is honoring the best of the local cross-dressing culture. Will Pussy-la win…
Bon Voyage Watching Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s big World War II drama Bon Voyage is like taking a vivid trip back to the middle of the Twentieth Century. This retro journey is not just because of the detailed Art Deco production design or the Nazis versus Free French storyline. The entire ethos…
SUN 2/1 Christians, Jews, and Muslims are finally getting together, not around the world but at the Coconut Grove Playhouse (3500 Main Hwy.). This afternoon at 4:30 following a 2:00 p.m. performance of Chaim Potok and Aaron Posner’s drama The Chosen, a panel discussion will ensue exploring how religions can…
THU 1/29 The Florida Center for the Literary Arts opens its writers’ residency and lecture series with a not-necessarily-politically-correct discourse. Prolific, award-winning author Francine Prose will lecture on “Scent of a Woman’s Ink: Why Women are Still Being Read Differently from Men.” When her original essay on the subject appeared…
THU 1/22 You’re intellectual, caring, and humorous. You must be a monkey. In the lunar calendar of Chinese astrology, that is. Yes, it’s Chinese New Year and you guessed it: The year of the monkey is upon us. We don’t recommend eating a bushel of bananas to celebrate. Instead head…
Pot, grass, weed, ganja, reefer, doobie, herb, sensi. Whatever you call it, the little spiky-leafed cannabis plant most commonly known as marijuana inflames passions on both sides of the pro/con fence, from those who use it as a sacrament in religious ceremonies held everywhere from India to Jamaica, to our…
Back in the Sixties, at a time when the only male jazz singers on the scene seemed to be the swingers of Rat Pack notoriety and lounge lizard fame — Frankie and Sammy and Deano — Mark Murphy was keeping the true flame alive with his post-bop renditions of standards…
SUN 1/18 Wearing puffy shirts and eyepatches, hoisting the Jolly Roger, walking the plank. It all screams pirates to us. But in the kooky world of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, dreamed up in England during the height of the Victorian era, pirates do more than just parade around in…
When aspiring independent filmmaker Justin Routt calls you up asking for help on his movie — free help, that is — don’t think that just because the industry outsider has no money, connections, or prior experience in moviemaking, he’ll be easily deterred. On the contrary. Routt has somehow got it…
THU 1/8 Country roads that disappear through Carolina tobacco fields, silos looming over a prairie, tractors kicking up dust on a hot summer day. This is the world evoked in the songs of folksinger Dana Robinson, the West Coast native who homesteaded in Vermont before settling down in the heart…
