From North Miami to Coral Gables to West Miami-Dade, a stupendous exhibition, a glittering museum expansion, and the sparkling-new Frost Art Museum show signs that South Florida continues flexing its cultural muscle beyond Basel. At the Museum of Contemporary Art, Anri Sala hijacks the language of cinema and video to…
Two years ago nearly to the day, Will Smith and Italian director Gabriele Muccino released The Pursuit of Happyness, one of the most underrated of recent Hollywood movies, which starred Smith as a single father navigating a hand-to-mouth existence on the streets of San Francisco. Writing at the time, I…
The Wrestler may be plenty visceral, but it’s no more a sports movie than professional wrestling is a competitive sport. Chronic over-reacher Darren Aronofsky’s relatively unpretentious follow-up to the ridiculous debacle that was The Fountain is all about showbiz. It’s also a canny example. You want to make a comeback…
Hello, Kitty: I met this guy in a club two years ago. We exchanged numbers, danced, and had a serious make-out session. After that, we went out on one date and then lost contact. Three weeks ago, I contacted him through MySpace, we exchanged numbers, and hung out. We ended…
If your group of friends includes international comrades, you won’t need to use any of your hard-earned frequent flyer miles to indulge in the culinary traditions of a worldly Christmas Eve. Dial up your Polish buddy and pray he asks you to sit down to a traditional meal of 12…
Two of Miami’s finest prodigal zine auteurs return for a joint reading of their respective new books, both published by Soft Skull Press. In the Nineties, Erick Lyle, then known as Iggy Scam, lived an enviable punk-ethics-fueled life around South Florida that is near impossible to imagine today. He ran…
The drag scene in Miami has been tried and tested by the vicissitudes of time. Through the years, some stars on have shone brightly, while others have simply faded away. Three primary ones remain, their names familiar even to outsiders. There’s blond glamazon Elaine Lancaster, comical cheerleader Shelley Novak, and…
With its timeless score by Tchaikovsky, unforgettable cast of characters, elaborate costumes, and gravity-defying leaps and flourishes, The Nutcracker is a beloved holiday tradition full of fantasy and enchantment. The beguiling ballet, based on a story by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, tells the tale of a young German girl named…
Those damn Ferrero Rocher commercials and the seasonal aisle at Walgreens alerted us to the fact that the season of jingle bells and fruitcakes arrived back in October, but thanks to the mixed messages we’re receiving, we don’t really know what Christmas means. Is the holiday about buying gifts, cooking…
’Twas the night before Christmas when all through South Beach, all the young Jews were dancing and no one could kvetch. The outfits were chosen with the greatest of care, in hopes that a nice Jewish mate would soon be there. Yeah, all the Gentiles always figure the Jews spend…
Meet Lucy Hill, the main character of New In Town. She’s one of these young, beautiful, independent, white career ladies we have so many of around town. She just loves her life in sunny Miami. Mostly because it is warm here, so very, very warm. But ruh roh! For her…
Artlurker is reporting that Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin’s Miami digs will be closing, kinda. There will still be some staff at the gallery throughout the year, but after the current exhibit closes, Perrotin won’t have another one open to the public until Art Basel 2009. Its Parisian counterpart will apparently remain unaffected. Check…
Riptide continues to find out about exciting events during Art Basel that no one bothered to invite him to. So we are just completely and totally devastated that we weren’t at the unveiling of the world’s self-proclaimed number one transsexual Amanda Lepore’s new signature fragrance. It’s supposed to smell like…
Oh, how nice of L’Uomo Vogue, the Italian fashion magazine for discerning men, to write our fair city a 100 page love letter in their latest issue. The mega-spread was shot by famed photog Bruce Weber and features Javier Bardem on the cover. If the Miami Beach tourist board was…
So the general consensus on Art Basel was that it wasn’t quite “the embodiment of failure” that the schadenfreude-loving German mag Der Spiegel predicted. As one anonymous dealer told New York: “We did better than we expected — and worse than we had hoped.”Among the artists New York singled out as recession-proof…
The tents are gone and the handwringing dealers gone with them. This year’s Art Basel crowds were noticeably thinner. At many of the fairs, dealers reported drops in sales, and the focus fell squarely on the art — where it belonged. But the energy was still palpable, and a cheery…
I hear America singing, and I see … Richard Nixon. Not the man but the muse: Has any president since Lincoln inspired more movies, TV miniseries, and operas? As Nixon’s beetle brows, ski nose, and mirthless grin were made for caricature, so his rampant pathology was a gift for novelists…
As in the original 1951 film by Robert Wise (but with little regard to Harry Bates’s original pulp short story “Farewell to the Master”), the arrival on Earth of a near-omnipotent being named Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) is met with a trigger-happy response. Only the widowed Dr. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly)…
Hello, Kitty: My girl complains about my body hair, saying that I need to wax and/or shave my chest and pubic area. But the vision of Steve Carell getting waxed in The 40-Year-Old Virgin has me thinking it’s not worth the pain. My hairy bod has never bothered me, but…
The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged By The Reduced Shakespeare Company. Through January 16 at the Adrienne Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; 305-949-6722, www.arshtenter.org According to the advertisement, those who like Shakespeare will like Shakespeare (Abridged), and those who hate Shakespeare will love this version of his plays. And…
We’re dreaming of a drunken Christmas, and if that chimney-slidin’ fat man knows what’s good for him, he’ll bring it to us. He’ll leave the lumps of coal for John Edwards and the guy who invented mandals and bring us jewel-toned boxes filled with bottles of something that’ll make us…
The malls are so disgustingly crowded during the holidays, sometimes you need extra help to cut through the insanity. Don’t you just wish you could take a big Rottweiler with you to clear the aisles at Body Works? Or keep your kitty cat in your purse, to unleash its claws…
