A friend of ours once told us that to be a proper host we should always keep these drinking staples on hand: Chimay, ginger beer, and a good rum, “Not that Bacardi crap,” the wise Brit would say. If our buddy were in town, we know he would be the…
Their unpretentious sartorial style might not be often imitated by today’s rappers, but if you can’t hear the influence of A Tribe Called Quest in the music of recent chart-toppers, you need to get your ears checked. The introspective lyrics of Kanye West, the experimentalism of OutKast, and the colorful…
Over the past quarter-century, the annual Sting concerts have become a launch pad for some of the Caribbean’s hottest acts. “Now we’re adding elements of R&B, hip-hop, and as we go on, Sting will come to represent rock, jazz, and soul too. We’re taking it to the next level,” says…
It’s a red square. No, it’s art, the curator tells you. But it’s a square, and it’s red, you think. What’s different from the one on the wall and one your five-year-old could do, besides ten grand? This has long been a puzzlement of modern art. You act like you…
So how about them Dolphins? They had a strong finish last season, and we soon had visions of Super Bowl celebrations after we heard they had secured quarterback Daunte Culpepper. Now we don’t want to be naysayers already, seeing that we are still trying to dig ourselves out of the…
Miami is a melting pot for many diverse cultures, but our strongest flavors are certainly Latin. One of the most concentrated regions is Hialeah. “We’re 94 percent Hispanic, and our population is about 250,000,” explains William Sanchez, the city’s sponsorship coordinator and public relations representative. The unique municipality is the…
Like Bridget Jones, we used to scoff at the “smug marrieds” as they held hands and gave us sympathetic looks as we stood alone at yet another wedding, posing in a sea-foam-green taffeta bridesmaid disaster. Being single sucks, and we never want to go back there. Now it’s time for…
Nam June Paik, who first introduced artwork featuring a television set into a museum space in 1963, once referred to the moon as the “oldest TV.” A couple of years later, the art maverick reproduced the lunar cycle using seventeen TV sets atop pedestals in a blacked-out room. A different…
Getting your vision out there or, heck, just securing a wall to hang your canvas on is not always easy. A few locals are not going to bother waiting around to be “discovered” by gallery owners who deem them worthy. Nor are they burning prayer candles, hoping to be judged…
As downtown Miami swells larger, there has been a corresponding increase in entertainment options for the locals populating our urban core. One of the newest and coolest kids on the block is the Jamaica International Café. A crowd of in-the-know revelers have been congregating for the Jammin’ Friday Happy Hour,…
Can you feel the heat? Feel the burn of Seraphic Fire, Miami’s hottest chamber choir ensemble, shooting up flames across South Florida with its fifth anniversary concert this weekend. In case you don’t know already, chamber music is traditional choral music performed by small ensembles. For this performance, the Fire…
Austrian auteur Michael Haneke’s films are bleak and fervent, scary and socially observant, disturbing and engaging all at once. He is described as a moralist, but one who reveals his truth using a dispassionate lens. Unlike many American directors, Haneke isn’t afraid to wade just as deep into sexuality as…
Worried those childhood violin lessons might have put a cramp in your cool? That fear didn’t stop David Harrington from forming the Kronos Quartet in 1973 and turning the group into the bad boys of new music. Iconoclastic almost to the point of being contrarian, the quartet isn’t the kind…
On the exterior, human beings are like snowflakes. None of us is completely like another; there are striking differences in the shade of our skin, the color of our eyes, the shape of our bodies. But strip away the epidermis, and the similarities begin to emerge. Deep down we’re all…
Ever wish you could have heard Jack Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson read live from the novels that made them famous and their readers yearn for a wild life on the road? Yeah, us too. Although Jack and Hunter are gone, you can head down to Coral Gables this evening…
Oh, man, I had the strangest dream last night, and you were in it. Only you weren’t really you; you were Mickey Mouse. I was Minnie, of course, and we were traveling around the world. And do you know what the weird part was? We were wearing those big shoes…
You thought the real estate slowdown would put an end to Miami’s “starchitect” fever? Pish posh. While not as uber-famous as Frank Gehry or Rem Koolhaas, the firm of Herzog and de Meuron, selected Thursday to build the new $200 million Miami Art Museum, is considered one of the most…
Directed by Brian De Palma from the novel by neo-noirist James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia is a true-crime policier unfolding in late-Forties Los Angeles somewhere between the neighborhoods of Chinatown and Mulholland Drive. The premise involves one of L.A.’s most notorious unsolved homicides. In early 1947, the naked corpse of…
Those twentysomethings, poor dears, can never catch a break in the movies. First this maligned generation is told, in countless gritty indies and perky studio comedies, they’re rowing through life without oars. Now director Tony Goldwyn’s admirably understated handling of dispiritingly slender material suggests if you’re pushing 30, you’re likely…
Ludicrously named hit man Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) awakens to the news that he’s been injected with a deadly poison, the effects of which can be staved off by cranking his adrenaline up to insanely high levels. Naturally his reaction is to turn the city of Los Angeles into his…
The first words heard in Lincolnesque are those of Abraham Lincoln. They are lyrical, lofty, and moving, spoken by a tall, bearded man in a long black coat, his voice at once inspiring and reassuring, if only a little off. Maybe a lot off: He is in fact a madman…
To get the drop on John Gotti, the “Teflon Don,” Marilyn Church had to move like a mongoose. The New Yorker is among an exclusive cadre of talent hired as quick-draw artists by the national media to capture the drama of high-profile trials. Because cameras are banned from federal trials,…
