Face the Blemished Truth

During the teenage years, they erupted like volcanoes. Explosive peaks and valleys suddenly appeared on your face, and an army of over-the-counter acne medications often seemed ill-equipped to fight the battle for beautiful skin. Even then the war was just beginning. Maintaining flawless skin becomes more of a challenge with…

Happy Birthday, Regis!

The guy might be bonkos, but we cannot begin our day without a cup of strong coffee and a big helping of Regis Philbin. The longtime talk-show host, who even appeared as himself on an episode of Seinfeld in which he continually called Kramer “bonkos,” turns 75 today. In celebration…

Make Time to Garden

Your allergies might prevent you from working with pets, and your aversion to runny noses keeps you away from kids, but have you considered working with plants? Oh, we know you have already killed off a Christmas cactus, a spider plant, and some variegated ivy (just kidding, Mom!), but you…

Positive Vibrations

The press on reggae musicians is invariably negative nowadays, and with valid reason. Many modern-day dancehall dons don’t seem to see the hypocrisy in recording lighters-in-the-air odes to love and unity and then performing vitriolic paeans to homophobic slaughter. To the critics, the title of the One Love Festival might…

Keeping Flaws Under Wraps

A red and white polka-dot dress with a cap and black stockings sounds more like a Minnie Mouse costume than beach attire, but chic modesty did once rule our shore, which is now overrun with silicone orbs. To take you back to a time when birthday suits were actually concealed…

A Family Affair

When she was doing the Roger Rabbit in the video for “Real Love,” Mary J. Blige seemed like the kind of chick you might find shopping at the Swap Shop. By now, MJB can buy out every high-end retail store from Paris to New York, but she’s still down enough…

Practical Magic

If, at this remove, we can imagine Vienna in the late 1890s, we behold a great imperial capital in ferment. Gustav Mahler is not only reinventing the harmonic structure of serious music, but also he is getting his head seriously shrunk by Sigmund Freud. Arnold Schoenberg takes painting lessons from…

Cine Havana

Luis Moro ignored restrictions on filming in Cuba to make the drama Love & Suicide during a 2003 trip to the island, and he obviously has a passion for the place. This passion fuels Moro’s charm as an actor with a central role. But as coscreenwriter of the film, now…

Now Playing

As a consideration of the power of storytelling — and the urge to mythologize one’s own life as well as the lives of others — The Night Listener could serve as creepy paranoid cousin to the current Lady in the Water. The specters of J.T. LeRoy and James Frey haunt…

Frequent Flyer Wiles

In Terminal Baggage, Paul Tei and Ivonne Azurdia have hatched a batch of quirky tone poems that center on what people do in airports while waiting, interminably, to fly. The result is a production that skids into turbulence yet hits a cruising altitude to deliver an evening of well-acted fun…

Stage Capsules

Ella: It’s ten years this month since songstress Ella Fitzgerald died. Fitzgerald, whose romantically distinctive voice has gently passed from generation to generation since her first recordings in 1936, didn’t so much have her own songs but rather made anything she sang an Ella experience. In the past year, Florida…

Home Groan

During an emergency, I sometimes can and will drive. For instance, when my girlfriend got decked by a medical test a few weeks ago and enlisted me to chauffeur her home from the clinic, I reluctantly agreed, even though it was the first time this millennium I found myself behind…

Smells Like Victory

Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier (Paramount) It’s all here, more or less: the 1979 theatrical cut of Francis Ford Coppola’s harrowing and still-hypnotic Joseph Conrad-in-Vietnam adaptation, the 49-minutes-longer-but-feels-24-minutes-shorter 2001 Redux edition, Marlon Brando’s entire 17-minute “The Hollow Men” monologue, even more “lost” and deleted scenes (including a spooky-shocking one, in…

Dogs of War

Like a real war, Chromehounds involves long stretches of tedium, occasionally broken up by a few moments of sheer terror. After what feels like weeks of ponderous marching from point A to point B in your titular “Hound” — a walking tank — combat erupts. The fighting is fast and…

Our Top DVD Picks for the Week of August 15, 2006

Benito (Lions Gate) Cape of Good Hope (New Yorker) Clark Gable Collection, Volume 1 (Fox) Don’t Tell (Lions Gate) The Hard Corps (Sony) Hong Kong Phooey: The Complete Series (Turner) Hoot (New Line) James Stewart: The Signature Collection (Warner Bros.) Land of the Blind (Bauer) Lemming (Strand) L’Enfant (Sony) Machined…

The Furball’s Fairy Godmother

Donna Halpern has earned her wings. As the founder of Fairy Tails, one of our favorite nonprofit, no-kill animal shelters, she is always caring for abandoned animals. Last year’s hurricane season tested her determination and endurance. Besides accommodating 23 dogs from New Orleans, Fairy Tails donated food and supplies to…

Chuckles for Charity

Now here’s an odd mix: The Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium, the educational host of events such as “Lizard Day”; the Just the Funny Improv Comedy Theatre Company, known for being, well, an improv group; and the Children’s Home Society of South Florida, which provides leadership programming for children…

Rediscover Virginia

Miamians who think everything past the toll booth is Key Biscayne could go their whole lives without realizing there are two islands, the first being Virginia Key, which happens to be one of the most interesting — and overlooked — places in South Florida. This was the “Negro” beach before…

The Anti-Lullaby

For the first time since its sensational debut in 2004, local audiences will be able to see one of the most heralded recent Broadway hits. The Pillowman premieres tonight, and contrary to its name, the play is far from a snoozer. Written by Martin McDonagh, The Pillowman is set in…

Everybody Loves a Riesling

Although there’s some dispute over the origin of Riesling grapes, there’s no arguing that they make great wine. That’s why so many regions have tried to claim the grape as their own. Germany, Alsace, and Austria are all recognized for their excellent Rieslings, each as distinct in flavor as the…

A Mother I’d Like to … Vote For

“More people vote for American Idol than for the president, and that’s scary,” says Nancy Ferreira. That’s why she recently called up the Washington office of Rock the Vote and got permission to use the name for her own undertaking, South Florida Rock the Vote 2006, which is making its…

Everybody Cut Footloose

If you’ve ever watched the interpretive sequence set to Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” at the end of Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion and thought, I wish I could express myself through dance, here’s your opportunity. The Miami Contemporary Dance Company is offering a special summer course. At the…