THU 24 Before schlepping to your parents’ house for turkey, talking, and the Detroit Lions/Atlanta Falcons and Dallas Cowboys/Denver Broncos games, you should roll a fatty to adjust your attitude and head to the 31st annual WinterNational Thanksgiving Day Parade. Strutting to the theme “Celebrate Music — The Universal Language,”…
Born to Run: 30th Anniversary Three-Disc Set (Columbia Home Video) The centerpiece of this three-disc boxed set isn’t the classic 1975 album, but the two DVDs that come with it. On one, shot in London in 1975, Bruce and the band tear through most of Born to Run and its…
Putting together a sequel to a hit videogame is tricky business. Play it safe and give people more of the same, and it ends up feeling stale. But try to innovate too much, and you dilute what made the game great to begin with. Soul Calibur III somehow manages to…
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Wellspring) The Ed Sullivan Show Rock & Roll Classics Boxed Set (Sofa Entertainment) Fantasy Island: The Complete First Season (Columbia/Tristar) Friends: The Complete Tenth Season (Warner Bros.) Friends: Collector’s Box (Warner Bros.) Greg Behrendt Is Uncool (WEA) Guided by Voices: The Electrifying Conclusion (Plexifilm)…
Giacomo Puccini is often regarded as the world’s most beloved and most performed operatic composer, and a scene during the first act of Florida Grand Opera’s fall season opener, La Fanciulla del West, illuminates why. A moment early on in the recent opening-night performance at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium —…
M Ensemble’s first fall production not only begins its new season, but it also opens the festering wounds of America’s murky past, offering audiences an elegant yet tragic look at history’s harrowing repercussions. The action in Bourbon at the Border takes places in 1995 Detroit, but the play revolves around…
Relief for frazzled nerves, hypertension, stress, and other ailments might be as close as a Walgreens, but at two Miami Beach stores you don’t have to comb the shelves to find it. The Windows at Walgreens public art project, organized by ArtCenter/South Florida, is playing an unheralded role in helping…
Earth, Water, and Fire: This group homage to three of the four fundamental elements — hurricane-force winds probably deserve an exhibit of their own — curated by FIU professor Carol Damian, hardly does justice to its almighty nomenclature, an imposing task no doubt. For the “Earth” segment, Tori Arpad —…
The part with the dragon is really cool. Might as well cut to the chase, right? It’s not as though you need anybody to tell you the basic premise of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; if you somehow missed the last three, this won’t likely be the one…
About halfway through Get Rich or Die Tryin’, the new movie starring rapper 50 Cent (a.k.a. Curtis Jackson) and loosely based on his life, 50’s character Marcus is in prison, being visited by his girlfriend Charlene (Joy Bryant). Surprised by his inability to communicate with her, she asks the gangsta…
The nasty French villain in Mikael Håfstrom’s thriller, played with obvious relish by Vincent Cassel, is the best thing about this neo-noir rehash of everything from Double Indemnity to Cape Fear to Fatal Attraction. Whether squeezing his victim’s testicles into a knot or exchanging ironic banter with a henchman, Cassel’s…
Richard Gere? That’s the first thought that came to mind upon learning that Mr. Salt-and-Pepper-Sexy-Buddhist-WASP had been cast as Saul Naumann in Bee Season, the film version of Myla Goldberg’s best-selling novel. In the book, Saul is an oppressive and learned Jewish patriarch, a cantor and student of mysticism whose…
You’d think that anyone possessed of the notion that “the Jews” are one monolithic whole that thinks and acts alike need only take a look at, say, wrestler Bill Goldberg, Hollywood hottie Natalie Portman, shock jock Howard Stern, and nebbishy right-wing scold Michael Medved to have that idea instantly dispelled…
We popcorn-chomping hitchhikers never know who will pick us up on the roadside. In Flirting with Disaster, it was a neurotic Manhattan adoptee on a nationwide search for his biological parents. The desert-parched heroines of Thelma & Louise brought us along as they raised hell en route to their doom…
Elaine Lancaster’s arrival in Miami was hardly the auspicious event she’d hoped for. “I moved here on July 15, 1997, to work for the Versace family. Unfortunately that was the day Gianni was murdered. It was heartbreaking,” says the statuesque queen, who, despite the tragedy, decided to give Miami the…
SAT 11/19 While the memory of living without electricity is still fresh in your mind, take a moment to talk to a few Florida pioneers and Seminole Indians to see how life was when light and climate control were generated by flint and tinder. At Harvest, the Historical Museum of…
FRI 11/18 Rrrrrrrace fans! Are you ready for high-speed action and pure NASCAR satisfaction? The 2005 Ford Championship Weekend is finally here, and although we’re bummed that the Ford 400 is sold out, you can still score tickets to today’s Craftsman Truck Series Ford 200 (gates open at 8:00; tickets…
You could stay home and read comics all day, but you should really leave your cave and enjoy a dash of culture with your cartoons. “Art in the ‘Toon Age” opens today at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood (1650 Harrison St., Hollywood). On loan from Michigan State University’s…
SUN 11/20 As a young, hip opera star, Laurie Rubin must surely be a fan of Cake’s “Opera Singer,” and we agree she “sing[s] what can’t be said.” The spunky mezzo-soprano vocalizes in eight languages, and owing to amaurosis, a rare congenital disease that dissolves the retina, Rubin is also…
THU 17 Here’s a fun fact about In Her Shoes, the recent bittersweet flick starring Cameron Diaz and Toni Colette: In a pivotal scene at the Italian Market, Colette is being followed by her character’s creator. Jennifer Weiner, the novel’s author, makes a silent surprise cameo. The way her career’s…
Joan Didion’s essays about the culture of the Sixties in Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album helped define what’s now widely known as literary journalism. She also showed how the personal and political can be wed in ways that transcend the famous feminist platitude. Her latest effort, however, is…
As a screenwriter, Shane Black has built a reputation on action movies featuring mismatched partners. Crazy Mel Gibson and aging Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon; sassy Samuel L. Jackson and amnesiac hit woman/housewife Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight; burnout detective Bruce Willis and football player Damon Wayans in…
