Night&Day

THU 18 Although eating with your hands is expected at an Ethiopian restaurant, slurping soup and sucking on stone crab claws probably won’t get you invited back for another dinner in Mr. Trump’s penthouse. Even though we are in Miami, white shoes are still tacky when worn after Labor Day…

Cookbooking with Gas

Anyone who has worked in a restaurant knows that attitudes are as plentiful as drugs in the kitchen. Anthony Bourdain may have kicked the heroin habit, but he is still one bad-ass motherfucker. His bestselling tell-all memoir, Kitchen Confidential, scared the hell out of foodies who will never again order…

Toy Sale

Buy Little Pony SAT 11/20 December is around the corner and toy-buying season is kicking into high gear. This year, instead of soldiering through the madding crowd in search of Optimus Prime, why not cut out the middleman? Hasbro Toys invites you to ransack its warehouse. Fill your cart with…

Ramblin’ Plant Man

Enjoy the pleasures of Fairchild SAT 11/20 Sixty-four years ago, Col. Robert H. Montgomery was stressed. He needed a truck for his botanical gardens, pronto. His wife, Nell Jennings, came up with an ingenious solution. She started the Ramble-a-Garden, a festival that allowed Miami plant lovers to explore their tropical…

Yesterday’s News

Before talking heads were pretty TUE 11/23 There was a time when the phrase “television journalism” was not an oxymoron. Sure, it’s hard to believe, but people used to think cigarettes were good for you, too. Back in the days before the drive for a larger market share turned local…

Poetry in Motion

Giovanni Luquini wants to free your mind SAT 11/20 It’s not dance, and it’s not theater. It’s cinematographic, but it’s not a movie. You might call it operatic or architectural. Or maybe you’d just throw up your hands and quit trying to categorize it at all. That’s probably what Giovanni…

The Man That Got Away

The official motto of the Coconut Grove Playhouse is “Broadway by the Bay,” but its unofficial one should be “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The Playhouse has featured a string of successful if skimpy “biomusicals” about great American songwriters and singing stars — Al Jolson, Al Dubin, Alberta…

Current Stage Shows

Barrio Hollywood: The New Theatre’s latest world premiere has considerable potential: it’s not only a play about boxing, it’s also about Mexican-American culture, family loyalty and cross-cultural romance. To this add some imaginative staging by the New’s Rafael de Acha and evocative, colorful production design and all signs point to…

Life Is a Comic Strip

Miami artist Victor Muñiz is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and an alumnus of Miami’s New World School of the Arts. “Monster,” his show now on display at Leonard Tachmes Gallery, consists of drawings and a mural installation. It is a winner. Graffiti, comics, Pop, and…

Current Art Shows

Brown Constructions: Curated by Los Angeles artist Amir Zaki and featuring artists Alice Könitz, Anthony Pearson, Tyler Vlahovich. The works here are linked formally by investigations into planar surfaces and solid constructions, which are pierced, impaled or excavated. Pearson’s photos of rocky landscapes are backlit in an intriguingly counterintuitive way…

Sour Grapes

When was the last time you saw Paul Giamatti? And when the film ended, did you realize how much you would miss him? It was just last year that Giamatti played the hilariously beleaguered Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, a role that he occupied with slumped, head-hanging perfection. Yet as…

The Anton Newcombe Massacre

I’m not for sale. I’m fucking love. I give it away.” So says Anton Newcombe, the raging megalomaniac who heads the Brian Jonestown Massacre, an underground rock band determined to take over the world. First he hurls the words at the audience. Then he informs the crowd that they bought…

Biblio Blowout

When the Miami Book Fair International began, who would have dreamed that our smoldering, sweaty, sexy city would be the proud annual host to one of the nation’s most prestigious literary events? Every year, more than 500,000 book lovers are drawn to our shores in hopes of hearing their favorite…

Timeless Road

About a decade ago, Patrick Gleber — who, along with fellow FIU grad Kevin Rusk, had taken over Tobacco Road in 1982 and transformed the dingy dive into Miami’s best dining-drinking-entertainment complex — was meeting with a local radio personality who wanted to launch a new live-music night in the…

Cheech’s Collection

Art show (sans Chong) FRI 11/12 When Cheech Marin torched his way out of the barrio and onto the big screen as half of the burnout franchise Cheech and Chong, few might have guessed he would become a respected art collector and author. Today, Marin, who tripped the counterculture with…

Horses

Saddle Up SAT 11/13 Fans of Arabian horses are showcasing their favorite equines with an event that features galloping, jumping, and spectacular duds. The Sunshine State Arabian Horse Club’s show offers a division that refers to the animals’ desert pedigree. The horses run the event regally adorned with tasseled finery;…

Corneau Cornucopia

French film homage FRI 11/12 Though he’s probably best known for the 1991 historical drama Tous les Matins du Monde (All the Mornings of the World), French director Alain Corneau has cooked up a few noirish potboilers in his day as well. In Serie Noire (Black Series), Corneau takes hard-edged…

Hughley’s Hour

Laugh your ass off at the Improv THU 11/11 Comedian D.L. Hughley’s life reads like the classic American rags-to-riches tale. He grew up on the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles, where he found himself sporting red bandanas as a member of the notorious Bloods gang. He had a…

Night&Day

THU 11 Ah, The King and I. The 1956 film version of this beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein musical gave Western audiences sing-along songs “Getting To Know You” and “Shall We Dance,” Deborah Kerr in period gowns that made her rear end look 40 feet wide, and the Oscar-winning performance by…

Messed Around

Ray, director Taylor Hackford’s fifteen-years-in-the-making biography of Ray Charles, begins as you might hope: with 1959’s “What’d I Say (Part 1)” pulsing on the soundtrack, the organ’s low moans building toward that familiar, funky frenzy. It almost serves as an early climax, a bracing thrill served up before a word…

Icky, Icky, Icky

Even before the movie begins, as the New Line logo is still coalescing on a dark screen, a man speaks on the soundtrack. He’s talking about reincarnation and about what he would do if his wife, named Anna, were to die and return as a bird insisting it was indeed…

The Fast and the Futuristic

Where are the flying cars? Isn’t it about time? Seriously, we’re almost five years into the new millennium and by now we expected to be able to hover over the 836 “skyway” like the Jetsons. Perhaps the opportunity to berate those responsible will present itself at the 34th annual South…