Ah, summer. What would it be without barbecues, beaches, and blockbusters? And in terms of the latter, we’re talking the cinematic variety, big feature flicks playing multiple screens at the local megaplex, long lines, explosive action, surround sound, special effects, the whole Hollywood hog. Alien vs. Predator, The Village, and…
Perhaps the most unlikely thing to capture on film is the creative process — the spinning of gears, the tripping of wires, the breaking of hearts, and the snapping of tempers that goes into the making of art. Movies about writers and painters and musicians seldom collapse the barrier between…
Steve’s cat flew through the roof and into the trees, which flew down the street into the neighbor’s garage, which wasn’t a garage any longer. A teacher’s office building disappeared, but her desk was undisturbed. People near the ocean returned to homes and reported flooding, but insurance-claims investigators found the…
THU 29 Skulk, stroll, or strut around the streets of Miami Beach like a native. Or at least learn to fake it from Carolyn Klepser. As a local historian and co-author of the book Miami: Then and Now, Klepser, often seen biking around town, can dish the historical dirt with…
Globetrotting photographer Denise Marino admits she loves to collect old things. She has trinkets from her travels around the world and plenty of antiques from local shops and flea markets. Until recently she even drove a 1965 Mustang convertible. “Old things have more character and more design,” she notes, “and…
Paintings depict eternal beauty FRI 7/30 Can a mangrove island be squeezed into a soup can? How do sea grapes play juxtaposed against a wall of Jeff Koons vacuum cleaners? How can the grandeur of our region’s natural gifts — the ocean, salty waters, birds, and alligators — be distilled…
Prime primate pair debuts SAT 7/31 Perhaps Parrot Jungle Island (1111 Parrot Jungle Trail, Watson Island) should drop the “Parrot” from its name and simply go by Jungle Island. More occurs there than just shows featuring colorful squawking birds rolling around on tiny skates and little bicycles. A lot of…
Peace, wisdom in timbre SAT 7/31 You’ve probably heard her voice: Perhaps when she backed Madonna through several world tours, or maybe it was on the McDonald’s and Kodak commercials? How about at Disneyland at the “It’s a Small World” ride? Wherever it was that you first heard Donna DeLory,…
Kevin Mahogany remembers a legend FRI 7/30 Prodigiously talented Johnny Hartman, the smoothest of smooth balladeers, never got the fame he deserved, that is until Clint Eastwood got a hold of his music. Unfortunately by the time Dirty Harry put Hartman’s lovely romantic songs into his tearjerker chick flick The…
A weblike charcoal-and-gouache drawing in “Beyond Havana: Intersecting Time and Place” at the Bettcher Gallery clues you in that artist Nereida Garcia Ferraz is picking up strands from her old life to spin the new. In this exhibit, her first solo show in Miami, Garcia Ferraz combines digital photography, painting,…
Florida Artists Series: R.F. Buckley and Clive King: FIU visual arts faculty members Buckley and King exhibit way too many artworks in a small museum. Overhung inevitably leads to overworked. In the case of Buckley, despite a few serendipitous still life elements, the forged and welded aluminum doesn’t reward the…
Fit To Be Tied: Tormented Arloc hates his promiscuous mother and falls for an “angel” in a local dramatic production. Long, somewhat aimless, and without conjuring any discernible interest, Nicky Silver’s play needs about three more drafts and some quality actors before it will be even remotely watchable. — Dan…
Winner of the Dramatic Audience Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Maria Full of Grace is an uncomfortably realistic look at a seventeen-year-old Colombian woman who, desperate for a job, agrees to swallow capsules of heroin and transport them to New York. Although a work of fiction, the film…
If you’re wondering how Hollywood could possibly adapt Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, a collection of similarly themed short stories bound together by the slenderest of common threads, the answer is that it didn’t. The credits for I, Robot read “suggested by Isaac Asimov’s book,” but the canny sci-fi fan will…
Nearly one-third of the way into Ian Smith’s relentless thriller The Blackbird Papers, protagonist Sterling Bledsoe, an FBI special agent/anatomy teacher, watches silently as New Hampshire’s chief medical examiner leads a meticulous autopsy on a Nobel Prize-winning Dartmouth College professor who has been brutally murdered, a racial epithet carved into…
THU 22 What would it be like to compare your interpretation of a screenplay with that of its writer or director? With its new Scriptures script presentation night, the Miami Beach Cinematheque (512 Española Way) allows fervent movie buffs and aspiring filmmakers the chance to “see” a movie before it’s…
Sammy Davis, Jr., Henry Kissinger, Shirley Chisholm, John Cage, Luis Tiant, and even Patty Hearst each are overshadowed when it comes to historical relevance in Miami by Crockett and Tubbs, those archetypal Miami Vice cops who branded our city as the sexiest, fastest, and most dangerously chic place to be…
Forty’s something for Flipper What becomes a legend most? When you hit midlife without a crisis and you are still capable of leaping through hoops and turning somersaults with class. Miami’s original TV darling, Flipper, hit the big four-OH this year and you wouldn’t know it to look at him…
Phillies, Schmillies, it’s anybody’s game Welcome to the second half — same game, higher stakes. The playoff race heats up tonight as the Marlins take on the Phillies. Some interesting tidbits about those Phillies: They have lost 10 straight games at Pro Player, dating back to April 2003 (pre-Jack McKeon!)…
Clothes Call Trendoids, hold onto your Prada socks. The next big fashion thing could be showing his or her work at Gen Art Styles Miami ’04. The national arts organization devoted to highlighting young talent will present the creations of five designers from Canada, Great Britain, and the U.S. who…
Mantra scopes the scene for stars Despite South Florida’s continuous influx of talented immigrants from South America and the Caribbean, Miami’s reputation on the world music scene is about as substantial as the breakfast menu at the International House of Pancakes. Our city’s musical exports are all too often flat…
It’s charming. It’s hilarious. It is perhaps the most beautifully crafted, lovingly rendered portrait of extreme geekitude ever to grace the screen. It’s Napoleon Dynamite — the first feature film from 24-year-old Brigham Young University student Jared Hess — and, if there is any justice, it’s going to be huge…
