Utter Trash

FRI 1/16 Some wimp requests information about John Waters’s film Pink Flamingos on an Internet bulletin board. “I want to see this movie but I want to know what I should watch out for, how gross it is … please help!” A reply is posted: “You’ll see the following: Divine…

Ahoy Vey!

SUN 1/18 Wearing puffy shirts and eyepatches, hoisting the Jolly Roger, walking the plank. It all screams pirates to us. But in the kooky world of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, dreamed up in England during the height of the Victorian era, pirates do more than just parade around in…

Aural Sex

There is much to savor and even more to contemplate in Nilo Cruz’s new play Beauty of the Father, now receiving a visually compelling world premiere at the New Theatre, www.new-theatre.org the third world premiere of a Cruz play at the Coral Gables space in as many seasons. The production…

Shape of New Things

Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk is an important player in the shaping of urban Miami. She’s one of the founders of Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company, Architects and Town Planners (DPZ), a leader in the national movement called New Urbanism. DPZ has received numerous awards, including two State of Florida Governor’s Urban Design Awards…

American Girl

Not a lot of people know this, but our word “actress” is derived from the Greek phrase strumpetos luckyos, meaning “prostitute who somehow landed an agent.” The reason that this etymological root remains largely unappreciated is that it is entirely fake, fabricated for the present purpose of irritating a lot…

This Week’s Day by Day Picks

Thursday 1/15 Civil rights leader Martin Luther King’s birthday is officially observed on Monday but today is the actual anniversary of his birth. No doubt events will be held all over town on Monday, but beginning today the West Perrine Community Development Corporation kicks off a five-day observance. Attend a…

Puttin’ on the Blitz

Those who choose writing as a career often face many sorrows — poverty, public indifference, and critical contempt, to name but three. But whatever woes must be endured in a literary life, the writer has one secret weapon: the chance to turn life experience into a story and, by so…

Art Listings

MUSEUMS Bass Museum of Art: Frida Kahlo: Portraits of an Icon, images of the painter by legendary 20th-century photographers, through Feb. 1; Dispersions: A Decade of Art from Spain, contemporary art from the Coca Cola Espana Foundation Collection, through Feb. 22; Judith Schaechter: Extra Virgin, stained glass works exploring social…

Lucky in Love

William H. Macy’s plain-vanilla features and hangdog screen demeanor have served him well. Who could resist him as the clueless car dealer who hatched the disastrous kidnapping plot in Fargo, or as the distraught husband of a frisky porn star in Boogie Nights? A splendid character actor with a gift…

The Full Mindy?

This year’s British assault on the Yank funnybone is a spirited, hard-trying farce called Calendar Girls, plucked straight from a 1999 news story and dolled up with all the heartwarming charm we’ve come to expect from recent films made by our former rulers. The film recounts the slightly naughty daring…

Southern Swell

“This performance has been many, many years in the making,” exclaims renowned Cuban choreographer and dancer Marianela Boan in reference to her one-woman piece Blanche, based on the wilting magnolia of a woman from Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire. Decades ago Boan read the work and was drawn…

On the Road Again

Whether playing Argentine tango, Appalachian folk songs, Brazilian bossa nova, or Bach concertos, Yo-Yo Ma, the soft-spoken classical cellist, has proved himself a true world musician, or better said a true citizen of the world. Born of Chinese parents in Paris and raised in New York, Ma embarked on a…

Camera Ready

THU 1/8 Utter the word “aperture” and the amateur photographer might merely think about the opening on a 35 mm camera’s lens. A more schooled photo fan will envision Aperture, the venerated quarterly magazine, created by the New York-based nonprofit arts institution of the same name devoted to advancing photography…

Amazon Birder

WED 1/14 South Florida shutterbug Claudine Laabs is headed up the Amazon again, with a paddle, a crew, and a camera. In the past 20 years she’s been to the region a dozen times, leading trips for West Palm Beach’s Audubon Society of the Everglades. But before her upcoming May…

Young at Art

THU 1/8 Two days ago marked the beginning of ARTS Week, when the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts’ Arts Recognition and Talent Search (ARTS) program awards cash and college scholarships to worthy teens. One hundred dancers, musicians, writers, actors, filmmakers, visual artists, and vocalists from 30 states will…

Local Pride

SUN 1/11 Freedom isn’t free. It requires vigilance 24/7. SAVE Dade, queer Miami’s political front, will be hosting its annual fundraising Lambda Showcase with an array of homegrown talent. Singing group the Rough Riders will perform a madcap version of Moulin Rouge. Rocker mama Bev McLellan will be jamming and…

Mountain Song

THU 1/8 Country roads that disappear through Carolina tobacco fields, silos looming over a prairie, tractors kicking up dust on a hot summer day. This is the world evoked in the songs of folksinger Dana Robinson, the West Coast native who homesteaded in Vermont before settling down in the heart…

This Week’s Day by Day Picks

Thursday 1/8 Wood block prints of a city in flux made in the 1930s by artist Koizumi Kishio, currently on display in the exhibition “Tokyo: The Imperial Capital” at the Wolfsonian-FIU (1001 Washington Ave., Miami Beach), are the subject of a chat titled “Koizumi’s Tokyo: Idealized Views of Radical Change”…

An Old Saw

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of GableStage’s current production, Joe Orton’s silly, sexually provocative farce, What The Butler Saw, is the cultural change that has occurred since Joe Orton’s cheeky sex farce was a scandalous coup de theatre in its Sixties premiere. Orton, a gay writer with a penchant for…

Mortality Rules

“Haunted” is a group show installation put together by José-Carlos Diaz at the Worm-Hole Laboratory, a small apartment-turned-exhibition space off Biscayne Boulevard. Diaz’s idea is to bring together lesser-known artists as well as themes that may slide under the radar of more established alternative spaces. Each artist is given a…

She’s Gonna Have It

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year — which often seems advantageous — you may have noticed that there’s a pugnacious air of defiance among today’s young women. Far be it from a film critic to attempt an essay on gender studies, but hey, look around:…

Haitian Celebration

Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Roman Catholic priest, social activist, Haitian president, now considered a dictator by many. He’s in. He’s out. He’s back in thanks to the U.S. military and an eventual election. He’s good. He’s bad. His people support him. His people struggle against him. In present-day Haiti, a climate of…