New Year’s 2004 Guide

Once again it’s time to ask: Where did the last twelve months go? It’s the kind of question that takes some serious thought to answer. You probably slept one-third of the last year away, and although you should have been working for another third, you didn’t. Too bad most of…

This Week’s Day by Day Picks

Thursday 12/11 In the midst of the crummiest Christmas of his life, Joe, the protagonist of Teatro Avante’s latest production, It’s a Fabulous Life, becomes something of a queer Jimmy Stewart. In his depths Joe asks the ultimate despairing-diva question: “What if I had never been born — gay?” The…

Tomorrow Never Dies

The holidays are upon us, and with them comes the annual choice of whether to surrender to or resist their cheery traditions. Clearly intent on your surrender, the Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables is presenting Annie, a big traditional musical staged in a big traditional way. But whereas past holiday…

Local Views For Basel

To see Glexis Novoa’s art is to witness a testimony to the destructive essence of humanity. Don’t miss his “New Work” at Bernice Steinbaum Gallery. Oswald Spengler in his Decline of the West pointed out that all civilizations come and go, leaving bare vestiges of their grandeur. Did we learn…

Video Eye For Basel

A: Three minutes. Q: How much time is spent viewing a work of art, on average? For a gallery hopper plied with wine and small talk and distracted by the scene, logic suggests those minutes are even fewer. And one can only guess at the attention span of a viewer…

Food Stuff For Basel

Muffins. Artist Carlos Betancourt is contemplating muffins outside a warehouse full of art owned by New York art dealer Robert Miller. The structure sticks out like a corrugated steel iceberg in the middle of the lush and gritty Wynwood street where Betancourt lives. As the artist ponders whether to serve…

Art During Basel

Get ready. Year two, round two. Today through Sunday, only in Miami! Okay, so you think you don’t really like art. At some of the Art Basel events you might not even run into it, at least in a traditional sense. Over on Miami Beach, art from the world’s top…

White Dork Down

In his career as a Hollywood action figure, Tom Cruise has been dressed in some pretty hip outfits — a macho fighter pilot’s sleek leather jacket, a NASCAR driver’s logo-speckled fire suit, assorted silken Armani sports jackets, even black cape and fangs. So it’s a bit unsettling to see the…

Dance This Mess Around

Honey is one of those movies you will see, swear you’ve seen before in several other guises and incarnations, then immediately forget you ever saw to begin with. Its story, about a would-be dancer trying to plot her escape from mean streets (or mean movie sets and back lots), has…

Mixed Movement

Out of the cage came Eve, escaping, escaping. She was clothed in her skin like the sun and her ankles were not for sale. –Anne Sexton Exploring the multifaceted roles of the primordial mother and asserting their simultaneity are the ambitious goals of Eve, an original piece Australian dancer/choreographer Ros…

Mellow Cello

This past Halloween, after his 7:00 p.m. sound check but well before his 10:00 p.m. solo performance at the 400 Bar, a Minneapolis rock club, classical music cellist Matt Haimovitz found himself with two hours to kill. “I didn’t know what to do between 8:00 and 10:00,” he recalls, speaking…

True Romance?

THU 12/4 Kathe Izzo vows to fall in love with anybody who makes an appointment with her. She offers a deep, telepathic connection based on unconditional love. This is not a joke. It’s art. Her work, LOST: An Exploration of Trust, Love, and True Connection, consists of a series of…

Sexless Beast

NOW 24/7 P. Diddy, O.J., Lenny Kravitz, Iggy Pop, Ben Affleck, Michael Jackson: You never can be sure what celeb-hunk-or-junk sighting you’re in for in South Florida. But if you’re a famous single male wintering here, you’re almost sure to get laid. Not so for one Sunshine State winter guest,…

Puppet Stuff

THU 12/4 The holidays can be a feast of tension, aggravation, and reopening family wounds, so it’s no wonder that among the most beloved traditions of the season is taking the kids out for a little escapist entertainment. Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen is a wintery tale meant to…

Plaid Prance

SAT 12/6 While Scottish actor Billy Connolly is busy frittering his talent away on that Crichtonian cow of a flick, Timeline, Florida Scots will be making their own, more enlightened, noise at the St. Andrew’s Pipe Band of Miami’s Annual Christmas Dance. When the pipers stop pipin’ hot, musical duties…

Radio Days

FRI 12/5 About the only people up before 5:00 a.m. are insomniacs and truck drivers, which is what you’ll have to be to catch the Tom Joyner Sky Show at the Miami Arena (721 NW 1st Ave.) featuring DJ Tom Joyner, the morning jock heard on Hot 105 (WHQT-FM). But…

This Week’s Day by Day Picks

Thursday 12/4 It’s that time again. Time to drape yourself head to toe in black and do your best art collector impression (a beret might be a nice touch). The mammoth event known as Art Basel is back to try to talk you into forking over your hard-earned cash for…

Time Out of Mind

Michael Crichton seems pretty clever. The doctor-screenwriter-novelist digs odd history (Eaters of the Dead, a.k.a. The 13th Warrior), clashing cultures (Rising Sun), and cutting-edge biotechnology (Jurassic Park, and virtually his whole canon). His 1999 novel and its inevitable new movie adaptation, Timeline, both attempt to deliver all this and more,…

Indian Giver

In director Ron Howard’s The Missing, Tommy Lee Jones’s Samuel Jones takes his place among the oldest archetypes in the Western genre — the white man who has lived among the Indians till he has at last become one. This plot device, used in Hombre and Nevada Smith and myriad…

Shopping Sickness

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the global corporatization über-fuck at the heart of modern-day culture? Does the gestapo-chic aesthetic espoused by Kenneth Cole and Prada make you think about the message you’re sending by wearing their styles? Social rigors demand that in order to have some say in the direction…

This Week’s Day by Day Picks

Thursday 11/27 It’s turkey day. Thanksgiving, that double-bladed holiday where you are supposed to honor the good things in life, such as family, friends, and good food. You get a long weekend, decent weather, and all you can do is hang around the house smelling the roasting bird and other…

Mind Altering

This dealer will happily feed your habit. Be warned, though: Her stash may make your heart race, tweak your perception of reality, cause you to laugh or cry uncontrollably, and keep you up well into the night. LaShawn Kinder opened Book Addiction this past June on Grand Avenue in Coconut…