War may be hell but we humans love to hear stories about it. Think back on the history of theater, of movies, of literature. The war story is central to them all. The Iliad still stirs the imagination. So does Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Hemingway’s For…
After a relatively tranquil summer, a plethora of openings tumbled out of the galleries over the last several weeks. In fact all of them can’t be reviewed in this space, but we’ll start with the all-woman show “Fourtell” (through October 4) at Casas Riegner Gallery, documenting the interplay among four…
The dumbed-down movie version of Frances Mayes’s best-selling travel memoir Under the Tuscan Sun is a virtual case study of Hollywood’s irrepressible urge to lower the bar in the hopes of upping the take. Mayes’s 1996 book is a nicely written, carefully observed meditation on buying a decrepit Italian villa…
Visualize Tokyo. Got it? Now add popular favorite Bill Murray, doing his “lovable schmo” shtick. Toss in American Rhapsody’s up-and-comer Scarlett Johansson, doing her standard “like, duh” face. Dip them both into emotional torpor in the sleek Park Hyatt, add local color, stir. Et voila: Lost in Translation. For Sofia…
For a purely Miami-centric take on former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, one need look no further than 1996, when a Cuban military gunner shot down the Cessna planes of Brothers to the Rescue. Admonishing both the bloody act and the celebratory response of the Cuban pilots, Albright said of…
Mercedes Sosa is like a fairy godmother for most popular musicians in Argentina. Powered by her strong voice, her songs make their way around the world, pit-stopping in countries like Chile and Turkey. For recording artists who lend her tunes, international fame and royalties are usually instant rewards. Most songwriters…
NOW 24/7 There’s a huge difference between professional architectural photographs and those random snapshots of fascinating buildings that caught your eye when you were on vacation in some swanky European capital or small American town. Or is there? Both types of works are liable to give people a fresh perspective…
SAT 9/27 The best thing about Grand Prix Americas is the idea of downtown Miami turning into a stoplight- and speed-limit-free supersonic racetrack for 3 days. Plus, it’s free to stand around the track, unless you’re a serious race fan and enter the infield ($45) or sit in the grandstands…
WED 10/1 To native South Floridians frozen water is delightful, but couple ice with Mickey Mouse and you have youngsters intoxicated with frosty pleasure. Disney on Ice returns to our parts with Mickey & Minnie’s Magical Journey. This year the famous mouse couple travels to 4 frozen locations, including Hawaii…
SAT 9/27 Why follow the exploits of manufactured celebrities like Bennifer when true notables like Genevieve the Dog really deserve your attention? As author of Memoirs of a Papillon: The Canine Guide to Living with Humans without Going Mad, the hirsute pooch has in a biting (excuse the expression) way…
FRI 9/26 Tat! Pop! Pow! … No, those aren’t fight scene graphics from the old Batman TV show, but the call of drums on the street corners of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, or on the sidewalks of Washington Heights in New York City. It’s bachata, music of la…
Thursday 9/25 Joey Galvan, Mark Stuart, Deane Cote, and Clark Stacer are all Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash. Don’t be alarmed: It’s not what you’re thinking. We don’t intend to be disrespectful. Nor do we mean to insinuate that over the years the late great Man in Black was doing…
In a full-spectrum festival that screens films as short as three minutes, documentaries from first-time directors, and experimental videos from San Francisco-based artist Tony Labat, you would naturally expect to find a full-length feature of the highest order. Which is exactly what you get in director Orlando Rojas’s thoroughly entertaining…
Tidy little Montecarlo, Georgia, which is the setting for Jonathan Lynn’s The Fighting Temptations, is a perfect movie fantasy town. At the picturesque train station, the ticket agent will call you a taxi or serve you a plate of Southern fried chicken. The house band at the local nightclub is…
To hear Alejandro Rios, director of Miami-Dade College’s Festival of Alternative Cuban Cinema, tell it, the world is obsessed with the island nation. Perhaps it’s a universal case of rubbernecking, or else the tropical glamour spot of old has retained its sexy cachet in our collective imaginations. Rios, a media…
When we last heard from perpetually active married couple Maud Dillingham and Cesar Becerra, it was December 31, 1999, and they were rolling into Miami in their flag-festooned 1979 Chevy Malibu Classic station wagon, after logging about 50,000 miles on a road trip across the United States they called Motoring…
NOW 24/7 “Don’t turn right on Grand,” insists the passenger as the car hits the intersection of Grand Avenue and McDonald Street in Coconut Grove. To the left are the drunks and the din of CocoWalk. To the right lies that amorphous entity known as the West Grove. The Black…
SAT 9/20 Go, go, speed racer. Go before the checkered flags fall on the winners in what is fast becoming an annual episode of race fever in the Magic City. Billed as Race Week Miami, an array of activities has been scheduled around the upcoming full-throttled Super Boat International National…
THUR 9/18 Excuse us, but where the hell has Grover been? You know, the blue Muppet with the big round head, skinny body and limbs, and unidentifiable accent. A popular fixture on the kiddie show Sesame Street for many years, Grover, overshadowed by newbies like Zoe, Rosita, and the third-person-obsessed…
FRI 9/19 Remember the good old days when our greatest fear was not terrorists but communists? Compared with what’s gone on in the world lately, domestic agitators like the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers seem almost innocuous these days. Our preferred kick-ass activist of the past? Angela Davis. She…
SUN 9/21 Yeah, baby! She began as an icon in swinging ’60s London; had a nude scene in Michelangelo Antonioni’s controversial film Blowup; lived in Paris with her incomparably hip husband, musician Serge Gainsbourg; and was immortalized as the breathy vocalist in the scandalously sexy song “Je T’aime Moi Non…
One of the lamentable aspects of modern American society is the absence of political discourse in public life. “Never talk about politics or religion” goes the old saw, and Americans don’t, as a rule, do so in social contexts, and they often go ballistic when artists get political. Apparently being…
