One of the fascinating oddities of theater in South Florida is the offbeat locations where it turns up. Local companies are found in some of the least likely places: The Caldwell Theatre and Florida Stage are in strip malls, the Broward Stage Door sits behind an IHOP. The Mosaic is…
At a time when painting seems to be metamorphosing into myriad subcategories, few of them include direct figurative images set out of the ordinary. Christian Curiel is an exception to this contemporary rule and his exhibit at Leonard Tachmes Gallery proves it. Curiel, who usually explores clannish young male scenarios…
Roger Avary’s screenplay for The Rules of Attraction is a remarkable work of literature: the disassembly and reconstruction of an impenetrable book by Bret Easton Ellis; a simplification and amplification of the 1987 novel’s attack on the bored, beautiful, and wealthy; a streamlined and mainlined version of a story originally…
The legend of director Werner Herzog goes something like this: Raised in a remote mountain village in the Black Forest of Germany, the young director-to-be lived with no television or telephone and had few lines of communication to the world outside. At age fourteen he began traveling long distances by…
Check beneath overpasses throughout Miami during the evening and you’re sure to find more than just the homeless, assures Greynolds Park naturalist Paula Schneeburger. Making their home there as well: bats. Yes, you’re not in Transylvania anymore, Dorothy. South Florida can lay claim to a small population of the world’s…
For the members of the Bonsai Society of Miami, size matters. Rather than dwell on the large, this assortment of tree lovers think diminutive is the desired scale — at least where miniature potted trees are concerned. Nevertheless the eight-year-old group (formed when the Bonsai Club of Miami and the…
Theater in South Florida was once the realm of musicals and light comedies, with dramas mighty scarce. Now the scene features theater of all kinds — fierce as well as frothy. But what remains rare are plays with immediate, topical subjects. Despite the disturbing real-life drama in contemporary America, most…
Brad Silberling’s instincts are right about half the time, which means that, depending upon your point of view, his films are either half-empty or half-full. His last picture, 1998’s City of Angels, an American remake of Wim Wenders’s poetic Wings of Desire, tried to marry European art-house cinema with mainstream…
The catering company that provided sustenance to the cast and crew of Just a Kiss, the feature directorial debut of actor Fisher Stevens, is named Cecil B. Demeals. It’s one small detail in a list of credits that appears after most casual moviegoers have walked out of the theater. So…
In her 1993 novel In Troubled Waters, Beverly Coyle depicts tensions arising in the fictional Central Florida town of Point Breeze when Tom Glover, 91-year-old patriarch of a cracker family, hires clever black 13-year-old Ted Johnson to help the old man look after his Alzheimer’s-afflicted son-in-law. Jumping between the present…
“People don’t expect such sophisticated expression from an underdeveloped country,” observed Cuban graphic designer Félix Beltrán during the recent opening of “¡Propaganda! Cuban Political and Film Posters 1960-1990” at the New World School of the Arts Gallery. Showcasing rare works that symbolized the island’s revolutionary ethos, promoted social programs and…
The last time I dropped by the Mosaic Theatre in Plantation last season, the company was presenting Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, a three-man hostage drama, to an audience of six in a bare, uninviting auditorium. Flash-forward to this month as the Mosaic presents another three-person show, The Complete Works…
Where is the dividing line between romantic devotion and psychotic obsession? How can you know whether your romance is Titanic … or Fatal Attraction? Veteran Spanish writer-director Vicente Aranda (Lovers) uses the story of Queen Joan “the Mad” (1479-1555) — daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, mother of Charles I of…
Twenty years after the rise of gangsta rap, its rebellious legacy is hollow, at least in the U.S. Once the voice of youthful defiance, American hip-hop now espouses a slickly marketed bling-bling message. The original agitators, if not dead, are now soft and fat, spouting songs about hot booty, pricey…
So there’s no confusion, the star of Sweet Home Alabama is Reese Witherspoon, who graces the film’s poster in full-body pout and appears on the press kit in closeup mug-shot smirk; any closer, and we’d shoot up her nostrils and exit through her pores. Of course there’s a great deal…
For artists Gina Cunningham and Peter Eves, innocently pursuing their own interests inadvertently leads to promoting international understanding. In the early Nineties, their fascination with all things Haitian resulted in them opening South Beach’s highly touted Tap-Tap restaurant, serving generous portions of Haitian cuisine and culture to clueless South Floridians…
Remember this: Even though the New York Times is finally running same-sex commitment notices in its “Sunday Styles” section among hetero wedding announcements, it doesn’t mean gay weddings are legally kosher — at least not outside the state of Vermont. Nevertheless despite the unlawful status, tying the queer knot is…
Havana has lived many lives. One of the first cities founded by the Spanish, it became a great port city of the New World, then suffered through the vicissitudes of colonialism and independence to become an eclectically vibrant center by early last century. Then came the upheavals of another revolution,…
Among the more preposterous rumors spread by Harry Knowles, whose Ain’t It Cool News movie-biz-gossip Website garners undue attention from studios too craven to do their own thinking, was one from the year’s beginning: Terrence Malick, Knowles “reported,” was working on an adaptation of The Catcher in the Rye for…
Although his name sounds like an inventory notebook for candy bars, Heath Ledger is presently overcoming this confusion — as well as the plight of the pretty boy — to become one of contemporary cinema’s more vital actors. In The Four Feathers — as in The Patriot, A Knight’s Tale,…
A possibly apocryphal tale about Little Haiti nightspot Churchill’s says that one night an armed man bounded in, demanding everyone at the bar hand over their wallets and valuables, which they reluctantly did. Then he ordered them to lie face down on the floor. That’s where the terrified crowd drew…
According to the American Library Association, Saturday, September 21, marks the first day of Banned Books Week. For the past 21 years the ALA along with several other co-sponsors have been exalting free speech and expression by commemorating one’s right to read anything. Fighting tenaciously against the closed-minded minions who…
