Merchant Ivory productions — Howard’s End and A Room With a View being two of the most notable — are famous for their almost tactile sense of time and place. The company’s latest effort, The Mystic Masseur, which was not directed by the team’s customary director, James Ivory, but by…
Long before chart-toppers We Are The World and Feed the World, French woodworker and lyricist Eugene Pottier accomplished what Michael Jackson and Sir Bob Geldoff only feigned at doing: igniting a social movement and uniting the world with a simple song. With the words to the 1871 Internationale, the Frenchman…
From the early 1930s through the late 1950s, the joint, as the phrase goes, was jumping in Overtown. Back then locals called the area Colored Town, and the stretch along Second Avenue between Sixth and Tenth streets — known variously as Little Broadway, the Strip, and the Great Black Way…
Learning through laughing has been the mission of South Florida’s Fantasy Theatre Factory for more than twenty years. Founded in New York by Mimi Schultz and Ed Allen, two energetic teachers who would later become husband and wife, the touring theater troupe arose from the couple’s frustration with the limitations…
At this very moment, members of the Television Critics Association are gathered at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena, California, to preview this fall’s new series, interview those responsible for them and, finally, gorge themselves silly and drink themselves stupid on the networks’ dwindling dime. This event, the so-called “press tour,” takes…
Think of it as Todd Solondz light — loads of dysfunction but, thankfully, none of the perversion. In fact despite deep-seated neuroses, occasionally inappropriate behavior, and a propensity for unhealthy relationships, the four females who are the Marks family are a fairly benevolent lot. As observed by writer-director Nicole Holofcener,…
It took the creative giants behind MIIB (a.k.a. Men in Black II) five years to come up with a disappointingly flat and uninspired sequel that not only treads familiar ground but does so with far less pizzazz than the original. It took the forces behind Stuart Little 2 a mere…
The founding fathers of democracy, the greatest warriors and fearless revolutionaries who shaped modern societies and died for their causes, have been reduced, over centuries, to meaningless symbols that decorate parks and national plazas. Their bronze statues are seen in grand majesty throughout the world, but as the Colombian film…
Goulds. It’s a place that sounds as if it belonged somewhere else. Goulds, West Virginia, maybe. Or Goulds, North Dakota. Certainly not Goulds, Florida. But more than a few lifelong South Floridians have driven a little too fast down U.S. 1 and certainly missed the town, which developed in the…
Not far from South Beach in the patio of a Little Haiti stronghold, young adults indulge in personal expression that goes beyond tank tops and bling bling. The desire for fun and freedom unites these people, but the main draw every Monday night is body language, voice, and music employed…
A pal asked last week, “Who you writing about?” Told him, “Art Linson,” which screwed his face into a big ol’ question mark. “He’s a movie producer. He made Heat, Fight Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Untouchables, Car Wash…” Said said friend upon hearing that last one, “Dude…
MAM’s “Ultrabaroque: Aspects of Post-Latin American Art,” the exhibit curated by Elizabeth Armstrong and Victor Zamudio-Taylor that landed here from San Diego, presents works by artists from Latin America who negotiate contemporary global trends within their own local traditions. But this is not a witty or humorous label. To categorize…
This is not your average film festival, of which we know there are far too many. This is a multimedia mix that’s all about archival images; if that sounds out in left screen, it’s maybe because it is. Documentaries from Ron Mann (one reviewed below) are some of the most…
Utter the name Skipper Chuck to a long-time Miami kid and he’ll be transported back to a world of “peace, love, and happiness,” where a gentle host held his young audience in thrall, plying them with cartoons, puppets, sidekicks (including zany Scrubby and wholesome babe Cher), and games such as…
Elizabeth Marsh’s hobby allows her to slip into flowing dresses with draping sleeves and four-foot trains. When she dines, she uses only a knife and spoon. And all her cohorts address her as “Your Excellency.” In the so-called mundane world (reality), Marsh is a broadcast coordinator at Florida International University…
They stream in and out, all day and all night, one after the other: band members, producers, business associates, friends, family, strangers, hangers-on who stare at the familiar face made infamous long ago. The tour bus, this parked sanctuary where he can roll his joints and drink his bottled Starbucks…
At 82, Eric Rohmer is the oldest of the original group of French New Wave directors — the others include Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard — whose careers in film started with the journal Cahiers du Cinema. Yet as is apparent from his latest film, The Lady and…
Like a Jawbreaker that changes color every few seconds that you suck it, MIIB: Men in Black II delivers a quick buzz, lots of stuff to look at, and a totally nonnutritious joy that can only be attained with the aid of artificial flavorings and Yellow #5. In a nutshell,…
Take about a dozen people lubricated with beverages, alcoholic and not, appetites whetted by spareribs with Hoisin sauce. Put them in a luxuriously sparse kitchen showroom in the Design District. Add a patient instructor offering directions while wielding a spatula and well-seasoned wok — cast iron, please, not carbon steel!…
Cigar-chomping, fatigues-wearing Fidel Castro impersonators. Flamboyant flamenco dancers in drag. Political humor geared toward older Cubans, who erupt in laughter at the thought of Fidel’s brother Raul scurrying about in a tutu. Until recently live theater on Eighth Street (with a few exceptions) has included such a hodgepodge of acts…
Ancient festivals served as markers for human progress, celebrating the passing of time and the progression of the community. Although seasonal changes, harvests, and rites of passage are not the focus of today’s festivals, these celebrations still provide a forum for assessing a community’s evolution. Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “Life must…
In dramaturgical terms, a play by a man about men is called theater — from Hamlet to Nixon’s Nixon, male playwrights, actors, and themes are not distinguished as “men’s theater” (and thankfully so). In contrast a play by a woman about women is frequently dubbed “women’s theater,” “touchy-feely,” “man hating,”…
