Last month GQ ran a disquietingly flattering profile of Joe Roth, who, in January 2000, quit his gig as Walt Disney Studios chairman to “revolutionize the industry” (GQ’s words) by forming his own studio. With a billion bucks on loan from men with money and bridges to burn — among…
The first day of May is significant for many people. Ancient Celts and Saxons commemorated it to mark the end of winter and the start of spring planting season. Medieval craft guilds elected a May queen and danced around the maypole in hopes of a fruitful harvest. In 1889 Paris,…
“How to be a Non-Stop Beauty” promises a line on a colorful Harper’s Bazaar cover from January 1970, where an electric-blue female swimmer clad in a white bikini and red-and-white bathing cap crouches. Her arms lifted straight up and head bent down, she appears more than ready to take a…
Most everyone knows the two masks of the theater: the sorrowful mask of tragedy and the gleeful one of comedy. Tragedy (or at least drama) is usually serious and “elevated” and therefore tends toward social acceptability: Because drama is serious, the society it portrays is to be taken seriously. Comedy,…
Combine sinuous DNA-like patterns, a mandala chart, geodesic marks, disco glitter, third-eye cut-ups, Arabic calligraphy, and kabbalah clues and you get a pretty disparate global vision. But if it’s Gean Moreno doing the combining, it seems to make sense. His “Nannies, Narcos, Suicide Girl Six, and Makbara’s Miraculous Ice Palace…
“This is contrary to how we grew up,” Stacy Peralta is saying a few minutes after getting dropped off at a newspaper office by a limo driver. The 45-year-old Peralta, still SoCal handsome and boyish beneath a ball cap and behind a well-trimmed beard, grins long and hard–a real hell-yeah…
American entries to the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in short supply this year? Fine. Let’s see how lesbians in Slovenia do it. That’s right, Slovenia. And judging from Maja Weiss’s excellent feature Guardian of the Frontier (Varuh Meje), they do it damn well. It being filmmaking, of course…
The covered pavilion was sparse, psychics scattered, one to a table. A purveyor of New Age relics — incense and oils, stones and jewelry — chatted into her cell phone. The occasional hot dog and soda sold at the concession. On the lawn nearby, a lone man played creepy, upbeat…
Straining to describe to a tropical fish dummy the appearance of the moorish idol, one of the dozens of different species he keeps in his sixteen home aquaria, Rafael Estenoz resorts to the more familiar realm of home furnishings. “You’ll see them on a lot of bathroom curtains that depict…
Peter Bogdanovich, maybe the last man alive who wears a neckerchief without irony, holds a copy of a newspaper article in which his old friend Larry McMurtry is saying nice, or not nice, things about him–Bogdanovich can’t tell which. “He’s kind of risen from the dead,” McMurtry was quoted as…
So the issue of identity as a theme in a gay and lesbian festival may seem redundant — aren’t all gay films by nature dealing with sexual identity? Well, here comes a surprise at this year’s fest: Identity in a much broader sense is indeed the theme, including what should…
As a child Miami-born-and-raised Glenn Terry didn’t own a Water Wiggle or a Slip ‘n’ Slide, and he only recently began drinking the recommended eight glasses of water a day. So what led to his affinity for liquid? “I’m a Pisces,” he giggles. And what ignited the idea for the…
In nature (and on lottery tickets), flamingos seem perfectly happy being pink. On South Beach, of course, fabulous fashion rules. There flamingos sport high heels, hats, and bikinis. Such creativity ensues when dozens of South Florida artists apply their talents to seven-foot likenesses of the tropical icon. Separate public art…
What’s your pleasure, the sizzle or the steak? The Coconut Grove Playhouse offers both in its latest production, a musical revue called The Soul of George Gershwin: the Musical Journey of an American Klezmer. It’s a studious, educational show that also happens to offer some outstanding vocal and instrumental artistry…
After more than two years writing for this column, I’ve witnessed a tremendous growth in the arts in Miami: New galleries, better shows, a fresh breed of young local talent, exciting alternative projects, involved museums, and upcoming this year, an international art fair. But there are also other voices within…
An eighteenth-century battle of the sexes, Triumph of Love contains a radiant performance by Mira Sorvino as a princess whose complicated scheme to win the man she loves finds her juggling three suitors at once, all while disguised as a man. “I’m losing track of my own plot,” she giddily…
Ah, jealousy. Scourge of the spirit and seed of countless wicked plots, the green-eyed beast guarantees gripping drama. Celebrated British playwright Sir Peter Shaffer (Equus) seems to have grasped this concept in reorchestrating the intertwined lives of eighteenth-century composers Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Adapting his hit London and…
Quiz composer/vocalist Lila Downs about her striking resemblance (minus the unibrow) to troubled Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and surprisingly she doesn’t tear your head off or sigh impatiently. Ask her the question, which she’s heard 100 times, and Downs gently explains she’s not that unusual: “If you go to Oaxaca,…
Revolution is often sparked by the simplest of weapons — a voice, a guitar, a message. Such is the tradition of trova, an acoustic musical movement that blossomed in revolutionary Cuba and spread through South America in the 1970s. Also known as nueva trova and nueva cancion, its heroes, Cubans…
On a good day, Mark Cuban might respond to a journalist’s query with a terse, unpunctuated e-mail that reads like something dashed off by a hostage while his captors are in the can. It’s understandable: The man’s running the Dallas Mavericks, investing in movie distribution and exhibition companies, sticking it…
Bee-luther-hatchee (noun, African-American slang, 1920s-1940s): a far away, damnable place, the next station after the stop for Hell. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But in Florida Stage’s intriguing new production, Bee-luther-hatchee, hell isn’t the final destination. There’s another torment ahead, so dreadful it doesn’t…
Roberto Matta Echaurren was born in Santiago de Chile in 1911. He graduated as an architect in 1931, moved to Paris in 1935, and landed a job in Le Corbusier’s architectural office. Then he switched to a different design. He befriended the inner circle of Surrealists in 1936, though by…
