Call architect Norman Giller the man who made MIMo. Of course in 1949 when he was designing buildings such as the first ever two-story motel, Sunny Isles’ Ocean Palm, the last thing on his mind was what style he was utilizing. “Styles are something that historians give to architecture,” says…
When Murray Moss, owner of the seven-year-old SoHo boutique called moss, talks shop, it’s a bit different than a typical New York City storekeeper. Perhaps that’s because moss is not your ordinary store. The 7000-square-foot space boasts white walls and sleek glass-fronted display cases that show off lamps, candleholders, cutlery,…
There cannot be man, woman, child or beast alive who does not know that on November 6, Fox will debut its new series 24. Long before the fall season was to begin, it had already been appointed the most anticipated and beloved show of the year–by critics who had seen…
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl: the classic model for romantic comedy and drama. According to Rebecca Gilman, it’s also the prescription for obsessive stalking. Gilman, an up-and-coming playwright with a penchant for issue-oriented suspense, has served up a hyperrealistic portrait of one woman’s nightmare in the…
My art chronicle begins on a rainy Friday night, on my way to Ambrosino Gallery in North Miami. Upon arrival I don’t find too many people, but those there are staunch art lovers. In spite of the rain, they gather by the door. “The less people there are at exhibits,”…
Revolutionary times have always been tempting backdrops for film stories. Some are fictional epics set against a historical backdrop (Dr. Zhivago, The Year of Living Dangerously). In these there’s plenty of personal drama, love, and thrills, with the historical setting essentially background to the fictional derring-do. An alternative approach is…
A Miami fundraiser that asks attendees to dress down instead of up, that replaces dining and dancing with digging and planting? That’s so wacky it just might work. And, in fact, it does. Last year 2500 corporate and individual volunteers pitched in at 25 sites for the sixth annual Hands…
“This was the mecca of Yiddish culture other than New York in this country,” says David Weintraub, executive director of the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture, offering a surprising fact about Miami and explaining why Teitelboim — a Yiddish poet, activist, and labor organizer, who lived from 1914 to…
You don’t have to open a vein to give at this Red Cross benefit, just your wallet (and bargain seats are available). The first annual South Florida Dance for Life, an offshoot of Chicago’s successful AIDS/HIV fundraiser that originated in 1992, will transfuse the local dance scene while raising funds…
On November 4, some 1,800 television personalities–actors, writers, producers, show-runners, network executives–will, finally, parade into a Los Angeles theater to award their peers and themselves for a job well done. They will, at long last, hand out the golden statues known as Emmy, just as it has been done every…
In more than a few ways, producing live theater is akin to staging a military campaign, involving rapidly changing logistical considerations of time and personnel and never enough money. Generals must marshal their limited resources, placing assets where they will be the most effective. That also is the way it…
The air of danger that surrounds Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl (À Ma Soeur) never lets up, which is unusual for a film that doesn’t mean to be a thriller. Rather it’s a merciless look at adolescent insecurity, the mixed signals of emerging desire, and the ruthlessness of carnal gamesmanship that,…
Not long ago you could look and look and look for revivals, and the screen would remain blank. No more. Apocalypse Now Redux pulled in large crowds, and The Wide Blue Road also did well. Re-releases of classics from Fellini, Godard, and Melville are planned for the next couple of…
Where ghosts are, Linda Spitzer usually follows. Neither parapsychologist nor a ghostbuster, Spitzer is a storyteller of long standing who has entertained South Floridians all over town. The self-described “ghost maven of Miami” founded the Miami Storytellers Guild in 1990. But she is best-known locally for her nearly eight-year stint…
Where is the epicenter of live theater in South Florida? There are several contenders, but none can top Coral Gables, with five professional companies in residence. If you toss in the Coconut Grove Playhouse, just down the road, and City Stage, which books the University of Miami theater in the…
The still life is probably most famous in its nineteenth-century form: assorted fruits on a plate, next to a wine bottle, and a terra cotta figurine on top of the mantelpiece. Cezanne’s image of nature, or simply an example of bourgeois décor? But the history of still life goes back…
Two weeks ago, it would have been possible to use the name of the man interviewed below; indeed, it would have been expected, as he is no mere “spokesman,” the only identifier by which he is to be referred. Two weeks ago, it would have been possible to point out…
What is pornography? If someone can give me a workable definition, I’d have a better handle on Baise-Moi (Rape Me), a new French film about two women on the run that contains extreme violence and hard-core sex. Apparently the French government was shocked by this film and banned it as…
Ask David Lynch and he will tell you apple-pie America just isn’t what it seems. People behave strangely, sometimes violently, and sometimes they even transform into different people without being polite enough to warn you first. Eerie and freaky, shot through with sporadic bursts of humor and sex, Mulholland Drive…
Amazing how some buildings can look truly hideous in the daytime, while by the light of the moon or artificial illumination they are suddenly remade into ethereal works of art. Some structures, says architect, architectural historian, and Brown University professor Dietrich Neumann, are actually designed to look especially dazzling at…
On October 3, there appeared in The New York Times an article about how movie studios are struggling to find new villains in a post-September 11 environment. Writer Rick Lyman rounded up the usual suspects: a few film producers, a couple of screenwriters and the requisite amount of film scholars,…
One of the toughest decisions in my job is choosing which show to cover. Given the amount of theatrical activity in South Florida, there just is not enough room to review every show. This week, though, the choice was easy: I was going to New York. My long-time friend and…
