“May he rest in peace,” were the ominous words in the subject line of the e-mail North Miami art gallery owner Genaro Ambrosino sent on September 17. The “he” referred to Michael Richards, Ambrosino’s friend and one of the artists he represented. Only a week before, Richards had been sculpting…
A few weeks ago, in the wake of the unfathomable events that had unfolded in New York City, novelist Jonathan Franzen found himself with poet Maya Angelou, journalist David Halberstam, and writer Bebe Moore Campbell being interviewed by Ted Koppel on ABC television. Early in the program, the usually well-informed…
Before he was editor in chief at Marvel Comics–which, by all rights, makes him the man who tells Spider-Man what he can do with himself and the X-Men where to go–Joe Quesada illustrated a comic book titled Ash. The title did not last long; there was, perhaps, little market for…
Amid warehouses and train tracks on NE Flagler in Fort Lauderdale, the new Sol Theatre Project’s neon logo lights up the dark night like a cheery inn. The interior space is disarming. With a bookcase crammed with scripts, a large-mouthed bass mounted over a window, mismatched couches, and stuffed chairs,…
Together is the second feature from Swedish director Lukas Moodysson, whose 1998 Fucking Amal was shown here two years ago under the title Show Me Love, renamed for obvious reasons. Together is an ensemble piece — a sharp, perceptive look at a Swedish commune in a suburb of Stockholm, circa…
Ah, the backstage show-biz story. A classic movie genre. Think Bullets over Broadway, think Shakespeare in Love, think The Producers. Seen one, seen ’em all, you say? Consider this real-life scenario: A musical director from India plans to produce an Italian opera in Italy. He asks a Chinese director to…
“He doesn’t fit in anywhere,” says painter Carlos Suarez de Jesus about his Cuban-American colleague Sergio Garcia. “He’s constantly struggling with a sense of otherness.” Suarez de Jesus could very well be referring to himself, his equally creative wife Vivian Marthell, and the posse of artists who show at their…
I don’t know what motivated Rafael de Acha and his New Theatre to produce Nilo Cruz’s new play Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams. Maybe it was the topicality and locality of a South Florida production of a play about Cuban Americans searching for their roots. Cruz himself has been…
In The Medium Is the Message: An Inventory of Effects (1967), Marshall McLuhan envisioned the Global Village, a synchronized world where time and space has vanished and multimedia engulfs everyone. McLuhan thought the media would put us back in touch with ancestral emotions, from which print had divorced us. Charming…
Rene Balcer, like you and everyone you know, can’t stop talking about what we now refer to simply as The Attack. We may resume our lives, fall back into our routine until it again feels mundane and comforting, but sooner or later, The Attack becomes the only topic of conversation…
The cynic may notice only how Hearts in Atlantis plays like a Stephen King best-of compilation, a reheating of familiar stories and favorite themes. At times it feels so much like Stand By Me — with its nostalgic, flashback tale of cherubs and bullies accompanied by sad and weary narration…
Who’s afraid of the big bad building? No one, if it shows off sleek Streamline Moderne-style lines. Because for the unschooled, architecture in Miami stopped in the early Forties when houses, hotels, and public buildings looked vaguely cruise-ship-like, as if inhabitants would be suddenly cast adrift in the middle of…
“Love each other or perish” — W.H. Auden When the Jewish Museum of Florida’s current exhibition, “The Art of Hatred: Images of Intolerance in Florida Culture,” opened back in May, the institution’s founding executive director, Marcia Zerivitz, knew how important it was. What she didn’t know: how horribly prescient it…
On September 13, at 11:30 a.m., Bryce Zabel was to have met with USA Network executives about a miniseries he was pitching to the cable outlet. Zabel, creator of such television shows as Dark Skies and The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, had the conference on his calendar for weeks. But,…
Since the here and now has been so visceral these last days, many South Floridians may have spent little time looking ahead. But eventually they should, when it comes to theater. The upcoming season looks promising; both established companies and upstarts have ambitious plans. As has been the case for…
The beautiful little conceit at the heart of Brad Anderson’s Happy Accidents is that audiences will sit still once more for the crackpot notion of time travel — and in a movie that’s not science fiction. To his credit, and with an implied bow to Back to the Future and…
Let’s see — which movie sports the most clichés? Outside of the Naked Gun-style spoofs, The Monkey’s Mask, a new murder-mystery from Australia, is a serious contender for that dubious honor. The Monkey’s Mask is essentially a run-of-the-mill film noir whodunit with a central twist: The wisecracking, lonely gumshoe hero…
A white rhinestone-studded jumpsuit once worn by Elvis Presley during a 1970s concert in Miami. A 1964 mug shot from the Tallahassee Police Department depicting the handsome mug of Doors singer Jim Morrison. The piano on which the memorable refrain from Eric Clapton’s “Layla” was pounded out. The Gainesville High…
In 1989 a boatload of Holocaust survivors watched as a German yacht with a dubious history and unconfirmed connections to Hitler was dropped to the bottom of Miami-Dade waters. As it turns out, the Ostwind is not the only yacht of German origin buried here. At the sandy edge of…
Julie Davis’s All Over the Guy is yet another entry in the ever-growing genre of gay romantic comedy. Ten years ago one would have led off by saying, “It’s a romantic comedy but with a twist: They’re both men!” or “It’s When Harry Met Solly…!” It’s a step in the…
When marching-band director Tyrone Brown asks his Jackie Robinson Steppers, “Are you motivated?” he’s not so much inquiring as presenting a challenge. It’s the middle of a sweltering summer in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, where tensions, temptations, and distractions are omnipresent. Synchronizing 60 players — while diverting some of them…
Is the stage half empty or half full? Depends on your improvisational skills, David Christopher would say. While some consider it theater’s ugly cousin, Christopher, an actor, instructor, and one of the founding members of the Just the Funny Improv Comedy Theater Company, contends that improv is an essential part…
