You have to wonder about a circus that has a mission statement. Devoid of midgets, animals, and freaks, Cirque du Soleil is no ordinary spectacle. No girls hanging from their hair, no men shooting out of cannons, no dancing elephants. Just a bunch of highly flexible acrobats clad in brightly…
Charging lions, smiling natives, preening supermodels — all have their place in the life of intrepid photographer Peter Beard. Born in 1938 into an affluent family, the dashing Beard eschewed studies in medicine in favor of art. Reading Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa compelled him to visit that continent in…
Sometimes, usually out on the golf course near his home in upstate New York, Dan DeCarlo feels terrific, far younger than his 81 years. He’ll thwack the ball, reflect upon his 55 years of marriage to the same beautiful woman and occasionally contemplate a life spent drawing and creating some…
But God rattled on in his holy language about all kinds of important stuff, life-and-death stuff, and Moses just sat there like a Grade A number one goof, not understanding a single word. Well, you know what he felt like? He felt like some miserable little twelve-year-old kid from West…
Little has been said about the ubiquitous effect of irony in much of today’s art. Irony allows detachment, a trend that may have started with Dada, the first anarchic movement in modern art history. After a catastrophic first world war, Dadaists had good reasons to resent absolutes. When Genezyp Kapen,…
The renowned South African playwright Athol Fugard has one commanding subject: his vivid social outcasts’ lifelong confrontation with the oppression of apartheid, and the nobility of their survival. In Boesman and Lena, written in 1969 as the third part of a dramatic trilogy that also included Blood Knot and Hello…
Lance Barton, thin as paper and frail as fine china, is such a horrific stand-up that during an amateur-night performance at the Apollo Theater, he is booed with so much force, he’s literally knocked off the stage. Lance’s manager insists he’s a failure because he’s afraid of being himself: Lance…
The four friends at the center of the smart 1998 Venezuelan social satire Little Thieves, Big Thieves (Cien Años de Perdon) recall the motley group of male strippers in the British sleeper The Full Monty (1997). Like the underdogs of that film, the foursome in Thieves is composed of desperate…
When the lights finally came up in the Washington, D.C., movie theater, Leonard Nimoy sat still, silent, and a bit shaken. He could scarcely believe what he had seen–and what he had not seen. The movie was beautiful, but beneath the surface sheen, there was no heart, no soul. It…
If the British have a love-hate relationship with the French, it could be said that Americans have a laugh-hate relationship with the Brits. What we find riotously funny in them is what we abhor in ourselves: repressed sexuality, sniveling impishness, and hostility behind a thin veneer of civility. Words like…
The Twentieth Century is replete with examples of unconscionable crimes carried out in the name of some quasi-political, military, or religious cause — acts of such misguided judgment and mindless brutality that they seem to cross an invisible threshold of decency, morality, and understanding. The My Lai massacre of 1968,…
Film has always turned to classic literature for inspiration, but rare is the film adaptation that dodges the Scylla and Charybdis of the trade: too much reverence leads to inert moviemaking, too little results in parody. In Time Regained Chilean director Raoul Ruiz has taken on the Mount Everest of…
The idea that slavery existed in past centuries is disturbing enough. To think that it still exists somewhere in the world is even more troubling. But it does go on today in northwestern Africa and other parts of the Arab world, where Africans use the force of Islam’s doctrines to…
Renowned video artist Nam June Paik describes his first Miami artistic encounter with good humor. Back in 1987 he was invited to create an installation for Miami International Airport. Unfortunately his televisions took wing: “They stole half of my TVs,” he laughs. Eastern Airlines, the project’s original location, crashed financially,…
Eddie Izzard knows precisely why he wanted to become a performer, be it an actor or stand-up comedian or, for that matter, a street performer entertaining passers-by for spare change. When he was 6 years old, Izzard was living in South Wales with his parents and older brother. Before that,…
Most modern dramas about marriage and infidelity dwell on the clandestine nature of extramarital affairs and the havoc they wreak on everyone involved. Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing picks up where most such tales leave off, delving into what happens after the cheaters have sloughed off their former spouses and…
Beauty, once one of the most desired terms in the art lexicon, might be on the verge of extinction. We don’t describe things as beautiful anymore. Our evaluations tend toward fleeting states of mind, reflecting habits, places, even casual encounters. Saying “fun” or “cool” does the job when we want…
Watching this film is like watching a donkey being beaten for 90 minutes, so egregiously is the titular character treated and so powerless does she appear against her offenders. That the abuse is treated in a comedic fashion for a good part of the film makes it even more unacceptable…
Have you heard? Beauty’s only skin deep. Pay attention now: When it comes to love, experience is the best teacher. And just in case you didn’t know: Youth is wasted on the young. Such are the banalities director Tonie Marshall dispenses, more or less, in Venus Beauty Institute, a French…
Outside avant-garde or experimental showcases, short dramatic films used to be little more than a means to an end — a risky route to an uncertain mainstream future. Getting one made usually was easy enough, as these things go. The hard part was getting it shown, especially if you were…
Aside from relentless rain or bitter cold, what could possibly deter throngs of tourists from traipsing all over Ocean Drive on any given weekend? Chalk, that’s what. The bittersweet reminder of endless childhood days spent in the classroom nevertheless will attempt to attract visitors no longer haunted by sneeze-inducing dust…
Just because Miami, at a little more than 100 years old, is so young, doesn’t mean its history is any easier to figure out than that of an older town. Our callow condition notwithstanding, misconceptions abound. Ask any Miami buff what purpose was served by the small limestone and wood…
