Chinese cinema has long been at the forefront of modern moviemaking, but widespread recognition of this fact has been a long time coming, at least in the United States. Although enthusiasm for Hong Kong-style kung fu movies dates to Bruce Lee in the Seventies, such fervor generally has been derided…
September 9, 1966: Adam Sandler is born in Brooklyn, New York. He is raised in Manchester, New Hampshire. September 1987: Sandler joins Ken Ober, Colin Quinn, and Denis Leary as cast member on MTV’s game show Remote Control. Sometime in 1989: Sandler lands first starring role in a movie, playing…
Keep a diary, and one day it’ll keep you,” said Mae West, and while the sentiment rings true, it does little to explain the mystery of why Helen Fielding’s sliver of literary history managed to keep anyone. Fluffy, shrill, and approximately as deep as Cosmo magazine, the book somehow hit…
From: Nina.Korman@miaminewtimes.com To: RussellPerreault@randomhouse.com Subject: Dave Eggers? Hi, Russell: I’m the calendar editor at Miami New Times newspaper. Do you think there’s any chance I could speak to Dave Eggers on the phone (briefly!) next week for an interview in anticipation of his reading in Miami? Best, Nina Korman Author:RussellPerreault@randomhouse.com…
Ellie Schneiderman can’t seem to look at property and not think about artists — how they populate a blighted area and eventually get driven out of their spaces when the rest of the world catches on to how hip the enclave has become. A long-time ceramist and tireless activist, Schneiderman…
This is how famous Denis Leary is: He begins and ends a story by saying, “To this day, when I see Mick…,” and by Mick, he means Mick Jagger. They became pals, oh, seven years back, when the Rolling Stones were on that week’s farewell tour, kickin’ it in the…
When one thinks of William Shakespeare, great cities such as London come to mind. That’s why much ado is being made about the 29th annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, which will be held April 12 through April 14 in Miami. Each year a different city is chosen…
Justice may be blind, but vengeance, it turns out, has a very short memory. So it goes in Memento, the much anticipated “puzzle” movie from Christopher Nolan (Following), which — as is already fairly well-known — plays out its plot more or less in reverse. Pitting the protagonist (and us)…
Easily the creepiest (and by far the most interesting) thing about Along Came a Spider, yet another adaptation of one of James Patterson’s alleged mystery novels featuring beleaguered Det. Alex Cross, is how much costar Monica Potter looks, sounds, and acts like Julia Roberts. Granted it’s hardly a revelation to…
Hello, what’s this? Could it be another cautionary tale from Hollywood about recreational drugs being — alert the media! — not particularly good for people? Indeed with Blow, director Ted Demme (Beautiful Girls, Monument Ave.) has set us up with a morality tale in which the moral is obvious from…
Alone on a stage, without props, just a microphone to speak in, a stool to sit on, playing a slew of characters. Monologist/lyricist/writer/actor David Cale wouldn’t have it any other way. The British expatriate, who has penned and starred in six one-man shows, including the Obie Award-winning Lillian, readily admits…
“For those of you who think feng shui’s easy, it’s not,” said Jami Lin to a crowd of 40 or so professionally attired adults in Miami’s Design District last month. Lin, an interior designer, author, and feng shui consultant who has studied with masters Yap Cheng Hai and Lin Yun,…
Ennio Morricone can tell you stories about each of his 400 children–where they were conceived, what they mean to him, why each one remains so singular and special he cannot and will not choose a favorite. He’s proud even of the orphans, the runts, the bastards, the children long ago…
To drink green beer. To vomit green beer. To pinch fellow green-beer drinkers who are not wearing an article of green clothing. Let’s face it, this is the stuff of Saint Patrick’s Day. But that’s in the rest of the nation. In Miami there are about two bars that attract…
In the best of all possible worlds, a veteran art teacher would decide to shake up the inertia of the system with the quixotic idea of recruiting inner-city high school students for an art program he builds from scratch; then he would end up sending his graduates to the best…
As its title suggests, Spy Kids is an action fantasy aimed primarily at the preteen/early-teen audience. For all its thrills — and it has plenty — it’s strictly a PG film, which is all the more surprising when you consider its source: Robert Rodriguez, master of bloody gunplay and monster…
Amid the plethora of films with Freddie Prinze, Jr., Mena Suvari, Chris Klein, and Jason Biggs, it’s nice — in theory at least — to see a contemporary romantic comedy, like Someone Like You, where the characters, while hardly over the hill, are all over 30. In practice, however, “nice”…
Despite its rather odd name, the organization dubbed MIAPUG! has nothing to do with chubby smash-faced dogs that roam wild through Miami International Airport. The moniker actually describes a group of enthusiastic PDA aficionados. Okay, we’ll stop with the acronyms. PDA stands for personal digital assistant, the latest accessory people…
“This isn’t about trying to turn any place into Miami Beach or trying to duplicate Miami Beach,” says Randall Robinson. “It’s about offering the experiences of Miami Beach to people so they can take from it what they will, to lend a hand because we know that nobody wants the…
Violet represents the quintessentially American spiritual journey: the road trip. Set in 1964, it is the story of a young woman named Violet (Jennifer Hughes) who travels by Greyhound bus, her late mother’s confessional in hand, from her mountaintop home in rural North Carolina to the Hope and Glory Building…
Want to make a movie? Get a big house, preferably in a beautiful rural setting, gather a group of good-looking actors, and photograph them wandering around, discussing life and death. No, we’re not talking about The Big Chill or Enchanted April or Howard’s End or a dozen other successful films…
Im Kwon Taek has long been the best-known Korean director in the United States; in fact it would be fair to say he’s pretty much the only even vaguely known Korean director, and even then his renown is strictly among festivalgoers. The general distribution of his latest film, Chunhyang, should…
