The war on drugs has become this generation’s Vietnam, the unwinnable conflict that will, in the end, destroy the innocent and reward the guilty. That, in a coke vial, is the premise of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, a film that gives flesh and face to bloodless government statistics and statements seldom…
Jazz, that most ignored of musical genres, seems to be sweeping the nation of late. Currently holding musically inclined audiences in its thrall is prodigious documentarian Ken Burns’s multipart series about the uniquely American art form, which recently made its much-anticipated debut on PBS. Jazz piano gal Diana Krall is…
Midday the lobby of the Eden Roc Resort & Spa on Miami Beach is a swirling current of baggage, people, and noise. The flotsam and jetsam of shrieking and darting children, cleaning ladies, and clanging plates wash around Los Angeles-based site-specific choreographer Heidi Duckler as she energetically discusses her Collage…
As The Music Lesson opens, the houselights are dimmed, and a subtle illumination spotlights the hand of Irena (Jessica K. Peterson), a pianist and music teacher from Sarajevo. As she sits center stage on a white piano bench, her hand slowly begins to play an invisible keyboard one chord at…
The Museum of Contemporary Art’s “Making Art in Miami: Travels in Hyperreality,” featuring 22 emerging local artists, is a timely acknowledgment for the arts in this city. In the catalogue that accompanies the show, Bonnie Clearwater, MOCA’s director, puts it aptly: “Miami has witnessed ambitious museum exhibitions programs with an…
“You’re right! I quit!” Until this moment–this shrill outburst that comes out of nowhere and startles both interviewer and subject–Marisa Tomei had been speaking in hushed tones, like someone making funeral arrangements. Every so often, she would punctuate her sentences with giggles–some nervous, some delirious–but suddenly, she is laughing uncontrollably…
Welcome to the cinema, the great communal meditation chamber, circa 2000. Okay, now throw open all the exit doors, because some of our communal celluloid putrefied over the course of this year, and we’re going to clear the air by dispensing with the top offenders first. Whether it was the…
“Chickens fascinate me,” said hyperactive man-child character Stuart with wide-eyed wonder on the late-night comedy show MAD TV. As far as we know, local artist Robert Flynn has never been into domestic fowl, but he has in the past favored cows. From 1993 through 1996 he produced a series of…
We all have issues. Millions of people with millions of problems spend day after day muddling through life, rarely thinking what a tremendous toll it takes, or what a joy it can be. As if we need to be reminded of our sometimes pathetic plight, eight folks will make drama…
Thank God for old Jews with shaky hands and the inability to tell this word (G-O-R-E) from this one (B-U-C-H-A-N-A-N). Without them–and Survivor Richard Hatch, that self-proclaimed “fat naked fag” who, as is turns out, is just a really concerned parent and not at all, uh, abusive–it would have been…
When American poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “The personal is political,” she reminded us that political acts cannot be separated from the circumstances of individual lives. Too often drama that attempts to convey a political message does so by striving to be universal, at the expense of the characters’ discrete choices…
Finding Forrester is the latest film from director Gus Van Sant, one of the true American originals to emerge in the Eighties and Nineties. When Van Sant is at his best, he gives us stories and images we’ve never seen before. Finding Forrester, however, is not Gus Van Sant at…
It’s where Walter Huston found paradise at the end of The Treasure of Sierra Madre, where the murdering lovers Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw rode into the sunset at the end of The Getaway, and where Thelma and Louise were headed when they ended up at the Grand Canyon. There…
If you consider Northern Ireland to be part of Ireland proper, then An Everlasting Piece easily may be the best Irish film of the year (not that the competition was too stiff — anyone remember The Closer You Get?). If, on the other hand, you consider the six counties to…
“Flamingos are very sexy,” says Paulo Manso de Sousa. “They’re very vain. They’re very into themselves,” he adds, as if describing South Beach models or snobbish ballerinas. Clearly Manso, who’s delved into a multitude of roles as an actor, dancer, teacher, and choreographer since leaving the Miami City Ballet five…
Wasn’t it Frank Sinatra who once said, “A dame’s work is never done?” The perennially politically incorrect crooner most likely was referring to dames the same way he would talk about other women he didn’t respect: as broads, babes, or chicks. When we say dames, we mean Dames with an…
This cinematic bonbon has all the ingredients required to spin an audience into the throes of fuzzy warmheartedness — the hope, the compassion, the joie de vivre — blended with the skill of a consummate confectioner. Much like a box of sweets with a convenient guide inside the lid, there…
The moods of Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me are so artfully mingled that it’s difficult to get a fix on this highly personal independent feature. Set in a quiet little town in upstate New York’s lovely Catskill Mountains, it is at once a drama about the unresolved traumas…
For many people the month of December signifies a time to celebrate. Jews have Hanukkah. Christians have Christmas. Blacks of all religions have Kwanzaa. But make no mistake, Kwanzaa is a holiday, not a holy day. Created in 1966 by California State University professor/activist Maulana Karenga, the seven-day observance, which…
About the time your eggnog buzz wears off, so does the negligible charm of your houseguests. So like any gracious host, you smile and say, “Hey, let’s go for a ride!” You then drive for miles into the Everglades and ditch them. (Martha Stewart would understand.) But when they escape…
Contained within a care package sent by C.D. Payne is a self-penned press release introducing the author as “the Rodney Dangerfield of comic novelists,” complete with a picture of the bug-eyed comedian and his shopworn catchphrase “I can’t get no respect.” As it turns out, this is the letter Payne…
The word juggernaut means “an overpowering force,” and appropriately the artistic director of Juggerknot Theatre Company, Tanya Bravo, is tapping into the powerful force of theater by pushing limits — both artistic and geographic. On the 67th block of Biscayne Boulevard, there’s more than one craft being fine-tuned: The area…
