With the canon of Jane Austen all but exhausted, literary filmmakers continue their assault on Edith Wharton, another sharply observant writer of yore with something timeless to say about the plight of women. Terence Davies’ The House of Mirth, from Wharton’s beautifully detailed, ironically titled 1905 novel about a mannerly…
If M. Night Shyamalan makes movies to be seen twice, then Joel and Ethan Coen make films to be pawed over a dozen times. O Brother, Where Art Thou?, an opulent and often slapstick updating of Homer’s The Odyssey by way of Preston Sturges, Robert Johnson, and Clark Gable, sneaks…
“I’ve been on my knees for days!” admits designer Juan Carlos Arcila-Duque. Coproprietor of the Design District showroom called ROOM and soon owner of a-d furniture interiors, Arcila-Duque hasn’t taken on a new position as a presidential intern. He’s just adding the job of curator to his résumé, since he’s…
Masterfully commingling aspects of experimental theater and contemporary dance since the early Eighties, postmodern maverick Joe Goode has used everything in his art — from power tools to Chanel suits, spoken word to singing, film to fables — to peel away the convenient packaging of society’s particular, often peculiar, brand…
At the time, it was meant to be read as a great compliment: Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez create comic books for people who don’t read comic books! A publisher or pitchman couldn’t have come up with a more glorious phrase, one magical sentence that would reel in the literate and…
Buffalo soldier, dreadlock Rasta There was a buffalo soldier In the heart of America Stolen from Africa, brought to America Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival — Bob Marley Made famous by the Jamaican singing legend, “buffalo soldiers” was the name given to the African-American U.S. Army troops that patrolled…
The week before Christmas, Old Havana was open season on foreigners, more of them than ever, who had come to see Castro’s Cuba for themselves. Entrepreneurs, ready to pose for pictures, waited by the cathedral to charge tourists for the photos. Pretty young women in frilly folkloric dresses smiled stiffly…
For slightly more than a decade, Chinese martial arts films have directly and indirectly gained a growing audience in the United States. Now the genre may find its greatest breakthrough coming from an unlikely source: director Ang Lee, best known for comedy-dramas of social manners such as Sense and Sensibility,…
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…
