John Wesley Hall believes justice is a myth taught in classrooms, a fable found in law books, as imaginary as the unicorn and the mermaid. The Arkansas attorney mentions case after case in which he represented an innocent who wound up imprisoned or, worse, executed; in the course of a…
Junior officers quickly become disoriented in the Orient,” navy wife Julia Anderson warns newly arrived officer “Sparky” Watts in A.R. Gurney’s play Far East. Indeed the New Theatre’s production of this work seems to offer a heady brew of scandal, sex, and unrequited love, promising to leave the audience pleasantly…
With the long hot summer almost a muggy memory, Miami gets to turn its attention to cooler pursuits, such as a revved-up arts scene. The pace of activities already has quickened, and — good news — the quality of exhibitions has improved. This was evident on a Saturday night in…
Meet the Parents has just enough class to make for Prestige Pop: Robert De Niro as star, Randy Newman as composer, Blythe Danner as wallpaper, Ben Stiller as schmuck. It has just enough “comedy” to qualify as a crowd pleaser: sight gags (Stiller chasing a cat across a roof before…
The video camera and the chaos of the modern world have given Lars von Trier the opportunity to make us all seasick while self-indulgently flogging our emotions with a great big ham bone. Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the celebrated Danish director’s new abomination, the insanely sloppy…
Joel Schumacher goes to Vietnam: What else does one really have to know about Tigerland? Schumacher, for those readers fortunate enough not to have their brains cluttered with the sort of Hollywood detritus that afflicts some of us as an occupational hazard, is the auteur behind commercial confections such as…
A Coconut Grove psychiatrist named Dr. Camote visits his past life and learns he was once the idealistic Don Quixote. That’s the plot of the zany theater production The Adventures of Don Quixote in Miami. Not the handiwork of regression specialist Brian Weiss on a comedic bent, the play is…
According to gallery-owner Brook Dorsch, artist Kerry Ware paints because “he loves the way paint looks.” Dorsch must love the way Ware paints, because “whence,” Ware’s fourth solo installation at the Dorsch Gallery in about as many years, opened two weeks ago. The bold collection of oversize, three-dimensional pieces shows…
The literary canon is spinning, the hyphen that binds so-called multicultural fiction — Asian-American, Hispanic-American, African-American fiction — will not hold. Nor should it. Any thought-provoking work on ethnic identity must offer audiences a real look at the themes young playwrights are likely to undertake. In its inaugural performance, Miami’s…
According to Patrice Leconte, women live to be vulnerable, men thrive when they are in command, and the two genders can only find happy fusion once they’ve tasted one another’s fates … unless they capriciously kill each other. At least, this seems to be the director’s thesis in Girl on…
It takes a special kind of mindset to celebrate castration, and audiences confusing feminine empowerment with the crude hacking off of seemingly oppressive huevos are certain to get a bang out of Girlfight, the gritty debut feature from writer-director Karyn Kusama. Metaphoric or otherwise, there’s already a movie about deballing…
“I don’t understand why people keep asking me that, as if I should be embarrassed to be associated with benefiting people,” laments Marlon Moore, drummer for world-jazz ensemble Mantra. Moore refers to the many queries he’s received about his next gig, a daylong concert devoted to amassing a fund that…
The toaster in which you toast your toast. The computer keyboard on which you type. The toilet on which you sit. Design affects us in myriad ways we don’t even notice. A flawed kitchen appliance can yield a burned breakfast. A poorly assembled keyboard can contribute to a nasty case…
At first, you don’t want to admit it, because it seems somehow wrong–just too easy. After all, the woman on the other end of the phone line is not that woman seen every Sunday night on HBO, lamenting the sad, sorry state of her love affairs. She’s not an actress…
The logistic, aesthetic, and emotional challenges of keeping a small arts organization afloat would flummox the savviest CEO. Why do artistic directors struggle to bring live theater to South Florida stages when they could spend half the energy and earn six figures directing deodorant commercials? In the second part of…
Cuban artist Lazaro Sigler’s “Las Criaturas de la Isla” (“The Island’s Creatures”), at Domingo Padron Art Gallery in Coral Gables, is an absurd little show because it uses absurdity to dissect a much harsher world. But we almost missed it on a Friday night, after a circuitous first-of-the-month tour of…
This song explains why I’m leaving home and becoming a stewardess,” says Anita Miller (Zooey Deschanel) to her well-meaning, overbearing mother, as the soundtrack begins to swell with the low hums of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Just a few seconds earlier, Elaine Miller (Frances McDormand) had insisted she wouldn’t…
Some may find reason to embrace the romantic comedy Woman on Top as the nonsensical but sweet-tempered fantasy of two South American filmmakers who don’t understand life in this country very well but grasp all the magical powers of Brazil. After all, Brazil ranks second only to fashionable Tibet on…
Covered in kooky cartoon characters such as Felix the Cat, Daffy Duck, and Beavis and Butt-head, logos such as the Rolling Stones’ luscious lips and protruding tongue, colorful Tibetan sand mandalas or peaceful Oriental motifs like lotus flowers or the yin-yang symbol, the sheets of perforated stamplike squares soaked with…
Two men in T-shirts and baggy pants are taking a cigarette break at the entrance to the Mencia-Pikieris School of Dance in Perrine. The blonde with the Australian accent is David Palmer. His dark-haired counterpart is Yanis Pikieris, who runs the school with his wife, Marielena Mencia. Together Palmer and…
Almost Famous is the movie Cameron Crowe always wanted to make–and the movie he tried to keep from making as long as he could. The writer-director insists he didn’t want to make a film about his wonder years as a Rolling Stone writer in the 1970s, because he didn’t want…
Live theater has never been a big draw in South Florida, an area not usually recognized as a center for first-class theatrical performances. Independent arts organizations in general have a hard time just staying afloat — witness the shuttering of the Alliance Cinema’s doors last week. Yet several nonprofit local…
