These buildings were once meant to dazzle people,” notes preservation advocate Randall Robinson about the modern motels that used to shine and that still line Biscayne Boulevard. Be they the exotic places or the footloose natives evoked by the names Shalimar, South Pacific, and 7 Seas, or the sophisticated urbanity…
Aimée & Jaguar would be an unusual film under any circumstances, but that it was made in Germany proves somehow especially unexpected. Set in Berlin in 1943 and based on a true story, the movie concerns the love affair between two women: one a Jew passing as a Gentile while…
By day they drive their rippling torsos beneath the blinding desert sun, pausing intermittently to gaze sexily into the distance. By night they head for the open-air discos of Djibouti to get squiffy with the locals. When time allows they wash their socks, shave, and wander around in cylindrical white…
So a Jew and a Christian walk into the economically challenged valleys of Wales … No, it’s not a joke — not until the absurd, maudlin third act, anyway — but rather the essence of Solomon and Gaenor, the feature debut of British television director, documentarian, and psychotherapist Paul Morrison…
“Free rent!” says Judd Winick when asked the main reason why in 1994 he decided to compete against 30,000 eager postadolescents for a coveted place in the seven-member cast of MTV’s San Francisco edition of Real World, the reality-based soap opera that lumps people together in a house for six…
After Caridad Brenes died, her granddaughter Margarita Cepeda felt her grandmother’s spirit dancing inside her. Mami Cari had raised Margarita from the time she was a baby and, most important, had taught her as a little girl how to dance bomba. Holding her wide skirt high and swishing it in…
A month ago, R.J. Cutler thought he found a home for his child, one that would coddle and nurture his baby until it was ready to stand on its own two legs without wobbling or falling. A month ago, it all seemed so simple to the Oscar-nominated producer-director, who was…
You could say Shirley Richardson has a theatrical heritage. Growing up in Miami in the Fifties and Sixties, her entire family worked for the Coconut Grove Playhouse, either as domestic or manual laborers. Shirley would accompany her mother, Bennie Mae, who was a cleaning woman at the playhouse from 1954…
Humans and their stories, my oh my. Somehow the familiar themes just keep coming around, ad infinitum. Of course most of them already have been captured and processed by Shakespeare. From the bitter young man to the crazy old king, from the flirty young thing to the malicious old crone,…
For his directorial debut, the British actor Tim Roth (The Legend of 1900, Pulp Fiction) has chosen a most disturbing subject matter: incest. And he presents an unflinching portrait of it. The War Zone isn’t easy to watch; uncompromising in its depiction of child abuse, it demands from its audience…
This is the beginning of The Way of the Gun you will not see, because it was written but never filmed: Two men, Parker and Longbaugh, urinate in an open grave in front of mourners, beat up a priest, steal organs meant for transplant, and shoot a dog. The introduction,…
On deadline to churn out an article about relationships, women’s magazine writer Kate Wells (Famke Janssen) reviews the history of her many doomed affairs, particularly her recently ended romance with artist Adam Levy (Jon Favreau). Filmmaker Valerie Breiman is a former actress who moved behind the camera with fare such…
Most people consider Giovanni Luquini to be a dancer. A natural assumption, since his day job is teaching dance at FIU. During his off-hours, however, the Brazilian-born Luquini does more than move his feet. He is a choreographer, sometimes an actor, and even a set designer. When Akropolis Interdisciplinary Theater…
In the melodramatic world of the Latin-American soap opera known as the telenovela, a threatening villain and a scheming, evil woman always stand in the way of true love. Cold-hearted family members, corrupt officials, mysterious diseases, and endless cases of mistaken identity all conspire to keep the innocent heroine away…
Success is relative in Hollywood, like a third cousin twice-removed who doesn’t recognize you at family reunions, and doesn’t care to. Fame is so fleeting it has a month-by-month lease. Six years ago, Christopher McQuarrie was as famous as any screenwriter on the backlot known as Los Angeles. He had…
Paper elephants and donkeys; red, white, and blue banners; and two video screens — one posted in each of the far corners of the space — set the scene for George and Ira Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing, one of Broadway’s first political satires. We are quickly reminded that successful…
Turns out that when goodfellas don’t die (when they don’t get shot or blown up in a car or beaten to death with a baseball bat) they move to South Beach. They drive tour buses for the elderly, take orders at Burger King, give dime-a-dance lessons to old women in…
I’m not the celebrity type,” says Vincent D’Onofrio, and he does not lie. His is a household name in very few neighborhoods; it appears in film credits buried just beneath those of actors more famous, or just luckier. Rare is the filmgoer who utters the words, “Dude, let’s go check…
Too often baseball players are reduced to statistics, hollow numbers that resonate with the fetishist who drifts off to sleep counting home runs and career batting averages. Baseball demands such precision: It’s a team sport, yes, but ultimately it’s man against man, record against record, history against history. Look no…
All the things you’ve been told to seek in the perfect guy: sparkling sense of humor, sonorous voice, spiffy shoes. Trash ’em, says author Beverley East. The proof of the person is in the way he writes. Kingston, Jamaica, native East should know. As a professional handwriting analyst or graphologist,…
This weekend the biggest African-American business in the United States also is the best show in town. Detroit entrepreneur David Humphries, better known in the beauty world as Hump the Grinder, presents in Miami for the second year in a row what he calls “a showcase of hair entertainment.” At…
Be cool, get chicks.” While that’s paraphrased and boiled down, it’s nonetheless the essential creed of Dex (Donal Logue), the corpulent connoisseur of carnality who lumbers through this debut feature from Jenniphr Goodman as if he’s Paul Bunyan and every woman in sight is a tree. Overweight and underemployed, Dex…
