Maiden of Modernism

Fans of sleek buildings and furniture have always considered designers Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, and Le Corbusier as the main men of Modernism. Few realize that women were often behind the work of these successful men. Lily Reich helped Mies develop furniture and upholstery. Charlotte Perriand collaborated with…

The Talking Penis

I am Vlad the Impaler, Joe Eszterhas’ penis. You know Joe, right? Bigfoot-looking son of a bitch, like Jerry Garcia after he swallowed Brian Wilson on an Acapulco Gold high? The guy who wrote Basic Instinct and Showgirls and Flashdance and a whole lotta crap for which he was paid…

Short and Sweet

As the house lights go up at the end of Brief Encounters, the Lake Worth Playhouse’s second annual one-act festival, the cast shuffles onstage, folding chairs in tow. Each Friday night of the three-week festival, audience members can stick around to ask questions and chat with the cast. The actors…

Old Hands

It’s a pleasure to say that Clint Eastwood reverses his recent downward slide –A Perfect World (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Absolute Power (1997), and True Crime (1999), each of which has seemed less satisfying than its predecessor — with Space Cowboys, his latest. It isn’t an especially…

Fakin’ Bacon

There are many, many productive paths a bright, ambitious young fellow can pursue in America. He can, for instance, start a mediocre rock band and try to make music for beer commercials. He also can design a Website to advertise Websites about Websites. Or there’s always the war on drugs,…

Cultural Celluloid

You’d think a couple of film festivals with overlapping content would be at odds, but the six-year-old Asian Pacific Film Festival of Florida (APFFF) has coexisted peacefully as part of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF) while hosting its own periodic screenings of movies by Pacific Rim filmmakers. In…

Cumbia Holds Sway

“I am not seeking to be a star on Earth but rather a star in the universe,” once said the living legend of Colombian cumbia, Totó la Momposina. For more than three decades, Totó’s voice has floated heavenward. A Latin Grammy nomination this year for her album Pacanto just might…

Rocking On

The Latin-music craze on the way out? Dead? Buried? Finished? Don’t tell Aurelio Rodriguez. He still earns a comfortable living from it. Rodriguez is not a singer but a former model, who inherited his family’s 4000-square-foot truck stop known as La Covacha following the death of his father in 1989…

Porn to Sell

It’s tempting to think there’s something twisted about her tale. After all, she was a mere 18 the first time she had sex in front of a camera–for money, small change that would soon enough blossom into a pile of cash–and did so only at the insistence of her boyfriend,…

The Unbearable Bardness of Being

Remember that instantly evaporating pop hit from the early Eighties, “Video Killed the Radio Star”? If ever there were a comparable anthem for the relationship of the small screen to the stage, it would be Paul Rudnick’s I Hate Hamlet. The backstage comedy that hit Broadway in 1991 pits art…

Off the Ground

“Levity & Gravity” is the latest exhibition at the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery. It’s an extensive show with works from artists Ricci Albenda, Max Goldfarb, Jennifer Monick, and Peter Sarkisian, and Miami artists Robert Chambers, Karen Rifas, Eugenia Vargas, and Wendy Wischer. Curated by Amy Cappellazzo and Tiffany Huot, the show…

Don’t Cheer, Don’t Tell

It would be the easiest thing in the world to write off But I’m a Cheerleader, the story of a teenager discovering her sexual identity through a program designed to repress it, as a Saturday Night Live sketch somewhat awkwardly inflated to feature length. But when you start looking deeper…

Losin’ It

Only in the movies could a kid that looks and acts like Jason Biggs be called a loser. Let’s see: charming conversationalist, big smile, washboard abs? Oh yeah, those’ll make a guy unpopular, for sure. About the only thing that’s surprising about Biggs’s character in Loser is that the filmmakers…

I See Dull People!

Rather than asking if this senseless and expensive new film from wunderkind entertainer Robert Zemeckis is devoid of merit (it is), or “worth seeing” (it isn’t), we should instead take the movie’s title — What Lies Beneath — as a direct question. Indeed, what does lie beneath? Possible answers include:…

Performance Pizza

A Cuban balsero is rescued in the Florida Straits by a cruise ship. Sounds like a typical story. But this tale is different. The rafter is quite musical. He is invited to perform on the ship and does so for weeks until he disembarks to seek asylum in California. Eventually…

Punk for Sale

Price-gouging hot dog vendors, dollar-copping corporations, testosterone-oozing crowds — all elements of the punk-rock music extravaganza known as the Vans Warped Tour, stopping in South Florida this weekend. Big-name bands Green Day and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones headline this year. What makes this Warped Tour distinctive from the past, however,…

House of the Damned

While some critics would say Nathaniel Hawthorne’s dark tales are not of this world, The House of the Seven Gables reveals a work very much of two worlds, or rather two Americas — the new and the old. Woven from the black cloak of Calvinism but enlightened by the threads…

Private Defective

Murphy and Pryor. Skywalker and Kenobi. Amos and Zeppelin. Regardless of the creative universe, the maverick apprentice tends to stride off into territory beyond the edges of the master’s map. So it is with Alan Rudolph, whose career blossomed after serving as assistant director to Robert Altman on Nashville in…

Memo from Miami

Local pols like to boast of Miami as Hollywood East, and for a few days recently there was some truth behind that hype. The National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP) held its second annual convention at the Eden Roc Resort and Spa in Miami Beach, attended by 330 filmmakers…

Buck Teeth

Directed by Miguel Arteta. Screenplay by Mike White. Starring Mike White, Chris Weitz, Lupe Ontiveros, Beth Colt, and Paul Weitz.

Homeless Stills

The usual subjects Miami-based photographer Jamie Robinson shoots are flamboyant drag queens, hunky male exotic dancers, adorable dogs, even the president of the United States. But this weekend at a Biscayne Boulevard art gallery, Robinson, who was a White House videographer during the Carter administration, exhibits fifteen images of women…