In the course of two hours, Neil Gaiman speaks 10,000 words (or damned near, when transcribed), and it seems a shame to waste a single one, since there is not an uh or y’know among them. Even the most eloquent writer gets lost in thought every now and then…uh…y’know? But…
Bryan Singer did not read comic books as a young boy, because he couldn’t read them. As a kid, he was slightly dyslexic and, therefore, unable to follow the dialogue as it bubbled across panels and pages; quite simply, Singer says now, comic books confused him, so the Jersey boy…
The key to great parody is that it hits home in contemporary society. Although Cuban playwright Rolando Ferrer’s play Lila, La Mariposa (Lila, the Butterfly) was meant to be a criticism of Havana and the 1950s when it was first written back in 1954, Teatro Avante’s rendition continues the tradition…
In Bryan Singer’s last movie, 1998’s Apt Pupil, Ian McKellen portrayed a Nazi war criminal hiding out in the suburbs, passing himself off as an ordinary old man crouching behind drawn blinds. In Singer’s new movie, X-Men, McKellen plays Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, the son of Jews who were murdered in…
Why is this film called Disney’s The Kid? Is it really possible the studio was so concerned that someone might actually mistake the film for an update of the Chaplin classic that the brand name had to be formally incorporated into the title? Or was this an attempt to reinforce…
Canadian documentarian Ron Mann, who previously examined aspects of pop culture in Comic Book Confidential (1988) and Twist (1992), takes on a broader and more controversial subject in Grass, a history of America’s second-favorite smokable substance. As he has done before, he provides a sugarcoated crash course on a huge…
“They don’t have a decent piece of fruit at the supermarket. The apples are mealy, the oranges are dry … I don’t know what’s going on with the papayas!” once lamented eccentric, fruit-obsessed Kramer in the long-running sitcom Seinfeld. If the local grocery store is just not cutting it, and…
“There it is. This is the house I was born in and grew up in. It’s still standing. It’s painted but this is not the house I knew,” affirms 68-year-old Silvia Morini in the documentary Our House in Havana. Director Stephen Olsson’s film (screened as part of the Cuban Cinema…
Walking out of the Caldwell Theatre’s production of Snakebit, you can be certain you will not hear a playgoer over age 60 sigh, “Ahhh! To be young again!” This hard-hitting drama leaves no room to fantasize about the potency and possibility of the thirties. Playwright David Marshall Grant’s increasingly complex…
Artists never make art in a void, but autobiographies are more concrete in some peoples’ works than in others. Such is the case with the newly opened Blue Door Art Studio’s “The School of Unlearning” (“La Escuela de Desaprender”), an installation by the intriguing Paloma Figueiro, a 24-year-old Cuban-Brazilian artist…
Is there a more bankrupt genre than the parody movie? So many movies nowadays are so painfully self-aware and referential anyway that there often isn’t much left to make fun of, which is especially the case for Kevin Williamson-penned films like Scream and its clones, clichéd teen slasher movies that…
Director Alison Maclean, from Canada by way of New Zealand, turns her camera on the American landscape — or more accurately the underbelly of the American landscape — in Jesus’ Son, an uneven but often effective adaptation of Denis Johnson’s autobiographical book. Billy Crudup stars as a thoroughly marginalized character…
Film has always turned to classic literature for inspiration, but rare is the film adaptation that dodges the Scylla and Charybdis of the trade: too much reverence leads to inert moviemaking, too little results in parody. In Time Regained Chilean director Raoul Ruiz has taken on the Mount Everest of…
If you’ve ever beat up your little sister just for fun, dyed your hair purple to annoy Dad, or bickered with your spouse over what color shower curtain would look best in the downstairs bathroom, then you understand. Families are weird. They are groups of people who share the same…
Gregory Nava’s Hollywood epic My Family/Mi Familia (1995) turns the travails of a Chicano family in Los Angeles into a saccharine-sweet elegy. Maria Escobedo’s fluffy romantic comedy Rum and Coke (1999) sends a hunky firefighter to rescue the Cuban identity of a confused New York damsel. Ela Troyano’s Latin Boys…
Had Julian Glover not broken his leg at the beginning of January, it’s quite likely he would be off filming a movie. But, Glover reminds, having a broken leg in the movie business is like being pregnant in the movie business: “It lasts five years,” meaning casting agents don’t phone…
A strong monologue, very much like a steaming jazz solo, should always seem improvisational, even if it’s not. Like music it moves and gathers momentum and in doing so, meaning. No long-winded plot summary or a pedantic sermon, the final monologue in GableStage’s production of Warren Leight’s Side Man does…
The press kit for The Perfect Storm contains the damnedest thing I’ve ever read: a “special request” that reads, in full, “Warner Bros. Pictures would appreciate the press’ cooperation in not revealing the ending of this film to their readers, viewers, or listeners.” All due apologies but that seems highly…
It has taken moviemakers and, more crucially, foot-dragging movie investors, almost a decade to catch up with rave culture, the heady mix of secret warehouses, electronic music, designer drugs, and ecstatic dancing that has come to define the yearning and the restlessness of a generation. But now, the 5:00 a.m…
Kikujiro, the latest release from Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano, is likely to be a surprise — possibly even a disappointment — to his American fans if they walk in unprepared. In fact the movie is altogether worthwhile, so just get yourselves prepared.Kitano attracted international attention when his first two movies…
It’s summertime and the livin’ is compas. Miami’s second annual Haitian Compas Festival coincides with the glut of new compas albums released each July. The sales barometer rises just before August, when the Haitian diaspora in Miami and New York heads home for the annual town festivals bearing gifts for…
Remember those old Mickey Rooney flicks where all the “kids” would be sittin’ around just shootin’ the breeze? Suddenly Mickey would jump up and declare: “Hey, kids, I got a great idea. Let’s put on a show!” In a matter of seconds, a piano rolls in. Judy Garland strikes a…
