La crème de la coiffure! A mock documentary about, of all things, a Scottish hairdresser who travels to America to compete in an international hairstyling tournament, The Big Tease is a mildly amusing romp that benefits enormously from an ingratiating performance by Scottish actor Craig Ferguson, who also co-wrote the…
Jane Campion’s 1992 film The Piano was an intoxicating work of art, a film of such beauty and power that it literally took my breath away. Nothing the New Zealand-born writer-director has done before or since even comes close to matching it in form, content, or sensibility. And her latest…
Lift ev’ry voice and sing/Till Earth and Heaven ring/Ring with the harmonies of liberty. Stirring words fit for a poem, eventually adapted as lyrics to the song many view as the black national anthem. This weekend Florida Memorial College celebrates the 100th birthday of the tune with the musical revue…
Ask any American whose birthdays are celebrated as part of the catchall holiday known as Presidents’ Day, and watch them give you the wrong answer. Oldsters know that once upon a time, commanders in chief were important enough to have their birthdays recognized separately. Not anymore. Now people care more…
Ask Rafael Lima, award-winning author, what the secret to his success has been, and he just might respond with a joke. So there’s this priest holding services at church, when a flood crashes through. Someone in a station wagon drives up to offer help. Thank you, says the priest, but…
Everyone knows the cliché about men and navigation. They don’t mix. Men don’t accept directions — ever. They could be driving off the end of the Earth and they would still keep going, insisting all along they know where they are. Take Christopher Columbus, for instance; seems as if he…
She took out her notebook. But he spoke so fast she couldn’t keep up. He paced the stuffy room as he dictated, drifting toward the stove. He lit one trembly cigarette after another, flicking them half-smoked into the ashtray. In October 1866 Anna Snitkina graduated from stenography school and agreed…
Sharon Stone doesn’t appear onscreen until halfway through this tale of three lives unraveling, but when she does, she makes quite an impression as Rosie, the third player in a horse-racing scam. Adapted from a play by Sam Shepard, Simpatico jumps back and forth in time between present day and…
“Sorry I’m late,” whines the dominatrix in Communicating Doors. “I think there was a gun battle in the Strand.” She sports a tattoo, nosebleed heels, and a leopard-print coat, underneath which is a layer of patent leather lingerie, complete with zippers dangling from pointy nipples. Poopay, as she calls herself…
Two weekends ago art lovers in Miami who made it to the Espirito Santo Bank building on Brickell Avenue for Departing Perspectives were offered a unique experience: a predemolition event curated by Fredric Snitzer. (The bank soon will be torn down.) For four days 44 local artists participated in an…
The obsession begins when you’re a little kid strolling along the beach. Suddenly you stop dead in your tracks. Peeking out of the sand is a stunning shell, former home to a slimy mollusk, now a piece of calcified art, unique as a fingerprint, tinted in a rainbow of pastel…
The evening of March 14, 1885, was an auspicious one in the annals of musical theater. Less than four years had passed since the opening of London’s Savoy Theatre, built specifically for the productions of librettist William Schwenk Gilbert and composer Arthur Seymour Sullivan. The partners’ first six works had…
It’s easy to see how Play It to the Bone, writer-director Ron Shelton’s latest comedy-drama, got started. Shelton obviously wanted to do for boxing what he’d already done with baseball in Bull Durham, golf in Tin Cup, and pick-up basketball in White Men Can’t Jump. But somewhere along the way…
Alain Resnais is not only one of the most respected film directors from the French New Wave, but, in this writer’s opinion, he is the most important one. His film Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) showed us a different way to look at movies, and a completely revolutionary way to adapt…
[Exit, pursued by a bear] — The Winter’s Tale, William Shakespeare Being a theater critic is one of the best jobs ever invented, so it is with mixed emotions that I’m leaving behind my duties at New Times to pursue new adventures in Washington, D.C. With apologies to dance fans,…
No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men? I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon, and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist. — Jorge Luis Borges To live forever always has been a…
Vaseline. Uranium. Westmoreland. Fostoria. Fire King. Names that invaded American cupboards between the Twenties and the Forties. What they stood for: Depression glass, machine-made low-quality glass that was mass-produced in vibrant colors such as pink, purple, red, yellow, blue, green, as well as white. A happy reminder of better days…
Change is the metaphor that pervades Eleanor: Her Secret Journey, in which Jean Stapleton gives an affecting and affectionate portrait of first lady and Hillary Clinton precursor Eleanor Roosevelt. Indeed the young society wife and mother transformed herself into one of the most influential people of the Twentieth Century. Despite…
In the past 30 years, Woody Allen has written and directed something like 28 movies (“something like” reflects the confusion of how to count his contribution to New York Stories), a remarkable productivity record for a major filmmaker, and one that’s even more impressive when you consider how high his…
Boo hoo! Frank McCourt had a miserable childhood! Honestly who can say their childhood wasn’t impoverished in some way … or in many ways? That Mr. McCourt survived and eventually published his inescapable memoir is nice, of course, and the book indeed is a poignant and crafty piece of work…
The world’s demand for minimally talented 30-year-old high school dropouts who believe they’re great poets or great musicians or great movie directors isn’t going to catch up with the supply anytime soon. That won’t keep the strivers from striving, of course, nor will it snuff out their dreams. Case in…
