[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…
The nuclear suitcase, the repository of codes needed to launch Russia’s nuclear weapons, was one of the last things (other than his title, a few symbolic medals, and the presidential pen) that outgoing Russian Prime Minister Boris Yeltsin handed over to his successor Vladimir Putin before leaving the Kremlin on…
The stolid stone faces on Easter Island as rendered by German artist Wilhelm Moser remind viewers of one eternal truth: Nature will always reclaim even the most noble monuments built by human hands. The moment of creation also is the moment of gradual disintegration. On display at ArtCenter/South Florida in…
Some people really are crazy, but then crazy is a relative term. Does it apply to someone who thinks he might spin off into outer space and never be able to get back down to Earth? Or is it only crazy when you have to cling to the nearest table…
The War Zone opens with a black screen and the sound of waves gently crashing against the shore. The methodical ebb and flow of the water produces a soothing rhythm and a sense of tranquility. The film’s first visual image is equally evocative — a beautiful section of seashore, buttressed…
In The Allegory of Painting, seventeenth-century Dutch master Jan Vermeer paints a portrait of the artist painting a portrait. To the left of the canvas, a lavish curtain is drawn to reveal an empty chair, perhaps reserved for the viewer. Beyond the curtain a seated man has just begun the…
The most memorable detail in Tom Tom on a Rooftop, Daniel Keough’s new play now receiving its East Coast premiere in Hollywood, is a piece of the set. The feeble comedy takes place entirely on the tarpaper roof of a modest apartment building, where, amid lawn chairs and milk crates,…
Surrounded by a canal, an airport, and railroad tracks, the City of Miami Springs is a calm oasis of small-town America nestled in Miami-Dade County. Conceived in 1922 by aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss and his partner James Bright (they’re also responsible for Opa-locka) as a reaction to building run amok…
Among the neon lights and shimmery surfaces of the Magic City, it’s often easy to lose sight of the past, but the folks at Miami-Dade County’s Fruit and Spice Park remember a time when the world did not speed along the digital pathways of the Internet. Some even recall the…
Andy’s Top 10Film critics are by nature a sour lot, so it is with truly great pleasure that I suggest that 1999 has been the best year for cinema — certainly for American cinema and even for the major studios — in my fifteen years on the beat. I’m at…
In the literary classic, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, photographer Walker Evans and journalist James Agee make heroes of three unknown families struggling to survive as tenant farmers in rural Alabama circa 1936. Evans and Agee’s praise for the poor but proud helped drum up support for President Franklin…
Of all the versions of Cuba that exist, few are as fragmented or elusive as those that live in the memory of exiles. Anyone who left the island before his or her own memories really began or grew up in the United States with exile parents knows stories of how…
By sheer coincidence, A Bicycle Country, Nilo Cruz’s bewitching play about the fate of three balseros, is premiering against the backdrop of the political drama of the young rafter Elian Gonzalez. Or is it coincidence? If six-year-old Elian hadn’t been rescued off Palm Beach on Thanksgiving Day, then perhaps some…
In totalitarian societies terror is the instrument to force submission, and the threat of terror is often marked on the very land itself. Human sovereignty, a basic political right, is seized and annihilated by an übermensch utopia. Putting ideology over rights and rhetoric over truth, dictatorships from the right and…
When Paul Thomas Anderson’s second feature, Boogie Nights, was released in 1997, critics and film industry types fell over themselves to designate Anderson the next big thing, an auteur in the footsteps of Scorsese and Coppola. His film turned Mark Wahlberg from a has-been underwear model and rapper into a…
“Hell is a sort of high-class nightclub,” wrote George Orwell, “entry to which is reserved for Catholics only.” This sentiment is on stark display in the work of novelist Graham Greene, whose adulterous relationship (with the very married Catherine Welston, a wealthy farmer’s wife) propelled him to scrutinize the mechanics…
