When Jacques Demy died in 1990, one might have thought his unique style of filmmaking died with him. For while the history of movie musicals is rich and multifaceted, Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Young Girls of Rochefort, and his lesser-known Room in Town and Three Seats for the…
Much like the religion that has swirled around the Star Wars trilogy for twentysome years, the fanaticism of American fans of Japanese anime remains a mystery to some of us. Writer-director Hayao Miyazaki’s megahit Princess Mononoke does very little to cast light on this obsession. More’s the pity, because Lupin…
“The Fiesta de Miami will be the biggest festival of them all,” boasts Oscar Alvarez of Eden Rock Promotions. No small claim in a town that hosts the annual Calle Ocho, officially the largest outdoor festival in the world in terms of both attendance and square feet. “Well, the biggest…
Ask Homestead Montessori school owner Betty Calabrese what most people usually think of as storytelling, and she’ll say, “a bunch of preschool children sitting around the knees of a grandmother reading to them.” It’s an inaccurate notion, and one Calabrese is quick to correct. “It’s totally changed,” she reports. “Today…
Writer-director-star Daphna Kastner seems to have designed her second feature, Spanish Fly, primarily to make out with as many attractive Spanish men as she can. Male actor-directors do this sort of thing all the time, usually with a lot less flair. Perhaps it’s the female touch, but Kastner has a…
Tim Bennett’s set — a sitting room in an English manor, dappled with gorgeous pink light and a dozen vases of cut flowers, opening out on to a rose-strewn garden — is so inviting that I wanted to walk up onstage and move in. That’s the only positive thing I…
The last time Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in an apocalypse-theme action movie featuring a Guns N’ Roses song, it was Terminator 2, the biggest and loudest action picture that had ever been seen. Since then he’s produced one bona fide balls-to-the-wall action flick (True Lies), one pale imitation (Eraser), and a…
How do you make a sequel to a nearly perfect film? Toy Story, the 1995 hit from Disney and Pixar, was not only the first fully computer-animated feature; it was also as brilliantly written and directed a film as any of the classic Disney releases. Pixar did nearly everything right:…
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…
Late on a recent Tuesday night, I parked myself at the bar in the second floor dining room of the Van Dyke Café, eschewing the four-dollar music charge and the small circular dining tables in front of the bandstand. There sat some of South Beach’s late-night winners — people who…
Some Miami residents may be as inclined to visit Liberty City as they are to visit Timbuktu. Artist Marvin Weeks hopes to change that. This Friday Weeks, with 25 area artists, craftspeople, and vendors, will make a bid to revitalize the neighborhood with the Timbuktu African & Caribbean Marketplace. “There…
Karen Stephens is such an appealing performer that I wish her one-person show were as compelling as she is. Called Out of the Box, the show is billed as a multimedia event that looks at “societal and racial parameters through the life experiences of a black American female and her…
Havana. A magical place built by the Spanish, coveted by the English, worshiped by the Americans, and nearly destroyed by the Cubans, the city has become a de rigueur stop for sex-hungry Europeans and cheap Latin-American tourists. Lately one finds the city’s decrepit walls set against blue skies in Cigar…
“The spectre is known at all the country firesides by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow,” writes Washington Irving in his original fantasy. Thanks in large part to the silly, watered-down fun of the animated Disney version, the Horseman and his victim, the gangling and gallant Ichabod…
A tangible sense of sadness and longing hangs over The Legend of 1900, the mesmerizingly beautiful and poetic new film from Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore, best known in the United States for his Academy Award-winning Cinema Paradiso. Based on a dramatic monologue by contemporary Italian novelist Alessandro Barrico but filmed…
Although he couldn’t have known it at the time, growing up in Baltimore during the 1950s would prove to be filmmaker Barry Levinson’s smartest career move. First in Diner, then in Tin Men, Avalon, and now Liberty Heights, he has drawn on the specific time, place, and culture of his…
Earth, an Indian Gone with the Wind, is set against the backdrop of India in 1947, when the British moved out shortly after dividing their colony into India and Pakistan. The movie examines the ensuing violent turmoil through the eyes of seven-year-old Lenny-Baby (Maia Sethna, making an impressive acting debut),…
Strolling through South Beach on a clear night, you enter a lush garden. You pass a horse-drawn carriage only to be greeted by a dazzling bearded lady on stilts; behind her a lit fountain sparkles with flames from a fire juggler. Everyone is wearing white. Just as you marvel at…
For someone who spends the majority of his time making art, painter Tomata du Plenty also finds many moments in which to appreciate the art of others. He reads — a lot. “Five, six, or seven books at a time,” he boasts. “Everything from Mark Twain to Jackie Collins. I…
In these post-Sondheim, pro-revival days, it’s sometimes difficult to find the why and wherefore of the Broadway musical. On the one hand, Times Square overflows with new productions of Grease and Saturday Night Fever and the self-perpetuating Cats, as though the industry were one gigantic broken record. On the other,…
Luc Besson, director of La Femme Nikita, The Professional, and The Fifth Element, is not the first name that would leap to mind to helm a biopic of Joan of Arc. Sure, he’s French, and sure, most of his films have women/girls as protagonist or savior, but this is a…
The spirit of Fellini hovers over Train of Life, the third so-called Holocaust comedy to come down the pike. Far superior to either Life Is Beautiful or Jakob the Liar, the French-language production has a silliness and a buffoonish humor reminiscent of Fellini’s Amarcord and Roma, yet somehow it feels…
