It’s almost always funnier when men dress up as women than the other way around. Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli are drag standbys in theaters and cabarets around the world. Elizabeth Dole and Hillary Clinton are routinely skewered on Saturday Night Live and in improv clubs. But where are the…
thursday july 8 New Orleans’s swingingest ensemble, Los Hombres Calientes, brings its jazzy Afro-Cuban stylings to the summer concert series at Coral Gables Congregational Church (3010 De Soto Blvd., Coral Gables) tonight at 8:00. The band, whose name translates as “the hot men,” counts among its members percussionist Bill Summers,…
Three years ago a quintet of optimists combined their ingenuity, contacts, and resources to create Songwriters in the Round, a relaxed evening featuring an open-mike session for local musicians followed by a few established songwriters showcasing their tunes. It’s organized by music impresaria Chrystal Hartigan, Warner/Chappell Latin division executive Ellen…
thursday july 1 You may recall working with beads from your halcyon days in summer camp. Sure you created a few gorgeous bracelets, necklaces, and key chains, but that was kid stuff. Beads are a sophisticated medium for a sophisticated art form. To wit: Donald Pierce’s intricate necklaces; Ken Tisa’s…
Run Lola Run is proof that the influence of MTV on feature filmmaking hasn’t been all bad. The jagged stylistic excess that dominates short-form music videos can be exhausting and irritating when drawn out to feature length: Michael Bay (The Rock, Armageddon) may be the worst offender, though far from…
To hear Spike Lee tell it, Summer of Sam means to be a panoramic view of the summer of 1977 in New York City, when temperatures shot into the high 90s and power blackouts set nerves on edge; when the party agenda included snorting coke at Studio 54 and copulating…
The animated TV show South Park was the big sensation of the 1997-98 season — or at least as big a hit as a cable channel like Comedy Central can manage. It was almost inevitable that creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone would take their batch of foul-mouthed eight-year-olds to…
They served flan. As far as we know, no other theater in Miami, let alone many Cuban restaurants, offers flan. And it was good flan, too. That’s one of the many positive things people will say after the Absinthe House Cinematheque shuts off its immense 1939 Supersimplex projector for the…
Playwright John Patrick Shanley once told the New York Times that he bought a copy of Krafft-Ebing’s nineteenth-century textbook Psychopathia Sexualis because “I have an unhealthy interest in sex and eccentric German people.” (Well, who doesn’t?) It might stand to reason then that he named his 1997 comedy Psychopathia Sexualis…
These days they can be used to buy drinks and dinner at any Club Med. Once they were used to purchase real estate, namely the island of Manhattan. With us for the past 40,000 years, they are beads, first formed from animal teeth, bone, and stone, and later made of…
Give Paul S. George three hours and he’ll give you Biscayne Bay in all its sparkling beauty and fascinating history. As the sun sets this Sunday, George, a nationally recognized local historian, will conduct a boat tour from Bayside to Key Biscayne and back. He’ll spin the rich lore of…
thursday june 24 Yearning for the days when drunk South Beach pioneers gyrated on restaurant tables to the speed-flamenco strains of “Bamboleo?” Take heart: The Gipsy Kings will reprise their endless repertoire of Eurotrash party anthems tonight at the Jackie Gleason Theater (1700 Washington Ave., Miami Beach). Since they exploded…
Woe to the scribbler who presumes to rewrite a master, unless he is so deft that his invasion of privacy produces something new and exciting. Enter British writer-director Oliver Parker. He has the nerve to meddle with Oscar Wilde’s sublime farce An Ideal Husband and the skill to pull it…
Anthology films are an odd-duck genre: While at one time books of short stories were published almost as frequently as novels were, their cinematic equivalent has never amounted to even one percent of the fictional films released. You could argue that Pulp Fiction counts as an anthology, but its stories…
The new Adam Sandler comedy Big Daddy isn’t just the funniest movie of the summer; it’s also the most improbable feel-good movie of the season. It’s improbable because practically everything about Adam Sandler seems so unlikely, so strangely back-assward. His whole phenomenal career (from Billy Madison to Happy Gilmore, from…
Mixed Emotions! is the name of Richard Baer’s astoundingly popular comedy about two golden agers who fall in love. Since its February opening, the show has been a hit for the Broward Stage Door Theatre, which has extended it through late July. Mixed emotions might also describe a demanding theatergoer’s…
David Haskin shows off his renaissance. It’s a building first, a two-story former office complex in the murky shadows of downtown’s federal courthouse. Outside the streets are busy with the business of making money and deploying power, the proverbial hustle and bustle of the gray-flannel herds. Upstairs inside is culture…
It’s a somewhat lively weeknight on the corner of Miami Beach’s Tenth Street and Washington Avenue and sound is all around. Hip-hop blares from car stereos. Miniskirted drunken women amble along the sidewalk muttering loudly. Motorcycles transporting fat guys thunder down the road. An action-packed evening for a place that…
thursday june 17 The Florida Dance Festival continues this week, incorporating films and discussions with a bevy of dance performances. This evening at 7:00 Dancemaker, Matthew Diamond’s Academy Award-nominated documentary about the Paul Taylor Dance Company, screens at the Alliance Cinema (927 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach; 305-534-7171). Also tonight at…
Twice Upon a Yesterday seems almost too geared for the Sliding Doors crowd. By relying on the same kind of conceptual sleight of hand as that recent Brit hit (which owed a giant debt of its own to Groundhog Day), this romantic fable’s sense of originality and wit is greatly…
Pretentiousness masquerading as profundity; self-indulgence masquerading as art. The Loss of Sexual Innocence, the dreadful new film from writer/director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, One Night Stand), joins the ranks of the worst films ever made. A statement that may, on the surface, seem harsh and heartless but that will…
While Hong Kong movies have been invading Hollywood through the success of Jackie Chan, John Woo, Jet Li, and others, mainland Chinese cinema has invaded the classier neighborhoods of the film industry during the past decade or so. The latest contender is The King of Masks, an affecting melodrama from…
