thursday july 31 Florida Marlins: Someday they will talk with reverence about the Atlanta Braves. Extraordinary. Dynastic. Unbelievable. Dominant. When the historians look back on organized baseball in the Nineties, they will look at Atlanta. In the past eight years the Braves have won a World Series championship and four…
187, a number favored by adolescent thugs, is the California state penal code for homicide — and a harsh sentence for all involved in this hopeless, hapless movie. The gifted Samuel L. Jackson stars as a high school teacher who cracks under the constant threat of rabid teen machismo and…
In Picture Perfect Jennifer Aniston tells a whopper of a lie partially to win the attentions of a guy who has heretofore ignored her, interrupts a wedding, and humiliates another guy at his workplace. This follows on the heels of My Best Friend’s Wedding, which finds Julia Roberts trying to…
In a variation on the St. Patrick’s Day saying about the Irish, in South Florida theater these days there are two types of shows: those that are Jewish and those that wish they were. Eager to reach the vast numbers of ticket buyers among the region’s sizable Jewish population, producers…
At first glance, the new Japanese comedy Shall We Dance? appears to be an Asian remake of the Australian hit Strictly Ballroom. But in fact the similarities are only surface-deep, and just barely that. Part of the difference is rooted in the cultural gap between the two nations, but wider…
Mrs. Brown (a Cannes hit and Miramax release) is dignified to the dead max — brownish-gray in mood and look and spirit. It’s based on the true story of the platonic but controversial bond between Queen Victoria (Judi Dench) and a Highlander named John Brown (Billy Connolly), who had been…
Not satisfied with the president you have? Here’s Harrison Ford’s James Marshall in Air Force One: Vietnam war hero, straight as a ramrod, devoted husband and father. We first see him delivering a speech before a roomful of Russian dignitaries. Departing from the prepared, wishy-washy text, Mr. President fire-breathes his…
It’s been said that all you need to create theater is two planks and a passion. With its basic platform stage, South Beach’s EDGE/Theatre comes raggedly close to meeting the first criterion. As for the second, Jim Tommaney, the company’s artistic director and general manager, supplies the requisite passion in…
In a painting on paper that hangs just inside the door of Miami-Dade Community College’s InterAmerican Gallery on SW 27th Avenue, a man screams. The cartoonish figure’s mouth is wide open, his beady eyes popping, conveying a darkly comic sense of slow-burning distress. Joseph Oakes, the artist, a resident of…
thursday july 24 Arthur Hailey: Author of mega best sellers Hotel (which eventually became a long-running television series starring Barbra Streisand’s current honey-pie James Brolin and Connie Selleca, wife of the musical antichrist, a.k.a. John Tesh) and Airport (turned into a hit movie with a superfluity of screaming), Hailey is…
thursday july 17 Zo’s Summer Groove: Under all that scowling and snarling he does on the court, the Miami Heat’s Alonzo Mourning has a soft spot for kids. This weekend Zo hosts a series of charity events for children, including tonight’s kickoff Mourning Knight Gala, a black-tie dinner at 6:30…
What must those poor guys in Insane Clown Posse be thinking? After all, the sad white rap act only made a record that included profanity, and still they got drop-kicked off a panicky Disney-owned Hollywood Records, a label whose greatest catalogue asset is Queen. Martin Lawrence, on the other hand,…
When the producers at Miami Beach’s Area Stage and Coral Gables’s Florida Shakespeare Theatre discovered several weeks ago both troupes had scheduled a South Florida premiere of a work by the same playwright, they decided to join forces and create what they’re calling the Nicky Silver Play Festival. During the…
thursday july 10 Franco-Hispanic Film Festival: Celebrate French independence with a four-day festival of recent films co-produced by French- and Spanish-speaking nations, at CocoWalk 16 Theatres (3015 Grand Ave., Coconut Grove). Tonight’s opening gala features the Florida premiere of Raul Ruiz’s Franco-Chilean 1996 film Genealogies d’un Crime (Genealogy of a…
Just in time for Bastille Day, the consulate general of France in Florida and CocoWalk 16 Theatres are offering the inaugural Franco-Hispanic Film Festival (July 11 through 13; see “Showtimes” or “Calendar Listings” for a complete schedule), whose raison d’etre appears to be to spotlight cinema that’s co-produced or co-distributed…
A lot of ink has been shed in the press lately about the “seriousness” of the new Robert Zemeckis film Contact, starring Jodie Foster as an astronomer who receives humankind’s first extraterrestrial message. Forrest Gump made Zemeckis a guru; now he’s being primed as a philosopher king. Just abouxt every…
A shipwrecked young woman who protects herself in a strange city by masquerading as a man; an orphaned teenage girl who dons men’s clothing in defiance of Jewish laws that forbid the education of women; a tortured man who stops numbing his pain with alcohol long enough to confront his…
thursday july 3 Marisa Monte: Critics are hailing Marisa Monte, the new Brazilian diva whose cascade of black hair, red lips, and sexy moves qualify her to carry the torch of Gal Costa and Astrud Gilberto. Her voice might just have something to do with it, too. Best-known for rejuvenating…
Tomas Gutierrez Alea’s final film shares with the late Cuban director’s Letters from the Park (a sweetly lyrical film based on the Gabriel Garcia Marquez story about a man who ghostwrites love letters) and Strawberry and Chocolate a tone of wistful romanticism. Like a Garcia Marquez novel, Guantanamera, which screened…
One speech and one prop from Men in Black combine to sum up the movie. An alien in four-legged earthly form delivers the speech: “You humans, when’re you gonna learn that size doesn’t matter? Just ’cause something’s important doesn’t mean it’s not very, very small.” The most refreshing thing about…
Info: Rodgers and Hart Failure By Savannah Whaley With the exception of a few years in the early Thirties spent toiling in Hollywood’s movie factory, lyricist Lorenz Hart and composer Richard Rodgers held sway for nearly a quarter of a century on Broadway. Between 1919 and 1942, the pair defied…
Sculptor Florencio Gelabert — whose work is the subject of a solo show at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale — arrived in Miami in 1990, the first of several dozen Cuban artists who decamped here at the start of the decade. At the time, these young emigres caused…
