From the moment Richard Jay-Alexander saw his first musical he was hooked. “When I was in the fourth grade my dad took me to see Bye Bye Birdie, and I went nuts,” recalls the executive producer and associate director of the long-running Broadway mega-hit Les Miserables. “It was a bad…
As anyone who has relied on canine companionship to get through a difficult time can attest, a faithful dog more than deserves the moniker “man’s best friend.” Few species on Earth offer such undying devotion, unconditional love, reliable warmth, cuddly coats to snuggle up to, and homing instincts for returning…
Miami is often audaciously referred to as the Latin American art capital, a title that Coral Gables dealer Gary Nader has even claimed as a trademark for his annual Latin American art auction. In a city in which the majority of the population is Hispanic, with inextricable ties to Cuba,…
Fans of Zhang Yimou’s haunting and visually striking epic Raise the Red Lantern may want to check out Li Shaohong’s new film Blush, a lush adaption of a novel by Su Tong, who also wrote the book upon which Raise the Red Lantern was based. Like Yimou’s film, Shaohong’s provides…
Multiple Oscar-winner Nick Park’s name is well-known in his native England but remains relatively unfamiliar here in the U.S. More Americans have probably witnessed Park’s Plasticine magic in the video for the Peter Gabriel song “Sledgehammer” than in any of his other projects, despite the fact that he has walked…
thursday august 29 Steve Gunderson: Among the many, many fascinating headlines and sound bites that came out of this month’s Republican National Convention were interviews with Congressman Steve Gunderson, the only openly gay Republican congressman in U.S. history. His partner, architect Rob Morris, not only shares his life but has…
thursday august 22 Sweet Mickey: The Haitian sounds of compas ring through Rezurrection Hall at Club Nu (245 22nd St., Miami Beach) tonight as Sweet Mickey and King Posse take the stage. Sweet Mickey swings compas from nice to naughty and back again on the group’s most recent disc, Toutse…
You won’t see a more damning testimony to the mindlessness of war than the final scene of Vukovar. It’s a sweeping panorama of burned-out rubble where once stood the town of Vukovar, a breathtakingly picturesque jewel of a city in the former Yugoslavia. It took three months for director Boro…
If Jean-Michel Basquiat had chosen rock music rather than painting as his metier, his life story would seem so familiar as to border on cliche: gifted young artist rockets from obscurity to fame, makes buckets of money, begins to believe his own press clippings, and ultimately succumbs to the too-much-too-soon…
Set against the backdrops of ghostly castles, lonely heaths, magical forests, and islands inhabited by spirits, the plays of William Shakespeare have been offering us insights into the human condition for four hundred years. Complex characters, from Hamlet to Lear to Prospero, from Lady Macbeth to Desdemona to Cleopatra, have…
Emma viewers may need reassurance that they haven’t just wandered into a screening of last year’s acclaimed Jane Austen adaption, Sense and Sensibility. The two films share a wealth of connections with a real-life Emma — Thompson, that is. Although she isn’t starring in this current film, the distinguished English…
This past January, artistic director Rafael de Acha proudly announced that the Coral Gables-based New Theatre had secured the rights to present an August 1996 production of Terrence McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion! to be directed by company member Bill Yule. De Acha knew that the Caldwell Theatre Company was planning…
The contents of Miami’s closets and drawers are now on display around town. Organizers of the small but satisfying exhibitions at the Wolfsonian, the Metro-Dade Main Library, and the Historical Museum of Southern Florida have wisely eschewed centennial pomp and circumstance, opting instead for shows that comprise intimate reflections of…
thursday august 15 Dawn to Dusk: Director Larry Miller and choreographer Grace Campbell present France Luce Benson’s play about affirmation through culture and knowledge, Dawn to Dusk. The protagonist Aduska explores her personal history, as well as the history of her African and American ancestors, in order to improve her…
The last time Robert Altman named one of his movies after the city in which it took place, he gave us 1975’s sweeping satire Nashville, one of the defining films of its time. The country music capital and the crazy quilt of characters who gravitate to it provided Altman with…
thursday august 8 Self: The songs on the Tennessee-based band Self’s debut album Subliminal Plastic Motives (Zoo) move with the groove of one marvelously mutant mind, that of 22-year-old singer-songwriter-guitarist-producer Matt Mahaffey. In this collection of a dozen tunes that Mahaffey wrote, performed, and produced, grungy, crunchy guitars meet liquidy,…
It comes as no surprise that the recent release Kingpin has been rolling gutter balls at the box office. The promotional campaign for the film stresses the fact that Kingpin was directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, better known as the duo that brought you Dumb and Dumber. One might…
A lot of people, myself included, enjoyed director Andrew Davis’s wildly improbable but winning chase flick The Fugitive, which bore little resemblance to the Sixties’ TV series upon which it was based. Prior to that Harrison Ford vehicle, Davis had made a name for himself in Hollywood circles as a…
Naysayers have been tolling theater’s death knell since the development of motion pictures more than a century ago. The sound has grown louder with each new technological threat to live performance, from television to VCR to CD-ROM to virtual reality. Audiences, the theater world bemoans, have also been lured away…
thursday august 1 Naturalist Lectures: Summer is the time to look out over your yard (if you happen to have one), survey your domain, and realize that a crappy little mower and some hedge clippers aren’t going to cut it, so to speak. With this idea in mind, some local…
A few bombshells from the movie adaption of John Grisham’s A Time to Kill: The U.S. criminal justice system has flaws. Matthew McConaughey walks funny and has crooked teeth. Some lawyers are dishonest. Mississippi has not yet discovered air conditioning. Some cops are racists. Good guys look sexy in khaki…
Nicole Holofcener sits at an elegantly set table in the nearly deserted Mayfair Grill and studies the cover of the press kit for her engaging new movie Walking and Talking. It’s the first time that the fledgling writer-director, in the midst of a whirlwind multi-city publicity tour, has seen the…
