Blown Away starts out auspiciously enough. As the credits roll and the ethereal, melancholy music moans, the camera skips over a rough sea. Murky green waves fill the screen. The water looks cold and deep. The mood is hypnotic, foreboding. Every now and again you hear a muffled roar off…
Americans are obsessed with mobility. Traveling from point A to point B, whether those destinations are geographical, spiritual, financial, or whatever, governs our lives. Success simply means getting where you want to go. And we’re all going somewhere, whether we realize it or not. We are bodies in motion trying…
After one year of operation, the Theatre League of South Florida can boast a profit of $407.60. If that figure doesn’t seem too impressive, especially when compared with other local projects such as Blockbuster Park, consider the following: 1. The organization runs on a purely volunteer basis, and started without…
I know, I know. The easiest and most PC thing to do here is to label Rose Troche’s lesbian love story Go Fish a delightful crossover film that will appeal to gay and straight audiences alike and be done with it. The film is, after all, sassy and salty and…
“Everything the light touches is your kingdom,” explains reigning king of the jungle Mufasa to Simba, his eager little cub, at the beginning of Disney’s dazzling new adventure The Lion King. There are a hundred reasons to praise The Lion King, from the bracing yet familiar screenplay to the spellbinding…
Significant historical events often shape an entire generation’s psyche, and when that generation reaches maturity, the whole of society can be similarly affected. America’s Depression-era babies, for example, were nurtured in an atmosphere of guilt and whispers; they grew up embracing denial over truth, and refused to re-examine their rigid…
Everyone deserves a vacation, even artistic directors. I suspect that after producing an exceptional season of drama and musical revues at New Theatre, Rafael de Acha decided to take a break, and graciously hand over this summer’s season to John A. Werkheiser, who will be staging the next three productions…
Here’s something you don’t see every day: black artists exploiting white culture for financial gain. I suppose you could make a case that talk shows were a predominantly white domain until Oprah and Arsenio marched on Phil and Johnny, and after a couple of joints you might be able to…
While you might not guess that a hip-hop mockumentary and a musical about AIDS have a lot in common, there are several parallels between Rusty Cundieff’s Fear of a Black Hat and John Greyson’s Zero Patience. For starters, both films are the work of young, nonmainstream auteurs, each of whom…
The flacks should have a field day with a high-concept action flick like Speed. You can almost predict the blurbs before you’ve even seen the movie: It’s a rush! The thrill ride of the summer! Speed is the ticket! My heart wouldn’t stop pounding! Pedal-to-the-metal action! Speed kills! Race to…
A disproportionate number of sociopaths and sexual miscreants have found careers as rock and rollers. Sid Vicious. Wendy O. Williams. Keith Moon. Patti Smith. Barry Manilow. As sick fucks go, however, GG Allin was probably the sickest. Whether you think Allin was as demented as advertised or just another pathetic,…
If you choose this week to enter into the world created by the ninth International Hispanic Theatre Festival, you may find yourself in a landscape of altered reality, where the stakes are high, the laughs are dark, and the tragic and comedic are almost inextricably tangled. For nearly a decade…
The release of Penny Marshall’s latest film, Renaissance Man, featuring Danny DeVito and Marky Mark, raises several burning questions. Can Marshall, whose picture hits theaters barely two months after Ron Howard’s The Paper and whose acting and directing career has eerily paralleled Howard’s, outschmaltz her freckle-faced colleague’s paper-thin tabloid opus?…
I lived in L.A. for two years in the late Seventies but I wasn’t much of a surfer. I tried it exactly once, sleeping on the beach at San Clemente for a long weekend with a couple of other bums I met playing hoops on Venice Beach. The waves sucked,…
Anyone who has seen Luis Santeiro’s two prior plays in their world premieres at the Coconut Grove Playhouse — Mixed Blessings (1989) and The Lady from Havana (1991) — knows what to expect from his latest offering at the Playhouse, The Rooster and the Egg. Although Santeiro has won seven…
Miss O’Hare, the plucky protagonist of the delightful new comedy-mystery (comedystery?) Widow’s Peak, feels betrayed by those closest to her when a scandal involving a secret love affair comes to light, airing her dirty laundry in public. Who better to play the part than Mia Farrow? Taking on a role…
Eddie Murphy needs a hit. Badly. Beverly Hills Cop 3 was written by Steven de Souza (the man who scripted Murphy’s action hit 48 HRS) and directed by John Landis (the man who shot Trading Places, Murphy’s best film to date). The favors have been called in and the hired…
Okay, I admit it. I’m a cynic. I thought the big-screen version of The Flintstones was going to be terrible, a new low in our national obsession with junk culture, a thinly veiled attempt to cash in on a popular television cartoon that was itself a tepid facsimile of The…
London, August 1973. Married less than six months, my husband and I strolled down Kings Road, blissfully in love with each other and with youth. Craftsmen on the street sold gold rings with artful designs, buskers played haunting ballads on weather-beaten guitars. We came upon a theater, brightly lighted, where…
At first glance it might not appear that Henry Jaglom and Spike Lee have much in common. Jaglom is white, Lee is black. Jaglom is 51, Lee is 37. Jaglom handles a camera clumsily and artlessly, like a construction worker would a Stradivarius. Lee is a consummate stylist whose visual…
I would be less than truthful if I said that the 1993-94 theater season in South Florida was anywhere near triumphant; in fact, it was not half as exciting as the two previous years I’ve spent here as a critic. Disregarding the few high points and the few dismal failures,…
Recently I saw a T-shirt imprinted with a cartoon that made me laugh out loud. It showed a young man sitting in a large but otherwise empty auditorium. The banner suspended from the ceiling read, “Convention Headquarters: Children from Completely Normal Families.” It’s now acceptable, even fashionable, to drag old…
