Don’t let the lush, tropical grounds surrounding University of Miami’s Bill Cosford theater lull you into thinking things are just as delectable on the inside of the movie house. They’re not. Based on the smattering of movies I’ve seen from this year’s usually impressive repertoire of unconventional works, who ever…
New-school genre junk food: Take a Tarantino wannabe with Sundance credentials; add a large, famous-enough cast and a show-biz backdrop; season the violence with references to Sergio Leone and Takeshi Kitano; serve cool; and garnish with a cynicism beyond irony. Smokin’ Aces is writer-director Joe Carnahan’s third and most elaborate…
The wildly uneven French writer/director/producer Luc Besson has a fondness for life outside the margins of conventional society: the neon-lit labyrinths of the Paris Metro (Subway), the pristine depths of the ocean (The Big Blue). His latest flick finds him subterranean once again, this time in a fantastical universe where…
Park City, Utah — On the first Saturday of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, I rolled out of bed and hustled up Main Street for the 8:30 a.m. screening of Tamara Jenkins’s The Savages, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as adult siblings caring for an irascible elderly parent…
Park City, Utah — Ten days of terse texting among professional narcissists working on little or no sleep in one of the last cold spots left on Al Gore’s inconvenient Earth: Welcome to Sundance ’07, where wounding homefront melodrama Grace is Gone sells and it hardly pays to be nice…
Ricky J. Martinez does not deserve the following review. Martinez is a nice guy, all comfy pats-on-the-back and easy laughter, and he’s obviously passionate about his work. He gets giddy while discussing it, and that’s fine. I wish his work would provoke some giddiness in me. It doesn’t. Sin Full…
Romance: A filthy, filthy courtroom farce in the grand Mametian tradition of filthy farces, Romance contains moments when the Jew jokes, pedophilia jokes, and gay jokes make even the hip audiences at GableStage gasp instead of chuckle. This is all to the good: Although the story seems like an afterthought…
For her solo debut at Kevin Bruk Gallery, Su-en Wong parodies and pulverizes preconceptions of Asian women in a show that’s both brazen and brainy. Mining the muck of porn fantasy, Wong clones herself in paintings and drawings in which she often appears nude or draped in suggestive schoolgirl regalia,…
I’m So Much Better than You: Magnus Sigurdarson’s installation features four tons of Miami New Times papers interlocked like bricks to form a curving hip-high wall. It houses a DVD player and monitor where the artist is seen performing a puppet show in Xiamen, China. Sigurdarson, who was born in…
Cocaine Cowboys (Magnolia) Slam! Bang! Pow! Snort! This tawdry and giddy documentary tells the story of Miami’s transformation from a place where old people go to die to a place with so much drug money that the Mercedes dealers were constantly out of stock, where the hit men would rather…
For most of us, the closest we get to practicing medicine is telling a depressed co-worker, “Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.” But that doesn’t stop us from living vicariously through TV doctors. Now, with Trauma Center: Second Opinion, you can take your surgical dreams one step further. Thanks…
PARK CITY, Utah — On the first Saturday of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, I rolled out of bed and hustled up Main Street for the 8:30 screening of Tamara Jenkins’ The Savages, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as adult siblings caring for an irascible elderly parent. Only…
PARK CITY, Utah — Ten days of terse texting among professional narcissists working on little or no sleep in one of the last cold spots left on Al Gore’s inconvenient Earth: Welcome to Sundance ’07, where wounding homefront melodrama Grace Is Gone sells and it hardly pays to be nice…
Brokeback Mountain: 2-Disc Collector’s Edition (Universal) Cowboy del Amor (Genius) Crooks (Lightyear) Fiddler on the Roof (MGM) The 2006 FIFA World Cup Film: The Grand Finale (Sony) Ghost Encounters: The Queen Mary (Anthem) The Guardian (Buena Vista) Hopeless Pictures: Season One (Genius) Jesus Camp (Magnolia) John Pinette: I’m Starvin’ (Image)…
The tradition began wayyyy off-Broadway, when theatergoing snobs used to (un)affectionately refer to stage plays marked by gospel sangin’ and inspirational story lines as “chitlin’ theater.” These dramatic expressions of heartbreak and redemption featured the black stars of Seventies sitcoms and Eighties R&B. But when Tyler Perry’s stage-bred, cross-dressing Madea…
You are here. If you love maps, here should be the Miami-Dade Cultural Center, where the Historical Museum of Southern Florida is hosting the fourteenth annual Miami International Map Fair, a weekend in which tons of antique maps in various shapes and sizes will be on display. This celebration of…
The scent of basil resonates as you enter the farmers’ market at Gardner’s Market in Pinecrest. Surrounded by mounds of ripe tomatoes, strawberries, and regional vegetables, you know whatever you choose to cook tonight will be scrumptious. Here you’ll find the freshest ingredients in town every Sunday morning through April,…
Chic parties on white sands under the stars, an amorous and glamorous rose-color champagne room … Nikki Beach didn’t need Justin to bring its sexy back. The star-studded location has been oozing the stuff for the past ten years. To celebrate, the beach club that spawned spinoffs from New York…
Ed Pettersen is infectious — or rather the music from his latest album, The New Punk Blues of Ed Pettersen. Despite the genre-blending title, Pettersen’s groove is entirely addictive folk and acoustic rock and roll with earnest lyrics about relationships, families, and politics (which sorta makes sense, since Janet Reno…
If 2006 was your year of the slob, spent in a chocoholic, sedentary haze, blithely letting the phone ring as your creditors kept calling, it’s time to snap out of it and get off of your lazy butt. Two thousand seven is your year to change for the better, and…
Live dance performance can be grueling, as dull as a spoon. But, at its best, it can also be explosive and propulsive, an in-the-face assault on the senses that leaves audiences so drained they feel like they did the steppin’ themselves. Vincent Mantsoe’s work definitely falls under the latter description…
It has been threatening our city for months, and whether you plan on putting up your Super Bowl shutters or heading outside for a look-see, there’s no escaping this storm. The big game is days away, but today you and the other early birds can celebrate at the NFL Experience,…
