In the mood to launch a thousand ships? Fine, but it’s gonna cost you. Feel like sacking the Temple of Apollo? Okay, but bring drachmas. Depending on who’s counting, Warner Brothers’ presummer blockbuster Troy budgeted out at anywhere between $175 million and $250 million, including the big wooden horse, assorted…
Those seeking a spiritual counterpart to the yin of Lynne Ramsay’s masterfully moody Morvern Callar will find their yang in David Mackenzie’s exquisitely sorrowful Young Adam. Art-house aficionados may recall that in Ramsay’s recent film, a young male writer commits suicide, leaving his simple girlfriend to absorb his very being…
Stop where you are. Take a look around you. In a city like Miami it’s likely that one of the people you observe will have a story to tell involving escape, desperation, political exile, starvation, and a dangerous journey to freedom. If you happen to be hanging out in Sweetwater…
Snapshot 2004: Pentagon people sit before Congress attempting to explain some pictures of American military police and others humiliating captives in Iraq by forcing them to pose in ridiculous positions, often nude. At one point during the hearing a half-dozen people in the gallery, all with nice hair and Gap…
SAT 5/22 Home to a vast collection of post-Art Deco buildings (yes, they’re important too), North Beach recently celebrated the City of Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board’s designation of the North Beach Resort District, which recognizes the sleek and fun Miami Modern (or MiMo) apartments, hotels, shops, and more between…
FRI 5/21 Grandpa might be pushing 80 but he can still kick butt on the tennis court. He is also quite the dancer, speed walker, and golf player. The feisty old codger hasn’t lost his competitive spirit. Problem is that you have. Maybe he can find some able-bodied opponents who…
THU 5/20 How real is real? This is a question worthy of a poet. Miami spoken-word artist Will Bell is so real, he has adopted “Da-RealOne” as his moniker. Inspiration for his art comes from the six o’clock news, random conversations, or street scenes. Da-RealOne relates all issues and current…
SAT 5/22 You’re no cynic, but you must admit you loathe the song “What a Wonderful World.” And why not? It’s only human to be sick of the Louis Armstrong version of the tune, which has been featured incessantly in movies, commercials, and on easy listening jazz stations. In fact…
Did you know that Miami has the highest rate of violent crime in America? We are also the second most stressful city in the nation (after Tacoma, Washington), according to the latest report from Sperling’s Best Places USA (www.bestplaces.net). They put it this way: “Miami has the highest violent crime…
Thursday 5/20 Last time we checked, NBC news guy/Meet the Press host Tim Russert was not Beaver Cleaver. But by the sound of his new book, Big Russ and Me, which he’s been plugging on every show except Ricki Lake, Maury Povich, and TRL, it sure as heck seems as…
Ever-evolving, always changing, the universe nonetheless sustains many constants: Hair metal never really goes away. British women inevitably become besotted grumps. And short men always turn into intolerable control freaks. Another “true generality” holds that males of all statures develop their innate behavioral characteristics within patriarchal cultures that, while aiming…
That sound you hear is the stampeding feet of millions of pubescent and prepubescent girls, racing to movie theaters this weekend to catch sisters Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen in their first feature film since 1995’s It Takes Two. The Olsen twins began their acting careers at the age of nine…
In a pretty awesome coup for our tip of the peninsula, the Miami Art Museum will unveil “Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration,” a retrospective of 118 of Close’s works, with pieces ranging from 1972 to 2002. Fresh from a showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,…
Tap dancing is all in the feet, whether large or small, or so many people think. Not true, says 26-year-old hoofer Marshall Davis, Jr., a generous size eleven-and-a-half, double E. “It’s more your approach, your technique, and how you want to be heard dealing with tonality — just being precise…
NOW 24/7 In the underbelly of the Dadeland South Metrorail Station the late-night bus riders gather. Dressed in sweaty uniforms from shifts at Publix, or drained from monitoring a lackluster parking lot during security detail, they begin their journey home at the sign that says DROP OFF: 500 Midnight Owl…
FRI 5/14 Curse the dry air that shriveled your phalaenopsis plants’ leaves into raisins! Now 5 are on sphag-and-bag life support and 3 are compost. How to get through this mourning period? Buy more orchids, obviously. How convenient, then, that it’s time for the 8th annual Redland International Orchid Festival?…
TUE 5/18 Your friends snicker at your vast and valuable collection of Precious Moments figurines. But now you have the last laugh. The teardrop-eyed porcelain statues bearing inspirational messages have learned to rock. That’s right. PM Rocks! is a cute little girl band, a quintet in fact, bearing guitars, playing…
SAT 5/15 It just may be that artist Robert Wyndam Bucknell is conceited. It could be he is a narcissistic charlatan capitalizing on his heroin-chic Jesus aura to draw attention to himself. But then again, he may be doing more. According to the London-born artist, his show “Why I Think…
Watching Deborah Zoe Laufer’s biting satire The Gulf of Westchester at Florida Stage is something akin to witnessing a hotshot skier hurtling down an icy slope. Laufer’s topical tale of suburbanites caught up in divisive political debate over the war in Iraq hurtles along with such passion and intensity, it’s…
Master Harold … and the boys: Athol Fugard’s modern classic has to do with the stormy relationship between a white teen and two black family workers in South Africa circa 1950. The fine GableStage production features assured, understated direction from Joseph Adler, which is well supported by some excellent, evocative…
All My Lies Are Wishes: Rubén Torres-Llorca is a conceptualist with superb craftsmanship. His photo series features blurred images, laid-over symbols, and tangential titles. They work like a personal domestic still-life sequence, though a bit cryptic. The show’s pièce de résistance is a spider-web installation, made of rope and filled…
Thursday 5/13 Fabulous people, fabulous furniture, fabulous art, and fabulous cocktails. You too can be fabulous at Art and Design Night, a monthly series of faboo block parties in fabulousness central, Miami’s Design District. Best of all, the district’s fabulous restaurants, cafés, showrooms, and galleries provide multo-fabulous settings for you…
