Who would have imagined that at this late date — more than half a century after the end of World War II, after The Diary of Anne Frank, Schindler’s List, Au Revoir, Les Enfants, Pierre Sauvage’s documentary Weapons of the Spirit, and Jan Kadar’s amazing The Shop on Main Street…
If internal combustion ever becomes obsolete — that is, if the auto industry ever allows internal combustion to become obsolete — whatever will movies do for heart-stopping drama? Hoof beats are dramatic, and the chug of a steam engine is suspenseful, but the roar of a gasoline-powered vehicle stirs the…
He’s a cowboy. He’s a construction worker. He’s a sailor. And a leather man. Anatomically correct — okay, he’s hung like a horse — and buff as a bodybuilder, he’s Billy the gay doll. Dreamed up by designer John McKitterick and debuted in a limited edition for a 1994 AIDS…
Bat dance, monkey dance, dance of the little horsemen. Small flutes called pitos and a giant gourd marimba. For the past decade, Grupo Cultural Uk’ux Pop Wuj (“the heart of the writings of the ancestors”), a community of Quiché Maya Indians from Chichicastenango, Guatemala, has actively sought to excavate its…
For the next five days, Richard Lewis will seldom leave his North Dallas hotel room, hidden away at the far end of the top floor with a view of overpasses, office buildings and distant dark clouds. He will venture out only to visit a couple of radio and television stations,…
Like apparitions rolling in from the sea, four rafters descend down the aisles from the back of the darkened Colony Theater toward the stage. Pedro (Luis Alberto Garcia), a soldier, crouches and peers excitedly through a telescope. Octavio (Gerardo Riveron) enters with a compass. Devoto (Jorge Hernandez), dressed as a…
In the annals of social change, Alma Schindler is strictly small potatoes, and Bruce Beresford’s new biopic, Bride of the Wind, unwittingly threatens to erase her altogether. For those who don’t have the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at their fingertips, Alma (Sarah Wynter) was an outspoken party girl from…
Up for a quick trip across the United States? If you can’t spare the time and gas money, an alternative might be the “road” movies currently screening as part of the Reel America Film Series at the Wolfsonian-FIU in Miami Beach. The idea behind the minifestival is to “explore travel…
Sabrina Matthews, a self-professed flannel-shirt-wearing truck-driving dyke who employs the word butcher as an adjective (“If I was butcher….”), and Jason Stuart, a goateed gay actor and comedian from a “very crazy and lovable Jewish family” who has a proclivity for leather and Speedos. Put them together and you have…
Watch your back for flying debris: Miami landmarks are falling fast. Witness the recent demolition of the 1899 house owned by Miami’s first doctor, James Jackson (as in Jackson Memorial Hospital), ranked second on Dade Heritage Trust’s list of the Ten Most Endangered Historic Sites just a short time ago…
At this moment, Baz Luhrmann, control freak and self-proclaimed ringleader of conspirators “who conspire to something greater than ourselves,” is not in control at all. The cameraman trailing behind him, like a faithful puppy awaiting treats, does not work for the director; rather, he is in the employ of the…
When Sonia (Connie SaLoutos), an aspiring lyricist, meets successful composer Vernon (Dan Kelley) in They’re Playing Our Song, she hesitates while searching for the right words to describe his work: “Your music is, well, universally embraced…. I don’t want to use the word commercial.” Ironically adjectives like commercial have plagued…
Fernando Garcia’s paintings are crafty enough to bring to mind Plato’s distrust of art. For the Greek philosopher, by attempting to become more real than reality, painting was a deceiving art form. But in fact Garcia’s work makes you relish the delicate balance between perception and illusion. Is that really…
When he was in his thirties, Ivan Reitman made comedies like a young man. His early movies, among them Stripes, Meatballs, and Ghostbusters, were messy, cocky, charming, daffy, and restless; they did anything for a laugh, even if that meant dousing John Candy in mud or Bill Murray in a…
Now here’s a tricky one. Start with a busload of familiar and appealing stars shacked up together for a couple of weeks in a house in the Hollywood Hills. Assign them their mission: to emulate themselves — sort of — while dutifully reminding us that human relationships can be complicated…
Vroom. Vroom. America gets going — by bus, boat, car, plane, and train. Braking, however, is another event altogether. The catchy chant of the winning young imp in the ubiquitous car commercial says it all: We’ve zoom, zoom, zoomed through the past century. Accordingly there are few better metaphors than…
Wherever there’s a vagina holding forth, a penis in need of countering dialogue must be close by. It’s no surprise, then, that on the heels of Eve Ensler’s critically acclaimed and commercially successful play The Vagina Monologues comes Dean C. Dauw and his play, Penis’ Responses to The Vagina Monologues…
Tamra Davis is bound by contract not to discuss the film that, at this very moment, she’s editing for release next year. “I’m officially not supposed to do any press for it,” the director says sheepishly, so she offers a few off-the-record comments about the movie, a road-trip comedy-drama starring…
Early on in Florida Stage’s The Pavilion, the narrator looks out at the audience and declares, “This is a play about time.” Normally such an audacious statement might undercut the play’s actual content, but The Pavilion delves into the concepts of time, memory, and perception so thoroughly, and often eloquently,…
Just when we culturally deprived, mystery-starved Americans were convinced that that most delicious of movie genres, the French thriller, was dead and buried, a literate and exciting new filmmaker named Dominik Moll has emerged to revive it — and set our nerves exquisitely on edge. It’s a minor miracle that…
Chalk up another one for George Dubya. A few weeks ago the U.S. Immigration Department refused to allow acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, director of both the Oscar-nominated The White Balloon and the Venice Film Festival Golden Lion winner The Circle, to change planes in New York on his way…
“Now wait a minute,” you may ask yourself during the setup of Ken Loach’s new film, Bread and Roses. “Is that Tom Green? Because it sure looks like Tom Green, and judging by the way he’s climbing into that garbage can, he certainly acts a bit like Tom Green….” Well…
