Gavin MacLeod, erstwhile captain of the Love Boat, sails blithely through Moon over Buffalo with an erect rubber nose. He’s playing Cyrano de Bergerac. Or rather he’s playing an actor playing Cyrano in Ken Ludwig’s 1995 Broadway hit, a comedy about a troupe of washed-up actors in 1953 who, by…
thursday december 10 The glitz and glitter for which South Beach is becoming too well known can be seen today at the Bass Museum (2121 Park Ave., Miami Beach), when the exhibition Liza Lou’s America opens. The California-based sculptor and installation artist Liza Lou has a fondness for sparkly things,…
After two decades of directing the annual Miami Christmas Pageant, Chuck Bridwell recalls one particular scene that will forever stick in his memory: the time a camel nearly backed into the orchestra pit. “It came within three feet of the violins,” he says. The camel is just one of some…
More than three years ago, when he was working as a paid production assistant on Fernando Trueba’s shot-in-Miami Two Much, Herschel Faber soaked up the moviemaking vibes while solidifying, once and for all, what he wanted to do with his life. “As I was watching the film being made,” he…
Ultratough guy Jesse “The Body” Ventura says he means business as the new governor of Minnesota. But for now the nasty crime wave in that state continues unchecked — in the movies anyway. Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan, a psychological thriller that shows us how dangerous life can get after…
Here we go again. Enemy of the State is Fascism in America 1998, Chapter Four … or Five … or whatever we’re up to. It readily invites comparison to The Siege, but for better or worse its goals are more mundane. While The Siege seems like an ideological agenda driving…
First of all, if you’re among the benighted who’ve never seen Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 shocker Psycho, stop reading at the end of this paragraph. A movie review, even one as incisive and elegant as this, is no way to be introduced to Hitchcock’s horror masterpiece. Your assignment is to rush…
Of all the repertory programs ever devised, the double bill playing this month at the New Theatre has got to be one of the most delightfully odd. Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is bound to pop up somewhere this time of year, of course, but would you expect to find…
A tinsel-decked Christmas tree overwhelms the living room of Atlanta’s upstanding Freitag family. The ceiling-scraping spruce is about to be topped by a star until one of the characters declares that “Jewish Christmas trees don’t have stars.” How the Freitags come to have this gold ornament packed away among their…
Lead Stories *Recently dismissed San Jose, California, police officer Johnny Venson, Jr., age 48, in jail facing fourteen counts of on-duty burglary, was awarded a $27,000 annual pension in November by the city’s retirement board. The board agreed with Venson that he had a disability: an addiction to gambling, which…
“It’s instant gratification,” says DB, a DJ from the UK who was instrumental in bringing across the Atlantic the fast-paced style of electronic music known as jungle. He’s talking on the phone from New York about the life of a DJ. According to DB, it’s the ideal career for restless…
Dogs can do so many things: perform tricks, guide blind people, sniff out anything from dope to death, pull sleds, catch plastic flying discs, hunt, provide security, rescue people, write stimulating articles for major metropolitan newspapers and national magazines. And if they should do something else — well, rest assured…
thursday 3 It may seem a bit early to listen to Christmas music and commune with Santa Claus, but that’s exactly what you’ll hear and be able to do when you hang out under the stars at the final Barnacle Under Moonlight concert of the year, taking place at 6:00…
“I just find it all so bizarre,” notes John Maybury, popping a cigarette in his mouth and lighting it in what appears to be one quick flip of the wrist. “All those issues of ‘being out’ and, ‘Are you in?’ We should have gone beyond that by now. I know…
JUMP INFORMATION APPENDED FROM FILE C:NEP32DAYS1203199812030101.NVT According to the sparse information available in standard reference books, Chilean expatriate director Raul Ruiz, still in his late fifties, has made more than 100 films since 1960; apparently only 50 or so are features, but that’s still an impressive stat. Although he’s been…
Imagine the results of a collaboration between Federico Fellini and Woody Allen? Let’s say it was years ago, before Fellini died and Woody stopped making funny movies. Hilarious, right? And how bizarre would it be if there were any justice for the oppressed of this sorry world? Would we all…
The word burp is layered with meaning in English. There is the nurturing burp one encourages from a baby to help digestion. There is the vulgar burp an ill-mannered boor expels after guzzling a gaseous beverage. Then there is the satisfying burp, the pleasing pffft heard when a Tupperware container…
thursday 26 It’s Thanksgiving and you’re home. You have yet to stuff your face with turkey and all the other stuff, and the last thing you want to do is sit around watching that damn Macy’s parade on TV. For a change, why not go to North Miami’s WinterNational Parade…
Surprise and pleasure come wrapped together in A Bug’s Life. This big adventure about tiny critters is the latest piece of robust whimsy from Pixar, the computer-animation studio that broke into features with the 1995 smash Toy Story. It should prove irresistible to children. Toy Story opened up the secret…
A third of the way through Home Fries you may begin wondering if the filmmakers haven’t outsmarted themselves. Overloaded with oddities but a bit short on horse sense, this is one of those stubbornly defiant, attitude-driven movies that’s so busy scrambling genres, breaking rules, and dashing expectations on the road…
In the rancid nightmare farce called Very Bad Things, Peter Berg, in his writing-directing debut, creates characters that you immediately want to see killed off. From the title to the ads to the Website (which features a Vegas stripper who will dance for you), Very Bad Things has been positioned…
Given the vroom-vroom of their current go-round on stage, it’s possible that, even with the theatrical equivalent of a road map, you might not be able to keep track of Kander and Ebb these days. Critically acclaimed revivals of the songwriting team’s biggest hits, Cabaret (1966) and Chicago (1975), are…
