In the post-Babe era, can you make a live-action movie about animals and not have them talk to each other? For me, this is the deep philosophical question raised by Disney’s new 101 Dalmatians, a live-action remake of the studio’s 1961 animated feature — in which, by the way, the…
In the golden age of Hollywood, no less than the likes of Frank Capra owned Christmas on the big screen. But if you want Proof No. 496 of how far things have fallen, consider that in the Nineties holiday cinema is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chris Columbus — hired…
Thomas Hardy wrote Jude the Obscure in the mid-1890s, and to those of us professional critics who sometimes question the efficacy of our calling, it is considerably reassuring to note that the savage reception of the book actually discouraged Hardy from producing any more novels. Later on, English majors the…
A wavering light spins on the dark stage floor as an actor’s voice booms from the sound system, reciting a speech from Antony and Cleopatra. “Come, let us have one more gaudy night,” the voice beseeches. The stage lights rise and the actor staggers into view, pulling a costume rack…
One year ago last month the Wolfsonian opened its ornate gates on Washington Avenue in Miami Beach with much fanfare and a spectacular inaugural exhibition. “Designing Modernity: The Arts of Reform and Persuasion” has since embarked on an international tour. The show, which explores major modern social and political movements…
thursday november 21 Miami Book Fair International: The twelfth annual book fair continues its “Evenings With …” series tonight at Miami-Dade Community College’s Wolfson Campus Auditorium (300 NE Second Ave.) with author Walter Mosley (Devil in a Blue Dress, Black Betty), reading from his latest novel A Little Yellow Dog…
On its 30th anniversary, Star Trek exists only as a fetish or a fool’s pastime. The original series continues to air as a faded relic; the Next Generation cast was put to pasture as a film enterprise before its time; and Deep Space Nine and Voyager run and rerun so…
Anthony Minghella believes in ghosts — and, at his best, makes believers out of viewers, too. The writer-director of Truly Madly Deeply and this heartfelt, eye-filling (but problematic and puzzling) adaption of Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel The English Patient salts his movies with passionate specters. In Truly Madly Deeply…
In the late Nineteenth Century, Thomas Edison created the first light bulb. In the early Twentieth Century, Henry Ford designed the first production-line automobile. Our plugged-in, revved-up contemporary world owes much to these quintessentially American geniuses, both of whom were as adept at marketing products as they were at inventing…
thursday november 14 New Vision Florida/Brazil: Tigertail Productions continues its second annual Florida/Brazil arts exchange festival this weekend with a number of dance and music concerts, lectures, and video screenings. First up is a dance lecture and video screening with Brazil’s premier dance writer and critic Helena Katz, who will…
“I coulda been a contender,” Marlon Brando laments to Rod Steiger in On the Waterfront. Instead, he got “a one-way ticket to Palookaville.” Russ, Jerry, and Sid, the three unemployed Jersey City guys at the core of the droll, poignant new film Palookaville, share Brando’s ultimate destination. Like the ex-pugilist,…
Mother Night, a loving adaption of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 novel of the same name, should be required viewing as a companion piece to Casablanca. Like that Bogart classic, Mother Night has a powerful World War II love story at its core, and uses that tragic romance to address the tricky…
Legend has it that French writer, artist, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau’s aesthetic was shaped by an injunction from the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev. The young Cocteau, having achieved a minor measure of celebrity as a poet in Paris before World War I, complained to Diaghilev that the older man did…
The current show at ART-ACT in the Design District is part of QueeRoots/QueerSpace, a three-week festival of gay and lesbian culture that has included performance art, a poetry slam, and video screenings. Mark Holt, who will perform his monologue Queerbait Friday, November 15, also organized the exhibition, which is casually…
“It’s time to take the hot seat, Mary,” says Rafael Lima, leading a Thursday morning class in the play-writing program at New World School of the Arts (NWSA). Mary Manning’s cheeks flush as she pushes her hair behind her ears. Clutching a thick loose-leaf notebook, she makes her way to…
thursday november 7 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival: The eleventh annual Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival opened last week but now goes into full swing with screenings at five locations around Broward County, mainly at Coral Ridge Theatre (3401 NE 26th Ave., Fort Lauderdale). Among the films making their world…
Looking for Richard is Al Pacino’s shaggy, nutty, wheedling documentary about a staging of Shakespeare’s Richard III and the art of performance. Filmed between acting stints over a period of several years, it shows us Pacino in a flurry of guises. We see him as Richard, of course, but also…
Thrillers that involve a threat to the nuclear family almost always have a reactionary subtext. Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and Cape Fear leap to mind. When a director of Ron Howard’s depth makes a film like Ransom, about a rich guy trying to best the man…
The made-on-a-shoestring male bonding comedy Swingers has become a darling of the film festival circuit thanks to the cinematic equivalent of good cocktail chatter: smart, funny lines delivered by a handful of stylish, good-looking (but not overpoweringly so) young hipsters whose slick, trendy appearances mask vulnerable hearts. Jon Favreau, the…
thursday october 31 Halloween Extravoodooganza: Lincoln Road (between Sixteenth and Seventeenth streets in Miami Beach) celebrates Halloween by transforming into a haunted cemetery filled with tombstones and sarcophagi, an outdoor “Ghoul Town” art exhibition, and tons of creepy characters. From 3:30 to 5:30, costumed kids can stop at Lincoln Road…
I hate the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. I know, I know — film festivals are good for us, they give us a chance to see movies that we wouldn’t otherwise get to see, they bring area cinephiles together, et cetera. But after screening videos of FLIFF (not to be…
One-person shows. Single-character plays. Monodramas. Autobiographical monologues. By whatever term actors, promoters, or critics dub solo performances, the format — in which one artist attempts to mesmerize an audience throughout an entire evening — has proliferated on the theater scene in recent years. Just check the listings from London to…
