On the surface, Arthur Miller’s 1950 adaption of Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 An Enemy of the People seems theatrical proof of the French adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Set in a nineteenth-century Norwegian town, the drama’s subject matter mirrors headlines in the 1990s: poisoned…
One morning last month, Gustavo Matamoros arrived at Miami International Airport to find that his flight to Tampa had been canceled. For Matamoros, the director of the South Florida Composers Alliance, the two-hour wait for the next plane to Tampa was not so much an inconvenience as it was what…
Some nights you get lucky. Writer-director John Rubino’s debut film, Lotto Land, sneaked into town as quietly as a balsero. I attended the preview screening not because I particularly wanted to see the film — I knew nothing about it and the title didn’t make the movie sound promising –…
Blaine Dunham began her career in theater down by the docks in Coconut Grove. Now 23 years old, the two-time Carbonell Award-nominated actress and artistic director of Lunatic Theatre Company arrived in Miami at the age of 6, making a dramatic entrance by sailing into the Grove’s Dinner Key Marina…
I live in South Miami. The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival has always bugged me because it presents a nasty dilemma: I love movies, but I hate to drive. In the past, my I-95 aversion has usually won out. And I’m fairly comfortable making the assumption that I’m not the…
“Look at that woman,” muses Hattie, as she watches a contestant dressed in a chicken suit lose everything during a rerun of Let’s Make a Deal. “Disappointment is carved on her face.” Of course, Hattie (Meredith Marsuli), a character in James McLure’s one-act comedy Laundry & Bourbon, has already seen…
Purvis Young, known for his fiery mixed-media paintings of Overtown crowds and streaming boat people, recently visited the Bass Museum, where his works are included in Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present. Young headed straight for the selections from the permanent collection located…
At one point in the witless but well-acted Copycat, Sigourney Weaver’s character, a criminal psychologist named Helen Hudson who specializes in serial killers, delivers a lecture on mass murderers to a packed auditorium. Hudson says, “The FBI estimates there could be as many as 35 serial killers cruising for their…
It’s always nice to see a local gal making a name for herself in the world of big-time professional filmmaking. Coral Park Senior High and UM drama department alumna Mel Gorham has had, in her own words, “nothing but great luck with directors.” After acting in only six pictures (the…
First came the innovative 1976 novel by the late Argentine writer Manuel Puig, followed by his 1981 stage adaption. Then came director Hector Babenco’s much-ballyhooed 1985 film. A musical rendition flopped when presented by New Musicals at SUNY Purchase in upstate New York in 1990; however, when resuscitated by the…
Angela Bassett cuts a striking figure in Strange Days. Defiant, chiseled facial features. Sculpted bod. Feral sensuality in her eyes and the confident grace of an athlete in her movement. But once you get past that fierce, riveting appearance and the novelty of a woman playing the strongest, toughest character…
After a short deliberation, I have reached a verdict: This fall movie season, though barely half over, already has acquitted itself as one of the most successful in recent memory. Led by The Usual Suspects (my early frontrunner for movie of the year), with the current fall crop Hollywood has…
We safely can assume that Hollywood will experience shortages of UV rays, earthquakes, and Porsche-driving studio executives before the town runs out of formulaic crap plots for pseudo-trash murder mysteries. Lately, however, a disproportionate share of the cinematic flotsam seems to flow from the prolific pen of a single writer:…
We live in an era of easy confession, a time in which stories of abuse and neglect make the rounds of talk shows, support groups, and the evening network news programs. Because we’ve grown accustomed to the public disclosure of personal trauma, the plays of Tennessee Williams, often structured around…
An excerpt from writer Derek Walcott’s 1992 Nobel lecture is included in the catalogue that accompanies “Caribbean Visions: Contemporary Painting and Sculpture,” currently at the Center for the Fine Arts. In his moving essay, Walcott, a St. Lucia native who was awarded the prestigious prize for literature, remarks on the…
Fans of Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann rejoice! With his excruciatingly moronic script for Showgirls, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (Flashdance, Basic Instinct) strips off all the layers of pseudo-social conscience that informed his two collaborations with director Costa-Gavras (Betrayed and Music Box) and exposes himself as the heir apparent to Susann’s…
A black Philip Marlowe: It’s an idea so simple you wonder why nobody thought of it sooner. Writer-director Carl Franklin’s sensational Devil in a Blue Dress casts Denzel Washington in the role of hard-boiled, soon-to-be private investigator Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins in the film adaption of Walter Mosley’s absorbing debut novel…
Following the breakout success of 1992’s Under Siege and 1993’s The Fugitive, director Andrew Davis could have had his pick of just about any action movie project his heart desired. Instead he opted for Steal Big, Steal Little, a misguided comic morality play about twin brothers (both played by Andy…
I don’t know if men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but anyone who doubts that we hail from different planets should attempt to discuss with a member of the opposite sex the film How to Make an American Quilt. This is not just another women’s movie. It’s…
There’s a whole lot of ranting and raving going on these days over at Area Stage on Lincoln Road. Alan Bowne’s Beirut, an unnerving nightmare about a not-so-distant future in which HIV-positive people are quarantined in warehouses on the Lower East Side of New York City, plays in repertory with…
Imagine two straight upper-middle-class white couples on the deck of a Long Island beach house. Chloe Haddock pushes food on everyone, peppers her speech with badly pronounced French, and sings the wrong lyrics to show tunes. Her husband, John, completes the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink and lusts…
Antonia Eiriz’s Reincarnation, six oil-on-canvas panels clustered on one wall of the upstairs gallery at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, depicts 99 masklike faces floating on a background as dark and deep as a black hole. Placed side by side in rows — an arrangement that resembles skeletons…
