“Everything the light touches is your kingdom,” explains reigning king of the jungle Mufasa to Simba, his eager little cub, at the beginning of Disney’s dazzling new adventure The Lion King. There are a hundred reasons to praise The Lion King, from the bracing yet familiar screenplay to the spellbinding…
Significant historical events often shape an entire generation’s psyche, and when that generation reaches maturity, the whole of society can be similarly affected. America’s Depression-era babies, for example, were nurtured in an atmosphere of guilt and whispers; they grew up embracing denial over truth, and refused to re-examine their rigid…
Everyone deserves a vacation, even artistic directors. I suspect that after producing an exceptional season of drama and musical revues at New Theatre, Rafael de Acha decided to take a break, and graciously hand over this summer’s season to John A. Werkheiser, who will be staging the next three productions…
Here’s something you don’t see every day: black artists exploiting white culture for financial gain. I suppose you could make a case that talk shows were a predominantly white domain until Oprah and Arsenio marched on Phil and Johnny, and after a couple of joints you might be able to…
While you might not guess that a hip-hop mockumentary and a musical about AIDS have a lot in common, there are several parallels between Rusty Cundieff’s Fear of a Black Hat and John Greyson’s Zero Patience. For starters, both films are the work of young, nonmainstream auteurs, each of whom…
The flacks should have a field day with a high-concept action flick like Speed. You can almost predict the blurbs before you’ve even seen the movie: It’s a rush! The thrill ride of the summer! Speed is the ticket! My heart wouldn’t stop pounding! Pedal-to-the-metal action! Speed kills! Race to…
A disproportionate number of sociopaths and sexual miscreants have found careers as rock and rollers. Sid Vicious. Wendy O. Williams. Keith Moon. Patti Smith. Barry Manilow. As sick fucks go, however, GG Allin was probably the sickest. Whether you think Allin was as demented as advertised or just another pathetic,…
If you choose this week to enter into the world created by the ninth International Hispanic Theatre Festival, you may find yourself in a landscape of altered reality, where the stakes are high, the laughs are dark, and the tragic and comedic are almost inextricably tangled. For nearly a decade…
The release of Penny Marshall’s latest film, Renaissance Man, featuring Danny DeVito and Marky Mark, raises several burning questions. Can Marshall, whose picture hits theaters barely two months after Ron Howard’s The Paper and whose acting and directing career has eerily paralleled Howard’s, outschmaltz her freckle-faced colleague’s paper-thin tabloid opus?…
I lived in L.A. for two years in the late Seventies but I wasn’t much of a surfer. I tried it exactly once, sleeping on the beach at San Clemente for a long weekend with a couple of other bums I met playing hoops on Venice Beach. The waves sucked,…
Anyone who has seen Luis Santeiro’s two prior plays in their world premieres at the Coconut Grove Playhouse — Mixed Blessings (1989) and The Lady from Havana (1991) — knows what to expect from his latest offering at the Playhouse, The Rooster and the Egg. Although Santeiro has won seven…
Miss O’Hare, the plucky protagonist of the delightful new comedy-mystery (comedystery?) Widow’s Peak, feels betrayed by those closest to her when a scandal involving a secret love affair comes to light, airing her dirty laundry in public. Who better to play the part than Mia Farrow? Taking on a role…
Eddie Murphy needs a hit. Badly. Beverly Hills Cop 3 was written by Steven de Souza (the man who scripted Murphy’s action hit 48 HRS) and directed by John Landis (the man who shot Trading Places, Murphy’s best film to date). The favors have been called in and the hired…
Okay, I admit it. I’m a cynic. I thought the big-screen version of The Flintstones was going to be terrible, a new low in our national obsession with junk culture, a thinly veiled attempt to cash in on a popular television cartoon that was itself a tepid facsimile of The…
London, August 1973. Married less than six months, my husband and I strolled down Kings Road, blissfully in love with each other and with youth. Craftsmen on the street sold gold rings with artful designs, buskers played haunting ballads on weather-beaten guitars. We came upon a theater, brightly lighted, where…
At first glance it might not appear that Henry Jaglom and Spike Lee have much in common. Jaglom is white, Lee is black. Jaglom is 51, Lee is 37. Jaglom handles a camera clumsily and artlessly, like a construction worker would a Stradivarius. Lee is a consummate stylist whose visual…
I would be less than truthful if I said that the 1993-94 theater season in South Florida was anywhere near triumphant; in fact, it was not half as exciting as the two previous years I’ve spent here as a critic. Disregarding the few high points and the few dismal failures,…
Recently I saw a T-shirt imprinted with a cartoon that made me laugh out loud. It showed a young man sitting in a large but otherwise empty auditorium. The banner suspended from the ceiling read, “Convention Headquarters: Children from Completely Normal Families.” It’s now acceptable, even fashionable, to drag old…
Once upon a time Alex Cox was a director who seemed assured of a bright future in Hollywood. His first film, 1984’s Repo Man, gained him cult status. His second, 1986’s Sid and Nancy, established Cox as a gifted, powerful filmmaker with a career as ambitious as he cared to…
Rene Rodriguez is a punk. Not the scowling, pierced, and tattoed kind; the Herald staff writer and film reviewer looks more like Opie Taylor than Sid Vicious. No, Rodriguez’s punkdom slashes deeper than nipple rings, jackboots, and the other affectations of the fashionably disaffected. Rather, he’s one of the far…
Is it just me or does anybody else out there have a problem with Peter Coyote as a paragon of Nineties studhood? The hollow-faced, crooked-toothed actor with the scraggly eyebrows that threaten to prolongate his creased and furrowed forehead like ivy on a pitted brick wall somehow landed the part…
An outraged member of the local theatrical community recently confronted me during the intermission of a play and asked if it was true that I, like some other regional critics (who he did not name), was about to begin rating productions using a star system, as do many restaurant and…
