Amid Hollywood’s zillion-dollar explosions and computer-enhanced trickery, plenty of quieter, better films sneaked into theaters virtually unnoticed this year. Following are our reviewers’ favorite overlooked movies of 2005. Some of them never made it to local screens, but many have since made it to the video store: Balzac and the…
On the last Saturday before Christmas, Mr. Pocketbook, a purse store, was blissfully void of holiday cheer — no windows adorned with mechanical elves, no Kenny G renditions of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” The owners of Mr. Pocketbook (2850 NW Fifth Ave.), Philip and Moshe Nahum, are Jewish, but…
On a recent Tuesday evening, Moshe Tendler, an influential Orthodox rabbi and Yeshiva University biology professor, ambled onto the stage at Kovens Conference Center in North Miami. A stately figure with a wispy white beard and heavy glasses, he surveyed the 300-strong crowd of scientists and intellectuals — most clad…
If you want to meet self-declared prophet James Lloyd in person, you have to drive twenty miles up winding dirt roads deep into the Oregon mountains. But there’s no real need to make the trek. With the right equipment, you can hear his message anywhere in America. The biblical soothsayer…
Miami was quiet after Hurricane Wilma’s winds subsided. Millions of people sat in shuttered homes listening to the final raindrops and withering gusts. But within hours, people cranked up their cars and hit the streets. The traffic signals that hadn’t been blown away were without power, and drivers entered the…
“I’ve only worked there for about five months. I was in good health when I started working there, but now I’m sick.” Gisela Ochoa cleans bathrooms and offices at the University of Miami’s medical complex for $6.25 an hour and has no medical insurance. She’s been feeling fatigue, nausea, and…
On the morning of Saturday, December 10, a dozen Miami Jackson Senior High School students sit with blank stares outside the Biscayne National Park visitor center in Homestead. The park’s superintendent, Mark Lewis, is trying to get the volunteer clean-up day off to a good start, but the obligatory welcome…
To some people it might seem weird that a 27-year-old dude has collected 35 Han Solo frozen-in-carbonite action figures over time. But at least as far as superficial presentation goes, Ralph Vega is about as odd as a one-dollar bill. A husky chap with an encyclopedic knowledge of today’s most…
Last month Miami-Dade Police sent Jet Bullet, a reliable old stallion, an upstanding member of their nine-horse unit, out to pasture. The reason: tendinitis. But that wasn’t the worst news for the equine cops. Miami-Dade commissioners purchased eight Segways — those two-wheel, stand-up, motorized riding things that look like old-fashioned…
Ben Photo Express 54, a tiny, two-desk, six-chair office tucked between an auto parts store and a botanica, is not a place to have a portrait taken. When you enter the storefront on NE 54th Street in Little Haiti, a casually dressed, goateed young man who looks like a philosophy…
This is a story about man-breasts — the protuberances that inspired the Bro (or was it the Manssiere?), the flesh that guarantees membership in the Fat Bastard Club, and in the case of Miles Forman, the goods that make for a great movie. Three years ago, when he weighed a…
It’s 10:25 p.m. when Sandra Snowden steers her midnight blue Ford Taurus into the parking lot near a line of tollbooths on Bay Harbor Islands. She flicks off the engine, hops out, and, within seconds, is clambering over the grassy hills that divide the east- and west-bound traffic. Never mind…
Miami New Times has recovered internal University of Miami documents that reveal how the administration is dealing with the recent scandal surrounding Kyle Munzenrieder, a student who blogged a raunchy rap song recorded by members of the football team. Munzenrieder, you may recall, was forced to leave his dorm after…
It’s that white-patent-leather-loafer-wearing Casanova’s night out in South Beach after a day of flipping flapjacks at Denny’s, and he’s wondering, Who are all of those gaudy socialites near the convention center? Rein in the horses, you hip-swiveling caballero. These blue bloods are in town gushing over contemporary art, amigo, and…
A muse can take many forms. Miami-based Jacquelyn Jackson Johnston found inspiration passed out under a tree in Little Haiti. “I spotted this homeless guy who had taken two shopping carts and made a double-decker loft, complete with storage space,” Johnston recalls. “This guy had nothing and managed to be…
While figurative ka-chings are the aural hallmark of Art Basel days, the clinking of champagne glasses dominates the evening-to-dawn hours of the art festival. The shark fins moving through the social waters are silent, but rivalries between artists, dealers, collectors, and entourages — this year’s must-have accessory — add a…
For its fourth incarnation — as with the first three — Art Basel presents one of a few acceptable opportunities each year for locals to behave like tourists, plodding down sidewalks while following “points of interest” maps, craning necks to glimpse celebrities, not being — or at least not acting…
As Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB), considered by many the monster truck of contemporary art fairs, rounds the bend on its varsity season, South Florida finds itself frozen in the international art community’s headlights and quivering over the dynamic transformation the event has effected on the local scene since blazing…
During Art Basel, local art dealers exhibiting works on consignment from domestic and international galleries are stocking inventories that include some staggeringly priced pieces and, with art crime statistics on the rise, are leaving nothing to chance by eagerly embracing a host of precautionary measures to safeguard artworks. Interpol ranks…
Touted as the most successful and prestigious event of its kind in the hemisphere, Art Basel Miami Beach will massage the egos of some of the wealthiest people on the planet. “This is definitely the most significant contemporary art fair in the country, and we’ll be seeing what one could…
Psychedelic punk, narrative noir, or pop Surrealism, whatever you call it, lowbrow art is an irreverent pop culture phenomenon that remains largely ignored by the traditionally highbrow art crowd. “Local galleries have pretty much failed to support us,” says Francesco LoCastro, local painter and curator of “Parallel Universe,” which opens…
No matter how brilliant their art, many galleries don’t have $50,000 to drop on a booth inside the Miami Beach Convention Center. But don’t worry — Art Basel isn’t a complete snob-op. The fair’s selection committee has devised an alternate opportunity: If your gallery is up-and-coming and innovative yet strapped…
