Having breakfast with theatrical producer Jay H. Harris is like taking a quick trip to Broadway. We are noshing at Lester’s, a retro diner in Fort Lauderdale, but Harris’s rapid-fire delivery and wide range of show-biz subjects makes the place feel more like the Edison Hotel coffee shop on West…
That indulgence in art has generally been a pastime for the rich is true. But the popular notion that collecting art is prohibitively expensive is false. At one point Van Gogh — arguably the best-sold artist in history — bartered his paintings for food. And so did Modigliani, Soutine, Pascin,…
Military clerk Ray Elwood (Joaquin Phoenix) is something of a modern-day Sergeant Bilko. Anything you need, he can get. Any scam that’s possible, he’ll run. Never mind the bumbling Colonel Berman (Ed Harris) who ostensibly runs the unit — Elwood has him wrapped around his finger. There’s just one major…
Those who remember Javier Bardem as the heartthrob poet from Before Night Falls, or the distinguished detective in The Dancer Upstairs, may be shocked to find that in his latest film to reach these shores, Mondays in the Sun, the Latin hunk is balding, bearded, and fat. Admittedly, he may…
You just can’t help looking up — and looking painfully like a tourist — in any big city you visit. Sure, you might be a seasoned world traveler with a passport that sports stamps from Kansas City to Kuala Lumpur, but in front of tall buildings like the Sears Tower,…
One could refer to the directors and writers of the French New Wave as the original anti-Doris Day contingent. Dedicated to telling tales of misfits, adulterers, bandits, and single, promiscuous women during the era when the queen of squeaky-clean was making goofy love, American style, in kooky Technicolor classics such…
Now 24/7 Sizzle, swelter, big hair gone awry, one phrase sums up Miami in August: “Coño, it’s HOT!” No surprise, same old story each year. The blazing summer scorches your hand and leaves your face beet red every time you enter your car each afternoon this season. While there’s no…
Saturday August 9 Each day millions of creatures, from the ordinary to the mysterious, wade in our shores. Various species of crustaceans, seahorses, pipe fish, and sea urchins live in the grasses that line the outer rim of South Florida’s natural mangrove habitats, themselves shelters for a seemingly endless supply…
Saturday August 9 Oh, no … school is already on the horizon. Don’t be glum, that means shopping! Teen People magazine has put together the Rock ‘n Shop back-to-school clothing and entertainment tour, which will stop at the Aventura Mall (19501 Biscayne Blvd.) this weekend. The best part is that…
Saturday August 9 Another ordinary Saturday night on Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road, or so you thought. You start with dinner at one of the dozens of outdoor cafés. Then dodge the crowds as you walk off the calories with a leisurely stroll along the mall. You check out the latest…
Thursday August 7 At GableStage in the Biltmore Hotel (1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables) is Terrence McNally’s funny and brash 1987 play, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. The show, which enjoyed a successful Broadway revival last year and a Hollywood movie based on it as well, is…
Thursday August 7 Proving that wine coolers and felony charges will not be the end of her, comedian Paula Poundstone is back on the road doing what she does best: breaking up crowds with her particular brand of hilarity. Still sporting her signature necktie, Poundstone is touring for the first…
If plays were drinks, the New Theatre’s Twelfth Night or As You Will would certainly be a New Age smoothie. Rafael de Acha and company have whipped up a colorful froth of a show that’s a decided departure from their sober Othello, the first half of the company’s two-play Shakespeare…
From the lofty American vantage point, Mexico’s New Wave filmmakers have materialized like magic, the unexpected fruit of a renaissance that even many cinematically alert Yanquis hardly took the trouble to notice. Meanwhile these new directors have fashioned a vivid style that combines, in various proportions, Latin American literary experimentation,…
There’s magic in Northfork — both in the movie, by twin brothers Mark and Michael Polish, and in the Montana town soon to be drowned by the opening of the dam keeping the baptismal waters at bay. Northfork is a beguiling and bittersweet fantasy set in a netherworld where the…
By day you slog away as a receptionist, waitress, sales executive, whatever. By night you eagerly await your big chance to become the next singing sensation who takes the record industry by storm. But where in this venue-barren town can you strut your talented stuff? On the first Tuesday of…
Taking swipes at oppression and authoritarian rule, Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles has gained a reputation around the world as an advocate for human freedom. His works often put observers in uncomfortable situations to emphasize the inhumanity of tyrannical rule. In previous installations visitors have had to navigate a floor covered…
Friday August 1 Our voyeuristic society loves a good peep show, despite the dirty feelings left over from Puritan guilt. But primp up the peep as an art show and apply appropriate pseudo-intellectualism — then guilty pleasure whittles down to just pleasure. And that’s the only thing that’ll whittle at…
Friday August 1 There is something addictive about showing off your body to strangers. Once you get some attention you crave more. The need intensifies if you are a bodybuilder. After spending hours a day working out and planning precision nutrition and exercise (not to mention drug) regimens, there is…
Friday August 1 Put 21 kids together in a room and usually you’ll get a cacophony of varied interests and wants … unless they have a mission. During 4 intense weeks, the Musical Theater Development Summer Camp’s class of 2003 came together to create What’s Wrong & What’s Write. The…
Friday August 1 How is one supposed to interpret being chosen for a total makeover? Is it a polite gesture, like being told you have spinach in your teeth? Or is it a backhanded compliment that implies, “Hey dude, those hip-huggers make your ass look like a chick’s.” Either way,…
Thursday July 31 Quartetto Gelato may be the first classical crossover group in outer space. At least their music made it onto the Columbia Space Shuttle in 1997. Which may tell you something about their sound: eclectic, quirky, and popular enough to include in the U.S. space program. The classical…
