Saturday July 5 State support for the arts may be waning, but Altoids patronage remains — yes, folks — curiously strong. The fifth annual exhibition of additions to the Altoids “Curiously Strong Collection” comes to ArtCenter/South Florida (800 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach) with an opening reception tonight from 8:00 to…
Thursday July 3 Singer Oleta Adams’s career first got a boost in 1989 when she sang background on British duo Tears for Fears’ megahit album The Seeds of Love. With a powerful voice trained in a church choir in Yakima, Washington, she went on to splendidly transcend the Eighties and…
Thursday July 3 Fast, short, and piercing are a few ways to describe the songs of Japanese noise rock trio Melt Banana. The famed eleven-year-old band can often sound just like a hyperactive child of the same age throwing a mini tantrum. Luckily Banana fans won’t be having any such…
Friday June 27 Miami does have a history. And in local playwright and director Sandra Riley’s Mariah Brown, the city’s past is as magical as its present. Starring Laverne Lewis, the solo drama tells the true story of the Bahamian-born Brown, who immigrated to Key West in 1885 and soon…
In South Florida summer shows, like summer clothes, tend toward lightweight informality. So it’s not surprising that the Stage Door Theatre in Coral Springs opted to present The Affections of May, a casual comedy that’s as unpretentious as a seersucker suit and just as traditional. Canadian playwright Norm Foster’s well-structured,…
A regular feature of the International Hispanic Theatre Festival, which is now in its eighteenth year, Miami-Dade Community College’s Prometeo continues to show its aptitude for children’s theater. This year’s original Spanish-language production of Matias y el Aviador, written by Cuban playwright Felix Lizarraga, even surpasses last year’s version of…
Rocket Projects is the latest effort by Nina Arias, proprietress of the former LaLush Gallery in Hollywood (R.I.P.) and curator of “Drawing Conclusions,” arguably the most successful independent show running opposite Art Basel Miami Beach last year. Her partner is Nick Cindric, a long-time art dealer hailing from Santa Fe…
I purposely avoided reading anything about Capturing the Friedmans till seeing the film, which has been no easy task. Andrew Jarecki’s documentary, about a Great Neck, New York family torn asunder in the late 1980s by allegations of kiddie-porn possession and the horrific sexual abuse of numerous children, has been…
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and it’s all PETA’s fault. Oh, we humored those wacky vegan extremists when they threw paint at rich bitches in hideously overpriced fur coats. We laughed when they’d come on conservative talk radio shows every Thanksgiving to get mocked for…
Once in a while a film comes along that is as sound, smart, sweet, and significant as can be, and Whale Rider is such a film. Fault the project on various counts if you like (I’ll try), but ultimately the tale is beyond reproach, a bane to cynics and a…
The egg, the ant, and the swan. Not a trio of kooky characters in a children’s story but chairs, curvy classics of modern design fabricated in the 1950s by trailblazing Danish designer/architect Arne Jacobsen (1902-1971). The self-described “perfectionist minimalist” was also a “nature-loving botanist.” Inspired by his environment, he produced…
Friday, June 27, at 8:00. Admission is free. Call 305-448-9677.
Sunday June 29 That skinny little bitch in the size two cocktail dress is not going to intimidate you anymore, Thelma. Keep in mind that she’s probably malnourished and she has no ass. You, on the other hand, are healthy and vibrant with enough curves to get jiggy with the…
Saturday June 28 As we zoomed across the MacArthur Causeway recently, our initial impression of Parrot Jungle Island was big buildings on a small strip of land. So big they encroached upon the tiny Ichimura Miami-Japan Garden, whose valuable sculptures and artifacts looked to be strewn in a pile next…
Friday June 27 As savvy muchachos know, Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer is the number one preschool show on commercial television, and que nice! — it’s bilingual. In each episode of the program, which you might think of as a cross between a Nancy Drew mystery and Que Pasa, USA?, Dora…
Monday June 30 Even if you don’t have golden tresses you can still be a blonde today on National Blonde Day. According to the Blonde Legal Defense Club, an advocacy group that fights discrimination and stereotypes, a sunny disposition combined with go-getter ambition and a supremely positive outlook defines what…
Thursday June 26 What could be cooler than a cultured gathering of young sexy urbanites sipping martinis by a pool after work? The Bass Museum is arranging such a fete when its ArtCrowd, a group of young professionals who donate to the museum and those who love them, sets up…
Never mind the calendar; summer arrives in South Florida when City Theatre rolls out its annual festival of short plays, “Summer Shorts 2003.” Now in its eighth year, this well-produced, stylish event has become a part of the area’s social scene as well as a highlight of the theater season…
Art can redeem the world,” writes Schiller in his Aesthetic Education of Man. I take his motto to mediate art and politics, as a means to show, not necessarily what is true or false, right or wrong, but other important shades in between. Art is powerful because it deals with…
The hero of Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen is an isolated teenager mired in a gray Scottish slum with only a vague dream of family life to sustain him. Like previous Loach heroes — the impoverished boy who finds hope training a falcon in Kes, say, or the downtrodden working stiff…
The number of boring, uninspired studio pictures hitting today’s multiplexes is getting depressing. To add insult to injury, many of these mind-numbing creations come from formerly — and presumably still — talented writers, directors, and actors. Last week saw Hollywood Homicide, a tired — and what’s, worse, lazy — buddy-buddy/cop/action…
No matter on which side of the border you sit, it’s a bit uncomfortable to hear the small mustachioed Mexicano in Herod’s Law tell the tall gringo, “Don’t worry, we Mexicans are men of our word.” As any fan of old Westerns knows, the lying, scheming Mexican is as much…
