In the past three years Miami has experienced a remarkable development in the arts, which brings new challenges for art education. New Times decided to take the pulse of academia by sitting down with Michael Carlebach and Carol Damian, chairs from the art departments at the University of Miami and…
The smart sci-fi fan knows that, technically speaking, Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris is not a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film at all, but rather a newly filmed interpretation of a Polish novel penned by Stanislaw Lem. Nonetheless the new film stands in a mighty big shadow. If someone attempted to make…
“Can somebody pinch me,” requests director Wilkenson Bruna, nervously speaking moments before his first feature film, Wind of Desire, premieres at the Intracoastal Theater in North Miami Beach. “I’m still dreaming.” Before him, the seats are packed with the movers and shakers of Miami’s Haitian community dressed in their finest…
Ten thousand years ago, when mastodon, woolly mammoths, and a fifteen-foot creature known as the dire wolf roamed the land, what we know as Biscayne Bay was a grassy valley about ten miles away from the Atlantic Ocean. A tribe of people known as Paleo Indians wandered here, hunting and…
When Catalan artist Luis Vidal last showed here, his work — wallpaper patterned with drawings of pedophilic acts — was the sensation of Art Miami 2002, drawing not only collectors and curious spectators but prompting visits from Miami Beach police. Vidal, who says the work is meant to inspire reflections…
Christ is sexy. There, got your attention. But honestly, think about it: nice guy, pretty hair, carpentry skills, puts loaves (and fishes) on the table. Plus all that doing miracles and rising from the dead and being the Son of God business. Heck, he’d be a prime catch for any…
Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Hello, Mr. Hundert. If we can judge by the new Kevin Kline vehicle, The Emperor’s Club, the notions remain alive (if not particularly well) that a self-sacrificing boarding school teacher can enrich the lives of his students while subsisting in relative emotional misery himself — and that…
“Everybody hits on me. Everyone from gay men to bisexual men to straight women to, of course, lesbians,” quips Maureen (Mo) Fischer, the pretty bisexual woman behind the brazen, blue-eyed drag king known as Mo B. Dick. But let Fischer switch into full Dick mode, and things get raunchy. “I’m…
Imagine scheduling an arts event right after September 11, 2001. Certainly not the brightest idea. Crowds, frightened for their safety and feeling a bit guilty, wouldn’t be in the mood to whup it up and have fun. But some presenters like artist/gallery owner Franklin Goldman, director of The Spanish Monastery…
When a play by Neil LaBute hits town, any town, the specifics of the production usually take a back seat to the force of the writer’s personality. LaBute’s plays and films are biting, challenging, often cruel — and by comparison, most other scripts seem bland and polite. His debut film…
Picture this: You have been invited to a party on a dark night in a strange neighborhood, and you have no idea how to get there. The host offers to meet you and lead the way. But he drives so fast, it’s hard to keep up with him. He makes…
Under blue skies, gabled and pitched roofs top bright symmetric façades, shutter windows are protected by delicate canopies, and spacious verandas and plenty of light and space render the essential building details. Careful distribution of planes and volumes are bounded by nuances of shadows and sunlight. That’s Emilio Sanchez’s “Works…
Miami film fans have long complained about the difficulty in catching offbeat independent films. The local art house cinemas — the Cosford, Soyka, the Absinthe, Intracoastal, and the Miami-based microcinema group www.straightawaymovies.com — serve up indie fare, but many hot films never make it to South Florida and those that…
Miamians have been hearing the same promise for years: The city is a certifiable and important center for the arts. It is on the cusp of greatness, as far as an arts scene is concerned. The city has culture, with artists, musicians, and filmmakers of diverse backgrounds creating a new…
“I had the whole nine yards — the tunnel, the colors, and the lights,” recalls actor/director Adalberto J. Acevedo. Not of his illustrious stage debut but of a difficult time in the hospital two years ago; after enduring open-heart surgery, he suffered a bout of ventricular tachycardia and nearly took…
Jesus is big. He always has been. The subject of songs, musical plays, books, and movies. His catchy handle used in the name of bands and once tactlessly uttered as a basis for comparison by John Lennon, bragging about the Beatles’ level of fame. Six or seven years ago, after…
Ahh, the dysfunctional family. We all have one or know one, and playwrights seem to know a lot of them. Feuding families have been with us at least as long as drama has existed. The Greeks had the house of Atreus. Shakespeare had King Lear and his daughters. Then there’s…
There’s no denying that U2 is awesome, nor that Phil Joanou is a snappy director, but the charming awkwardness of Sam Jones’s 16mm black-and-white rockumentary, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, makes one wanna murmur, “Rattle on? Humbug!” at the Irish Grammy-grabbers’ old-school cinematic self-celebration. As we turn our…
With Frida — the story of profoundly passionate and uncompromising Mexican-Jewish painter Frida Kahlo — it’s evident that a few folks in marketing know how to work the demographics (it’ll be extremely PC, possibly mandatory, to gush in adoration of it), but that’s the first and last cynical comment of…
While playwright Dan Goggin’s Nunsense nuns may have taken vows of celibacy, their creator has been birthing hilarious stories about the Little Sisters of Hoboken in biblical proportions. Goggin’s 1985 Nunsense mother ship, which copped a quartet of awards, begat 1992’s Nunsense II: The Second Coming, which, in turn, begat…
Although the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau may not know it, Miami is a Mecca of sorts for skateboarders. Each year aficionados from around the world arrive to catch subtropical air and ride the rails and smooth concrete around Biscayne Bay, according to native son and professional skate rat…
When you go to a Mad Cat show, ya rolls yer dice and ya takes yer chances. The risk-taking theater ensemble in downtown Miami makes sure that the audience takes some risk just to get in the door. Company policy establishes a “$12 plus the roll of one die” policy…
