Succulent treats perfectly ripe from the tree. Exotic flavors and textures: silky like pudding, so sweet and juicy that wearing a bib while eating is a must. Yes, a brief talk with tropical fruit enthusiasts is enough to tempt the taste buds. Sufficiently aroused appetites might enjoy this weekend’s Redland…
Intricate, outrageous plots; clever wordplay; catchy songs performed quickly. Hearing the work of opera composers William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan (the British duo who collaborated from 1871 to 1896 and put the “light” in light opera) sung in English is enough to give the average listener a splitting headache. Imagine…
“Nothing is inevitable,” goes the old saying, “except death and taxes.” In Park Your Car In Harvard Yard, playwright Israel Horovitz begs to differ, or at least, amend: Add “regret” to that short list. In the freezing gloom of a New England winter, an imperious old man, Jacob Brackish, shuffles…
As far as he can remember, he always wanted to be an actor. To him, being an actor was better than being president of the United States. Even before he first wandered into the high school auditorium for an after-school audition, he wanted to be one of them. It was…
There have been other films dealing with the Jewish ghettos during the Nazi occupation of Poland — some very good — but The Pianist, the latest feature from Roman Polanski, may be the best. Of course it starts out with a huge advantage: The 69-year-old Polanski is probably the only…
There are myriad stories to tell in Miami. Two-bit fraud schemes, big-time drug smugglers, and quirky tales of immigrants in America add fodder to a screenwriter or director’s imagination. The city is, after all, a funky and cinematically appealing world to set a movie in. Add to that television shows…
Although a Spanish-language version of playwright Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece Waiting for Godot helped inaugurate Little Havana’s new Latin Quarter Cultural Center, Tony Wagner, artistic director and owner, waited for no one when it came to creating a truly multipurpose arts venue. With a shoestring budget, some grant money, and the…
Your fifteen minutes of fame are about to begin. Lights up. You’re on. This is not a dress rehearsal. Marching onstage, blood thumping in your eardrums, throat dry, palms clammy, you find your light, take a breath, shape your lips to carry the first sounds of your performance. “To be…
Sometimes a good idea for a play doesn’t spin out into good theater. One such conundrum is Bach at Leipzig, a well-produced but dramatically inert talkfest now on colorful display at Florida Stage. Itamar Moses’s new play, a Florida premiere, has to do with a historical event in 1722, when…
In all, a far better year than any in recent memory, so much so it feels impolite and irresponsible to choose a mere ten best among the annum’s offerings. This list remained in flux till the last possible moment; five seconds ago it featured, among others, Signs, Full Frontal, Human…
Four of the top ten films I saw this year don’t actually open in the U.S. until 2003, but they played at various film festivals during the year. By listing them here I not only alert readers to films they should watch out for in ’03, but I also make…
David Levinthal, a grown man, can’t help but play with toys. Cowboys, Indians, Barbie dolls, figurines clad in S&M-wear: All have posed for the photographer’s large-format Polaroid camera — one of six in the world — over the past 30 years. Or better said, he has posed them. A graduate…
To hear it from the viejos and the not-so-viejos, everything Cuban was (and is) unique. Sure, their brand of inflammatory politics is one point. And to the unschooled palate black beans can seem odd. But how different can things Cuban really be? Two exhibitions at the Historical Museum of Southern…
In 1965 a savvy cabal of Los Angeles-based pop-culture stem-cell researchers coalesced to formulate three-quarters of the verities that have come to define the rigid boy-band genre: modest singing ability, some facility with light comedy, and a certain ineffable cuteness. Among the participants: writing partners Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker…
A free truffle giveaway? No. Then why did people get so happy about fungi recently at the Sagamore Hotel? Two doors south of the Delano, the joint’s jam-packed with groovy contemporary art. The owners, Cricket and Marty Taplin, are big collectors and their newest acquisition — a permanent installation by…
Based on the true story of three young Aboriginal girls who walked 1500 miles across the Australian Outback to be reunited with their mothers, Rabbit-Proof Fence might well be subtitled True Grit in recognition of the courage and single-minded determination that drove the trio to undertake such a perilous journey…
It’s been nearly three years since Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother won the Oscar for best foreign language film. Perhaps it’s in the spirit of spreading things around that Spain has not nominated Almodóvar’s latest, Talk to Her, as its entry this year. Certainly it’s hard to imagine any…
This season has seen its share of family dramas that playwrights keep reinventing to good theatrical effect. One recent incarnation is Charles Randolph-Wright’s moody, engaging comedy/drama Blue, a semi-autobiographical account of one wealthy black family’s domestic disturbances, a tale that spans several decades. The story is narrated by Reuben Clark…
What if you took the Swiss penchant for detail, seriousness, and thoroughness and mixed it up with Miami’s spirited, self-indulgent underdevelopedness. The result would be Art Basel 2002 in Miami Beach. First in its class, Art Basel did indeed deliver a proliferation of art, sending waves crashing around the county…
Adaptation is the most overrated movie of the year (of all time?) by people who should know better. Film critics have either been suckered in by its gimmick (Being John Malkovich screenwriter Charlie Kaufman can’t adapt a book for the big screen and winds up writing himself into his screenplay,…
Martin Scorsese’s latest epic of the streets, Gangs of New York, means to show us how a great metropolis was forged in the mid-nineteenth-century cauldrons of unbridled greed, ethnic violence, and Civil War. It means to give us the city as wild frontier — without the usual cowboy hats. This…
Ahh, show biz! One minute you’re wearing long hair and skintight Spandex onstage; the next minute you’re wearing long hair and flowing robes onstage. Blond-locked Sebastian Bach, onetime wild frontman for popular metal band Skid Row (1987-1996) and more recently leader of the supergroup the Last Hard Men, can relate…
