Twenty years after the rise of gangsta rap, its rebellious legacy is hollow, at least in the U.S. Once the voice of youthful defiance, American hip-hop now espouses a slickly marketed bling-bling message. The original agitators, if not dead, are now soft and fat, spouting songs about hot booty, pricey…
So there’s no confusion, the star of Sweet Home Alabama is Reese Witherspoon, who graces the film’s poster in full-body pout and appears on the press kit in closeup mug-shot smirk; any closer, and we’d shoot up her nostrils and exit through her pores. Of course there’s a great deal…
For artists Gina Cunningham and Peter Eves, innocently pursuing their own interests inadvertently leads to promoting international understanding. In the early Nineties, their fascination with all things Haitian resulted in them opening South Beach’s highly touted Tap-Tap restaurant, serving generous portions of Haitian cuisine and culture to clueless South Floridians…
Remember this: Even though the New York Times is finally running same-sex commitment notices in its “Sunday Styles” section among hetero wedding announcements, it doesn’t mean gay weddings are legally kosher — at least not outside the state of Vermont. Nevertheless despite the unlawful status, tying the queer knot is…
Havana has lived many lives. One of the first cities founded by the Spanish, it became a great port city of the New World, then suffered through the vicissitudes of colonialism and independence to become an eclectically vibrant center by early last century. Then came the upheavals of another revolution,…
Among the more preposterous rumors spread by Harry Knowles, whose Ain’t It Cool News movie-biz-gossip Website garners undue attention from studios too craven to do their own thinking, was one from the year’s beginning: Terrence Malick, Knowles “reported,” was working on an adaptation of The Catcher in the Rye for…
Although his name sounds like an inventory notebook for candy bars, Heath Ledger is presently overcoming this confusion — as well as the plight of the pretty boy — to become one of contemporary cinema’s more vital actors. In The Four Feathers — as in The Patriot, A Knight’s Tale,…
A possibly apocryphal tale about Little Haiti nightspot Churchill’s says that one night an armed man bounded in, demanding everyone at the bar hand over their wallets and valuables, which they reluctantly did. Then he ordered them to lie face down on the floor. That’s where the terrified crowd drew…
According to the American Library Association, Saturday, September 21, marks the first day of Banned Books Week. For the past 21 years the ALA along with several other co-sponsors have been exalting free speech and expression by commemorating one’s right to read anything. Fighting tenaciously against the closed-minded minions who…
I know. Life is a struggle sometimes: You’re faced with traffic gridlock, work overload, relationship limbo. But cheer up, at least you’re not Baby Doll Gibbons. Not only is her on-again, off-again romance off again, her roommates are furious that she trashed their apartment in a fit of jealous pique…
For those with any kind of pop cultural memory, it’s more than a little surprising to see Ice Cube in a movie like Barbershop. Not because it’s a light comedy — Friday was too, and that was certainly in character. What’s odd about Barbershop is its seeming embrace of positions…
Sweet Sauerkraut “I’m not compulsive; I’m precise,” insists Martha Klein, the accomplished but rigidly self-contained heroine at the center of this enormously appealing German romantic comedy-drama called Mostly Martha. The head chef at an upscale Hamburg restaurant, Martha (Martina Gedeck) is so focused and dour that she doesn’t even recognize…
A brigade of strangers firing up chainsaws in your back yard was already an ominous sight. It only got worse when your property was left looking like a hurricane had just blown through. Orange trees eliminated, grapefruits gone. The citrus canker killers didn’t mean any harm. They were just following…
A casual ménage à trois at stage right, a frisky Frenchman at stage left, couples — hopeful or just horny — coupling and uncoupling everywhere else. Not a naughty night on South Beach but what promises to be an entertaining evening of theater in the suburbs, namely The Nature of…
What’s the movie world coming to? Time was, if you wanted flash, dash, and empty-headed excitement you looked for them in the latest Hollywood bonbon, not in those sober, slow-paced films from Europe. Yet here comes Nadie conoce a nadie, a stylish Spanish thriller that pays deliberate homage to Hollywood…
Iranian films that make it to American shores generally fall into two categories: sensitive dramas featuring young children, à la The White Balloon and Children of Heaven, or pointed political statements about the plight of women, such as The Circle and The Day I Became a Woman. Secret Ballot is…
Like Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro is one of those guys who can make just about any material inherently enjoyable. Also like Clint, he will sometimes make you wish he’d pick roles that are a little more challenging. His recent record of relatively disposable films speaks for itself: tough-yet-sensitive cop…
Strange math has been permuting the American psyche since the September 11th attacks. Perhaps in an attempt to rationalize deep-seated uncertainty, Americans have been conjuring formulas involving the tragedy’s numerology. You know, September is the ninth month and nine plus one plus one equals eleven. American Airlines Flight 11, the…
The toughest part of being an international megastar? “Being in that very high income bracket,” admits Dame Edna Everage, who has put in more than her share of hours for her dollars and pounds. On the heels of co-hosting the Queen of England’s jubilee concert, appearing on Ally McBeal, and…
Escaping the glare and heat that pounded the concrete separating the downtown Miami-Dade Public Library from the Miami Art Museum, I cracked the MAM door, intent on sucking up some sweet air conditioning. As soon as I’d caught my breath, I noticed a sign announcing that Timothy Greenfield-Sanders had delivered…
In Tom Walker, a new play at the New Theatre, a very old story is given a modern twist. The Devil appears to the title character, dupes same into a hellish bargain, and runs off with poor Tom’s soul. Playwright John Strand has performed a similar act of piracy: He…
Somewhere, sometime, someone had a good idea: Let’s create a public-art project that identifies a city with an endemic animal. Let’s cookie-cutter-produce them, get businesses to sponsor them on behalf of a charitable organization, give artists a pittance to “decorate” them ($500 and the artist must provide the materials), and…
