Chopper, the first feature from Australian video director Andrew Dominik, is a strong, effective, but often stomach-churning portrait of notorious Aussie criminal Mark “Chopper” Read. It can be characterized as sensational — in both the positive and negative senses of the word. According to the filmmakers, Chopper Read is a…
“If you interview the artists, especially from the English-speaking Caribbean and the nonpopular Latin-American countries, you will hear this vast cry of not being able to show their work,” claims cultural crusader Rosie Gordon-Wallace of the local art scene. And it’s a situation that’s been going on for years, she…
A TV turns to static. A young girl lies motionless on a bed. A man in a suit enters a dark kitchen, loosens his tie, and opens a refrigerator. These scenes could be indiscriminate snapshots of anyone’s daily life, but placed in one of Michael John Garces’s plays, they become…
Fish. Nice in a net or attached to the end of a line. Great on the grill. Wonderful on the wall. But dangling from your neck? Hollywood, Florida, artist Pam Dugger seems to think it’s a perfectly fine notion as long as the fish are one of her spectacular glass…
There are not many stories left buried in James Ellroy’s past. In 1996, at the age of 48, he penned his memoirs, in which he paired his life story with that of his dead mother, Jean Ellroy, a nurse found strangled and beaten in the bushes of suburban Los Angeles…
Perhaps it’s sheer coincidence, but it seems largely appropriate that the first International Monologue Festival began with a voyage and ended with an enigmatic door. The festival, which took place from April 27 to May 6, began with Teatro Mio’s Waiting for Odysseus and closed with Teatro Buendia’s The Eighth…
ids might well be amused by the frenetic pacing of Shrek, the latest computer-animated film from DreamWorks, which moves so quickly it’s nearly a blur, though they need not get the jokes to enjoy frolicking in the muck (and the maggots) with a green, snaggletoothed ogre who wants only to…
With his hangdog face, rumpled overcoat and black beret, Tobias Schneebaum looks like one of those wild-eyed old men you find in, say, Prospect Park, absentmindedly feeding the pigeons and ranting on to exactly no one about Leon Trotsky, nuclear physics or the ’52 World Series. Time has taken its…
“I felt something slam into me … and it spun me around about 180 degrees,” says shark-attack victim Dawn Schauman, who will be among the speakers at the Miami Museum of Science’s glibly named Shark Shenanigans Day. Schauman’s survival story makes reality-based dramas like Survivor look like a day at…
For something that encompasses the word freedom in its name, the stately Freedom Tower has seemingly been in bondage for quite a long time. A bit of its tangled history: Modeled after Seville, Spain’s Giralda Tower, it was built in 1925 by Shultze and Weaver (the same firm that designed…
Heath Ledger, wearing the scowl of the anxious and uneasy, is having trouble standing still. He most certainly would rather be anywhere but here: killing time in a TV studio, waiting to be interviewed during a live afternoon newscast. Waiting to promote his new movie. Waiting to assume the guise…
If playwright Stan Lachow could have seen the set that the Hollywood Playhouse was going to construct for the world premiere of Harry and Thelma in the Woods, he would have edited out the “in the woods.” Walking into the small, residentially located theater, you are so assaulted by the…
Social alienation seems to be an underlying theme of postmodern urban America. The separation of labor and leisure has created a social estrangement that is only becoming more acute. We don’t have the time or, more important, the space to make contact. People usually spend two-thirds of the day confined…
Irish. Sex. Farce. These are not three words you see snuggled up together very often. Given the ironclad no-no’s of the Catholic Church, the preoccupations imposed by political troubles for the past eight centuries or so, and frequent commutes to the local pub, the Irish probably haven’t had much time…
Break dancing is back (minus the parachute pants). A renaissance of popping, locking, uprocking, head spins, robotic jams, phat flips, and contorted poses. Truth be told, the energetic street dance that busted out of the Bronx decades ago never really left — it was shuffled out of the fickle consumer…
For all of us everything began with Mom, in the sense that we owe her our lives. But for Elvis Presley, his mom was responsible for a little more — his career. If it weren’t for Gladys Presley’s love of music, her son would never have gone into the studios…
Heath Ledger, wearing the scowl of the anxious and uneasy, is having trouble standing still. He most certainly would rather be anywhere but here: killing time in a TV studio, waiting to be interviewed during a live afternoon newscast. Waiting to promote his new movie. Waiting to assume the guise…
Last thing first. At this very moment, Chris Carter sits behind his desk in the Ten Thirteen Production offices, on the 20th Century Fox lot in Studio City, California, finishing the final X-Files episode of this season. The show’s creator has just one scene left to write–the very last–and that…
Where were Howard Fast, Joe Adler, and Bob Rogerson when Mr. Nelson, my high school history teacher/wrestling coach, sidled up to the lectern to teach the American Revolution? That war, as I remember it, was a series of lively anecdotes about converting Boston Harbor into a giant cup of Earl…
Things seem to come in waves in South Florida. We have hurricane season, snowbird season, and come spring, film-festival season. There seem to be dozens of them, rolling in with the regularity of summer thunderstorms. Next up is the seventeenth Israel Film Festival, a presentation of Israel’s latest cinematic fare…
Presently sitting in a very peaceful meditational facility. First time here. The location (which shall remain unnamed so as to maintain nondenominational vibe) was selected specifically for the loving creation of this review, as it provides an almost perfect contrast to The Center of the World, the new motion picture…
Usually found in its storefront space in North Miami, M Ensemble Company, the oldest African-American theater organization in Miami-Dade County at 30 years of age, has certainly been around. From its beginnings in a Liberty City warehouse to an eleven-year tenure at the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center to a…
