Cultural memoryscapes; sophisticated movement; everyday sounds, rhythms, and speech patterns: the tools used by four challenging contemporary choreographers participating in the dance element of the Florida-Brazil arts collaboration known as FLA/BRA. Elevating the dialogue between sound and motion to a lively debate, the works offer vibrant perspectives on creativity, humanity,…
In a dingy sixth-floor room, two lonely souls join hands, seeking an escape from their solitude and isolation through the medium of dance. They shuffle across the floor, clumsily performing a waltz while chatting about their lives. If this scenario sounds as if it were penned by romance novelist Danielle…
Let’s get this out of the way right now, because so many of you will find this hard to believe: Yes, Mad magazine still exists. It is still being published 48 years after it was created by Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines, neither of whom lived long enough to see…
Art is domination. It’s making people think for one moment in time, there’s only one art, one voice, and that’s yours,” declares opera star Maria Callas (Rosemary Prinz) in Master Class. Callas was not simply a talented singer and a beautiful woman; she was a diva. It is the ability…
By force of habit, we can live in a city and come to accept the degradation of our surroundings. Urban changes take place slowly, and we may not notice them because we move around these environments as part of our daily lives. Suddenly we realize the beauty is no more…
The opening credits of Charlie’s Angels hint at a movie that never appears in the film’s expurgated 94 minutes; the tease is too soon rendered a disappointment. A Mission: Impossible-style prelude suggests a live-action cartoon as directed by Robert Altman; a camera stalks the aisles of a jumbo jet, capturing…
To put it mildly, it is uncomfortable and embarrassing to have one’s cynical ass whipped by a huge hulking Hallmark card, and this is exactly the sensation one takes away from Mimi Leder’s Pay It Forward. Not that the near-total emotional submission isn’t preceded by a knock-down drag-out battle for…
Renowned Brazilian director Carlos Diegues has attempted to make a movie worthy of the music that has provided his nation with a soundtrack for the past century. But Diegues’s samba-inspired Orfeu doesn’t prove a very good dance partner. Like the floor charts sold to North Americans eager to learn the…
In 1992 fifteen acres of Miami-Dade parkland was designated as the Women’s Park. It was intentionally dubbed somewhat generically, explains Roxcy Bolton, the project’s visionary, so that “every woman would have a park … [a] special place. Women aren’t often remembered,” observes Bolton, an outspoken activist for gender equality in…
In the small bars and cafés of mid-1950s Rio de Janeiro, cool jazz-inspired samba musicians were experimenting. The result: the mellow mix known as bossa nova music, which literally means the new wave in Portuguese. The bohemian fusion of sweet melodies over a gentle rhythm with smooth vocals has become…
Before others could reject him, Michael Chabon had convinced himself no one wanted to read an epic novel about comic-book creators, mythical Jewish monsters called golems, New York in the 1930s, daring escapes from Lithuania, Nazis, and the Empire State Building’s elevator system. He wanted to write the book–desperately, one…
We enjoy a classic whodunit in the same way we enjoy Christmas carolers: with a certain amused detachment. We are not seeking new insight into the human condition but instead are indulging in a bit of nostalgic escapism. Thus, if the revival of a genre piece like Ira Levin’s classic…
It’s Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival time again: Time for more than 100 movies from dozens of countries. Time for screenings at locations from southern Palm Beach County to Miami-Dade’s South Beach. Time for foreign and domestic features, documentaries, and short subjects, along with the affiliated parties and other festivities…
Any moviemaker who ventures into the sewers of New York City corruption will find Sidney Lumet’s wet footprints. In classics like The Pawnbroker, Serpico, and Q&A, this streetwise film master has explored, among other things, individual morality in the face of big-city vice and individual transcendence in ethnic conflict. Other…
In Spanish girar means both to go on tour and to spin around. Currently on the road with the show Girados, Ana Torroja and Miguel Bosé have put a new spin on the comeback tour. Long the golden boy of Spanish pop, 47-year-old Bosé has released seventeen solo albums since…
Do you have latent supernatural urges? Craving a bit of that old-time religion? Afraid if you don that ratty bunny suit again for yet another year of bar hopping on South Beach, you’re going to chew your paws off? Well, have no fear, something Wiccan this way comes: a refreshingly…
It has often been written of Chris Guest–or, if you prefer, Fifth Baron Christopher Haden-Guest, son of diplomat Peter Haden-Guest, who could once vote in Parliament–that he has the demeanor of cold stone and the temperament of the dead. He possesses, one often hears, an impenetrable façade, that of the…
When you walk into the Miami Light Project’s theater space, you will find yourself momentarily onstage. The space is set up so the stage has its back to those entering; you have to walk through it to get to the chairs. There’s a sensation of getting lost backstage and accidentally…
American Art Today: Fantasies and Curiosities” at the Art Museum at Florida International University is a rich and well-crafted show. Director Dahlia Morgan has explored the idea of the fantastic in art, the so-called uncanny, which seldom is addressed in today’s often faddish and overly didactic curatorial establishments. Not to…
The past month or so hasn’t been good for the local film scene. The death of the venerable Alliance Cinema in South Beach was a decided blow to independent film programming in South Florida. Combined with a few months without much film festival activity or many special screenings, the area’s…
Let’s be honest: As much as people may complain about Spike Lee’s public pontifications on race, or his controversial stances, or his being a rabble-rouser, that’s the way we like him. What first comes to mind when you hear his name mentioned? Certainly not Girl 6 or The Original Kings…
You know about Friday night: end of the week, beginning of the weekend, the day millions of workers all over the nation indulge in happy hours, the night where if you have nothing to do, you can pretty much consider yourself a loser. Well, even if you don’t have a…
