Steven Spielberg’s Amistad is being given the Big Picture treatment — Schindler’s List big, not Jurassic Park big. Last week’s Newsweek featured the film on its cover, calling it “Spielberg’s controversial new movie,” even though it had not yet been released and the only “controversy” was a legal one about…
thursday december 4 Elba Ramalho: A superstar in her native Brazil, Ramalho has been called the Queen of the Lambada and likened to Tina Turner. She certainly has a mop of hair, manic energy, shapely legs, and a powerful voice. But don’t be fooled: Just because she’s Brazilian doesn’t mean…
What does it take to be an independent filmmaker? A few credit cards to max out, a few friends willing to work cheap, and a little faith in your own talent are about all you need to make a movie in the United States. But in China, to be any…
“Their music is incredibly melodic,” notes Mary Rodgers, referring to the work of famed songwriters Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II during a recent phone conversation from her home in New York City. “Human beings are constructed to enjoy that. We have something instinctive that needs that melodic base. And…
In 1996 Rent picked up the Pulitzer Prize for its rock and roll update of Puccini’s La Boheme, edging out another work that has ties to the classical canon: Jon Marans’s drama Old Wicked Songs. The latter play, about the life lessons a young pianist and his seasoned vocal coach…
thursday november 27 Santa’s Enchanted Forest: Okay, so the seasons don’t really change so much in Miami. Locals spend winter holidays baking themselves on the beach; it did snow once, but don’t count on a white Christmas. How to capture the holiday spirit? You have two options: Go shopping tomorrow…
First, The Heiress was unofficially remade as Washington Square, then Ace in the Hole as Mad City, and The Day of the Jackal as The Jackal. But now we get The Absent-Minded Professor all dressed up in new threads as Flubber. In this frenzy of plundering the past, is nothing…
You can’t exactly call Alien Resurrection a pleasurable experience, but then again, you wouldn’t say that about its predecessors either. Directed by the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who previously co-directed (with Marc Caro) Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, this fourth installment in the Alien onslaught is once again designed…
Miramax held on to the Spanish comedy Mouth to Mouth (a.k.a. Boca a Boca) for better than a year before releasing it early this fall — usually a bad omen. (The film did screen locally as part of this year’s Miami Film Festival.) But although this romp from director-cowriter Manuel…
Over the past three years, 20th Century Fox has built an ambitious new animation studio in Phoenix, putting the promising Don Bluth and Gary Goldman in charge. The two were obvious choices. Since the animators defected from Disney Studios in 1979 to form Don Bluth Productions, they’ve turned out the…
Even if you’re the type destined to arrive late for your own burial, you should make it a point to show up at least fifteen minutes early for Grandma Sylvia’s Funeral, the interactive comedy now at the Broward Stage Door Theater in Coral Springs. That’s the time Grandma Sylvia herself…
John Grisham’s The Rainmaker lulls you into the mindset you get while reading a best seller at the beach. What a sad thing to say about a Francis Ford Coppola movie! Rather than heighten your awareness the way The Conversation or The Godfather did, The Rainmaker makes you feel lazy…
Documentarian Errol Morris is by far best-known for his 1988 feature The Thin Blue Line, which is often described as the only film that ever got an innocent man off death row. But he got his start with very different sorts of material: His first two films, Gates of Heaven…
thursday november 20 Rose’s Rock On Anniversary IV: Everything is new at Rose’s Bar & Music Lounge — stage, sound system, lighting, decor, lower drink prices, cover charge — except for one thing: Rose’s itself. On fickle South Beach for four years, the club provides a rare forum for local,…
thursday november 13 New Vision Florida/Brazil Festival: Bringing together artists from Brazil and Florida, the festival ends this weekend with two dance concerts at Miami Beach’s Colony Theater and outdoor street performances on Lincoln Road. A highlight occurs tonight at 9:00 when Brazilian guitar virtuoso Baden Powell performs solo, in…
This final dispatch from the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival begins with a pair of French imports, the first of which, Pour Rire! (translated as Just for Laughs), could have been nicely paired with last week’s Love, Etc. on a double bill titled “What Is This Thing Called Love?” In…
When you can’t figure out which direction the stock market will head or which nation isn’t complying with nuclear disarmament, it’s soothing to know that at least somewhere on the television dial things remain constant: Mary Richards will never find Mr. Right, Lucy Ricardo won’t headline at Ricky’s club, and…
Info: Calendar for the week By Larry Boytano, Judy Cantor, Nina Korman, and Jennifer Osorio thursday november 6 House of Blues Tour: The blues comes to Broward in a big way tonight at 8:00 and Sunday at 7:30 p.m. when the House of Blues presents Dr. John, Charlie Musselwhite, and…
Continuing my rambles through the world’s longest-ever film festival, I couldn’t resist a peek at a tiny bit of the glitz that seems to be almost as important to these enterprises as the films themselves. I attended the opening night of the Boca Mini-Fest at a posh mall, Mizner Park…
To borrow a line from the great soul singer Sam Cooke, I don’t know much about history, but I do know that Benedict Arnold turned traitor during the Revolutionary War. In the world premiere of Benedict Arnold, now at Palm Beach’s Florida Stage (formerly the Pope Theatre Company), playwright William…
thursday october 30 Naomi Wolf: Naomi Wolf sure knows how to piss people off. A controversial figure among the feminist elite, she discusses her latest book Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood, today at 10:30 a.m. as part of the Jewish Book Fair’s Women’s Day Luncheon. A Rhodes Scholar and…
Once more unto the breach: It’s film festival time yet again! But this one promises to be a Biggie; in fact, it’s being hyped as one of the world’s Ten Best, and definitely the longest. What are we talking about? Our own Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, of course, scheduled…
