This summer Air Force One kicked off the post-Cold War thriller derby. The Peacemaker, the first feature from DreamWorks, the studio headed by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen, picks up the hot potato and carries it another nine yards. Once again we’re watching thickly accented Russians bemoaning the…
thursday september 18 Paul George Gallery Walk: He’s baaaack. Miami’s tireless homeboy historian Paul George is renowned in and out of town for his lively, informative tours about the people and places that make this such a weird and wonderful place to live. The professor celebrates ten years of exploration…
Howard and Emily’s marriage is the talk of Greenleaf, Indiana, a small town idyllic enough to repel Norman Rockwell. The town has waited three years for the couple to make it official, and slimmed-down Emily (Joan Cusack) has waited three long years for Howard (Kevin Kline) to consummate their relationship…
Every film adaption of an existing work has its own unique set of problems. In the case of Jocelyn Moorhouse’s A Thousand Acres, the problem is compounded. Not only was Jane Smiley’s 1991 novel a Pulitzer Prize-winning best seller with a large number of (presumably) devoted fans, but the book…
The Fifties-era Los Angeles of L.A. Confidential is Noir Central. Its denizens are tattooed in shadow; the play of light and dark in the streets, the police stations, the morgues is fetishistic. The postwar L.A. touted in the travelogues and billboards is a boomtown, but what we actually see is…
In their zeal to make sense of new and ever-evolving genres, rock critics are always quick to hold high a familiar sound from the past as the forerunner to and “seminal” influence on whatever is happening in the present. But Arkology (Island Jamaica/Chronicles), the new collection of reggae rarities produced…
Coming hard on the heels of New Theatre’s stylistically impressive but emotionally aloof Angels in America Part I: Millennium Approaches, the playhouse’s humanizing production of Tony Kushner’s challenging sequel, the three-hour Part II: Perestroika, unearths the soul in the play’s characters. The stirring performances are enhanced by the complexity and…
thursday september 11 Antonio Canales and His Ballet Flamenco: Choreographer Antonio Canales, considered to be among the best flamenco dancers in the world, and his troupe present the dramatic flamenco musical Torero, tonight through Sunday at 8:00 p.m. at the Jackie Gleason Theater of the Performing Arts (1700 Washington Ave.,…
The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca aims to cover a great deal of ground. It portrays Spain, with picturesque splendor, just before civil war, and the fate of impassioned, iconoclastic Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca in the clutches of fascism. Still, no matter how earnestly it attempts to realize its epic…
The Game is a puzzle picture; beyond its premise there isn’t much you can divulge without giving the show away. I’m not one of those critics who like to write “Stop reading now if you plan to see this movie,” so I’m tempted to wrap things up right now and…
A confession: Before the curtain goes up on any musical production, I check out the number of songs in each act; if the show turns out to be a turkey I can start the countdown till the final curtain. During the intermission to Little Shop of Horrors, now at Boca…
thursday september 4 Invitation to the Arts: It’s a sampler platter of culture! Instead of a couple of fried mozzarella sticks here or an oily potato skin there, you get short little bitefuls of delectable ballet, theater, dance, and other arty offerings. A showcase for the upcoming season at Jackie…
Somewhere in the meat-packing district in downtown Manhattan, behind a nondescript door in an unremarkable building, about 100,000 reels of film sit in stacks on twelve-foot-high metal shelves, and in unruly piles on the concrete floor. The titles taped to the sides of each canister — The Honey Industry, Resistance…
Even though he was actually born on July 3, legendary Broadway showman George M. Cohan (1878-1942) didn’t let the matter of a few hours stop him from proclaiming Independence Day his birthday. Immortalized by Hollywood’s Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and Broadway’s George M!(1968), the theatrical producer/actor/playwright/songwriter fostered America’s growing nationalism…
The summer doldrums have taken their toll on the South Florida art scene. Most local galleries and museums, it seems, have been on vacation — or might as well have been. With few culturally minded out-of-towners to cater to and with Miami art aficionados off at the Venice Biennial or…
thursday august 28 Big Wig: From New Jersey, the state that gave the world Bruce Springsteen, the Misfits, and Bon Jovi, among others, comes Big Wig — a hyper-catchy melodic-core band that packs a punk punch. The band’s recent album, UnMerry Melodies (on Fearless Records), boasts a dozen fast-paced, moshibly…
If you’re nostalgic for the cockeyed let-it-all-out gabfests of the late John Cassavetes, She’s So Lovely will seem like dejà vu all over again. Cassavetes wrote the script more than a decade ago, and now his son Nick, whose first feature, Unhook the Stars, starred his mother, Gena Rowlands, has…
Excess Baggage, Alicia Silverstone’s first feature from her First Kiss Productions, turns out to be a rather shaggy and uninvolving jaunt. As Emily T. Hope, the moneyed teenager looking for love from her emotionally distant single dad (Jack Thompson), Silverstone pouts a lot while trying to wring our sympathy. Even…
The sky was as dark as an actress’s roots when I pulled into the lot of Fort Lauderdale’s Studio Theatre, where the newly formed Actors’ Project has set up shop. For its first move on the local scene, the company is flexing its muscles with the musical Song of Singapore,…
thursday august 21 Frugal Indulgents: It’s hard to be a broke twentysomething with expensive tastes. When you have Donna Karan tastes and a Clothestime budget, having an empty wallet seems to be a constant rebuke. But don’t despair — Jennifer Griffin, one of the authors of Frugal Indulgents: How to…
Mike Leigh’s new film Career Girls is compact and minor. I don’t mean that as a slam, exactly. After the dawdling expansiveness of last year’s Secrets & Lies, his latest one is something of a relaxation — it’s appealingly small-scale. Leigh isn’t doing anything here he hasn’t done better before…
In G.I. Jane, Demi Moore plays a naval intelligence officer, Lt. Jordan O’Neil, who is recruited to be the first female SEAL. She gets a buzzcut. She endures the indignities of the male volunteers snickering at her in the food line. She rolls huge barrels through the surf and clambers…
