thursday july 17 Zo’s Summer Groove: Under all that scowling and snarling he does on the court, the Miami Heat’s Alonzo Mourning has a soft spot for kids. This weekend Zo hosts a series of charity events for children, including tonight’s kickoff Mourning Knight Gala, a black-tie dinner at 6:30…
What must those poor guys in Insane Clown Posse be thinking? After all, the sad white rap act only made a record that included profanity, and still they got drop-kicked off a panicky Disney-owned Hollywood Records, a label whose greatest catalogue asset is Queen. Martin Lawrence, on the other hand,…
When the producers at Miami Beach’s Area Stage and Coral Gables’s Florida Shakespeare Theatre discovered several weeks ago both troupes had scheduled a South Florida premiere of a work by the same playwright, they decided to join forces and create what they’re calling the Nicky Silver Play Festival. During the…
thursday july 10 Franco-Hispanic Film Festival: Celebrate French independence with a four-day festival of recent films co-produced by French- and Spanish-speaking nations, at CocoWalk 16 Theatres (3015 Grand Ave., Coconut Grove). Tonight’s opening gala features the Florida premiere of Raul Ruiz’s Franco-Chilean 1996 film Genealogies d’un Crime (Genealogy of a…
Just in time for Bastille Day, the consulate general of France in Florida and CocoWalk 16 Theatres are offering the inaugural Franco-Hispanic Film Festival (July 11 through 13; see “Showtimes” or “Calendar Listings” for a complete schedule), whose raison d’etre appears to be to spotlight cinema that’s co-produced or co-distributed…
A lot of ink has been shed in the press lately about the “seriousness” of the new Robert Zemeckis film Contact, starring Jodie Foster as an astronomer who receives humankind’s first extraterrestrial message. Forrest Gump made Zemeckis a guru; now he’s being primed as a philosopher king. Just abouxt every…
A shipwrecked young woman who protects herself in a strange city by masquerading as a man; an orphaned teenage girl who dons men’s clothing in defiance of Jewish laws that forbid the education of women; a tortured man who stops numbing his pain with alcohol long enough to confront his…
thursday july 3 Marisa Monte: Critics are hailing Marisa Monte, the new Brazilian diva whose cascade of black hair, red lips, and sexy moves qualify her to carry the torch of Gal Costa and Astrud Gilberto. Her voice might just have something to do with it, too. Best-known for rejuvenating…
Tomas Gutierrez Alea’s final film shares with the late Cuban director’s Letters from the Park (a sweetly lyrical film based on the Gabriel Garcia Marquez story about a man who ghostwrites love letters) and Strawberry and Chocolate a tone of wistful romanticism. Like a Garcia Marquez novel, Guantanamera, which screened…
One speech and one prop from Men in Black combine to sum up the movie. An alien in four-legged earthly form delivers the speech: “You humans, when’re you gonna learn that size doesn’t matter? Just ’cause something’s important doesn’t mean it’s not very, very small.” The most refreshing thing about…
Info: Rodgers and Hart Failure By Savannah Whaley With the exception of a few years in the early Thirties spent toiling in Hollywood’s movie factory, lyricist Lorenz Hart and composer Richard Rodgers held sway for nearly a quarter of a century on Broadway. Between 1919 and 1942, the pair defied…
Sculptor Florencio Gelabert — whose work is the subject of a solo show at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale — arrived in Miami in 1990, the first of several dozen Cuban artists who decamped here at the start of the decade. At the time, these young emigres caused…
thursday june 26 Laura Pausini: Less than four years ago Laura Pausini, a teenage girl from a small town near Ravenna, Italy, won the new-talent competition at the 1993 San Remo Song Festival, propelled by her tender vocal style and sincere, emotive delivery. Within the year Pausini’s career skyrocketed –…
The title of John Woo’s Face/Off is meant to be taken literally. John Travolta and Nicolas Cage play adversaries who swap faces. Here’s how: FBI agent Sean Archer (Travolta) has been single-mindedly tracking terrorist nut Castor Troy (Cage) ever since Castor’s botched assassination attempt six years earlier, in which he…
Slapstick decadence is the dominant style at the Disney studios this summer, reaching all the way from Touchstone Pictures’ action hit Con Air to the 35th Walt Disney animated feature, Hercules. It’s a moviemaking mode that weds anything-for-a-laugh to anything-for-a-jolt, leaving imagination and authenticity in the lurch. Instead of creating…
The Van is being billed as “the final chapter in the Barrytown Trilogy,” Irish author Roddy Doyle’s group of novels set in a fictional north Dublin suburb that also consists of The Commitments and The Snapper. That “final chapter” label, courtesy the production notes, gives The Van the aura of…
Despite its man-eating tigers, ferocious lions, and thundering elephants, the circus never frightens me. Not surprising, really — it’s merely theater where I can watch brave acts of skill from my comfortable seat (although I sometimes have trouble applauding with my hands glued together by cotton candy). Carnivals are another…
Producing only once a year, City Theatre sets the theatrical dog days of summer howling with Summer Shorts ’97, a festival of fifteen short plays ranging in length from two to fifteen minutes. Now at the University of Miami’s Jerry Herman Ring Theatre, the company brings more local talent to…
In Miami, summer is the best time to visit a museum. While crowds, unfortunately, are never a big problem at our local art institutions, on a weekday during the summer months a person can often have the run of the exhibition space, with only the museum guards for company. And…
British filmmaker Peter Greenaway sits near a window in the dining room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel; he indicates with his eyes a man walking along the sidewalk toward Hollywood Boulevard. In trying to explain his use of multiple imagery in his new film The Pillow Book and separating it…
To get into a good-lovin’ mood before each date, a college housemate of mine croaked along to Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey” while blasting it through his stereo. My fondness for the song survived. So as the end credits for Ulee’s Gold unrolled against the robust lyricism of Morrison belting out…
thursday june 19 Fred D’Aguiar: University of Miami creative writing teacher and local author Fred D’Aguiar explores history, place, and the resonance of a single image in his works. After winning the Whitbread Award for his first novel, The Longest Memory, D’Aguiar received critical praise for his latest work, Dear…
