My mind is capable of doing a couple of things at once. Therefore, while watching Shirley MacLaine Live! at the Jackie Gleason Theater, my thoughts drifted to the current sorry state of the modern musical and the dramatic arts in general — but that is not a negative comment on…
Normally, the second half of South Florida’s theatrical season comes up rosier than the first; this is the time of the tourists, when artistic companies present their most interesting offerings and try to appeal to a broader audience in terms of age and interests. Unfortunately, this year — partly owing…
Warning lights ought to flash in every filmgoer’s head any time the words “based on a true story” or “adapted from a play” are used to promote a motion picture. A true story is one thing, but based on a true story — that’s like the difference between 100 percent…
One of my New Year’s resolutions was to avoid giving away the endings of films in my reviews. But sometimes a movie is so predictable I can’t help myself. I feel that old temptation and I end up writing something to the effect of: “You know from the moment you…
I can’t really say I knew Bill Cosford. I met him a few times at previews. He liked popcorn. He was usually the first one out of the theater when a screening was over, no doubt a pre-emptive maneuver designed to avoid becoming entangled in endless “So, whadjathink?” queries from…
Everyone has heard that shopworn saying, “The third time’s a charm.” But what if you’re successful the first two times you try something? Does that mean you’ll blow it the third time around? If your name is Oliver Stone and you’ve carted away Best Director Oscars for Platoon and Born…
Manifest Destiny. What a clever two-word rationalization for the indiscriminate slaughter of tens of thousands of indigenous peoples and the bald-faced theft of their land. On September 5, 1886, Chiricahua Apache warlord Goyahkla, better known as Geronimo (a moniker bestowed upon him by the 3000 or so Mexican soldiers whose…
To sum up South Florida’s theatrical menu in 1993, I must use one of the most famous — if rather cliched — passages in English literature, Charles Dickens’s opening of A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the…
Have you ever been to a party where someone you don’t like tells a long-winded story about some fabulous adventure they had and you know it’s a good yarn but you don’t enjoy it because you can’t get around the fact that the storyteller is a jerk? Welcome to Six…
One of my colleagues here at New Times who lived in Spain has asked me not to compare Bigas Luna, director of the anarchic sexual farce Jam centsn Jam centsn (one of the well-received offerings at this year’s Miami Film Festival), with Pedro Almod centsvar, Luna’s better-known contemporary. I feel…
Without a doubt, A Criminal Sorority provided me with one of the most entertaining evenings I’ve spent watching theater since I moved down here. Presented in a less than perfect location — Rose’s Bar & Lounge — where glasses clink, people shoot pool and bar patrons shout on the telephone,…
Everybody’s a damn movie critic these days. When the president of the United States calls a time-out in the middle of his GATT announcement to give Schindler’s List two thumbs up — way up — you know the field has become saturated. What’s next — Al Gore urging every American…
The one thing it is not is brief. The bird it most resembles is not a pelican but a turkey. And the answer to the question all of America has been waiting to hear is…no, Julia Roberts does not contract jungle fever with Denzel Washington. She gives him a peck…
Playwrights often complain bitterly about the subjectivity of critics. A.R. Gurney, author of such classics as The Dining Room, has given several lectures around the country in which he rants about the fact that everyone, including professional viewers, comes to the theater with certain preconceptions that make it impossible for…
Hey, gang — let’s put on a show! Ever since Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney made careers out of that story line in the late Thirties, it’s been the most overused (and frequently the lamest) premise in television and motion picture history. It’s like an unwritten law of TV sitcoms:…
‘Tis the season to be jolly, go shopping, trim the tree, and light the candles. And to be falsely pious. Right this moment it’s ultrachic to embrace that Christmas and Chanukah spirit, even if it doesn’t extend as far as helping a homeless man on the street, or committing a…
Two guys fightin’ over a dame. If it ain’t the oldest plot on the books, it’s one of them. The guy-girl-guy triangle has been a dramatist’s staple since Lancelot and King Arthur’s old lady Guinevere bumped uglies in the woods outside Camelot. I’m-no-good-at-being-noble Bogart beat out Paul Henreid for Ingrid…
While I am genuinely thrilled by the growth in the number of small theater companies and theatrical experiments cropping up in the local scene over the past two years, I am also aware of certain demons that nascent groups may encounter no matter how hard they try to avoid them…
Hollywood is pretty evenly divided over the question of whether Tom Hanks’s portrayal of a gay attorney with AIDS in the upcoming film Philadelphia will mark the dawn of a new era of tolerance in mainstream cinema or the end of Hanks’s bankability. Will his on-screen kiss with Antonio Banderas…
Robin Williams’s movies tend to fall into one of two categories: the comedian Robin and oh-so-earnest Robin. In the first mode, the peripatetic comedian essentially just adapts his stand-up routine to the cinematic role at hand so that what you get on-screen is a variation of Robin Williams in concert…
It may sound surprising to some, but I have long suspected that David Mamet may one day be regarded as highly as Shakespeare is today: as a playwright of such skill, breadth, and intellect that every element of his work — from dialogue to plot to premise to characterization –…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Clint Eastwood as an aging lawman who relies on gut instinct in leading a manhunt for a killer who is not only smarter than Eastwood, but also more complex and interesting. Clint is paired with a feisty female with whom he clashes…
