In an essay called “The Decline of Quality,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman writes of Michelangelo, who locked all potential helpers out of the Sistine Chapel while he spent four painful years on a scaffold carrying his famed work to completion. “That is what makes for quality — and its…
Lesbians have always gotten a pretty raw deal from Hollywood. They’ve generally been portrayed as either villains or seductresses, take your pick. Sure, you’ll find the occasional self-consciously sensitive film (usually made by a man) like John Sayles’s Lianna or Robert Towne’s Personal Best, which took themselves so seriously that…
An esteemed acting teacher named Richard Pinter, himself a student of the great coach Sanford Meisner, once succinctly explained to his students (including me) the difference between real life and life as properly written and acted for the stage. “If we wanted belly-scratching reality in drama,” he began, “we’d take…
When the Actors’ Playhouse invited me to review their production of playwright Jane Wagner’s dramatic triumph, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, I took several deep breaths and said a prayer for Donna Kimball, the local actress slated to star in the one-woman show. A skilled…
You don’t always get what you pay for. Weekend at Bernie’s II and Son-in-law are lame excuses for comedies, but seeing them will still lighten your wallet noticeably. Meanwhile Studentfilms, Inc., an offshoot of Robert DeNiro’s Tribeca Film Center in New York City, has compiled a touring exhibition of eight…
Remember Vic Hitler, the narcoleptic comic in Hill Street Blues? Terry Kiser received an Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of the comedian with the penchant for nodding off just when he had an audience rolling in the aisles. Like most of the quirky characters who populated Hill Street, Vic…
A few empty parking spaces suddenly and miraculously available on Ocean Drive, combined with the paucity of openings around town, tell this reviewer it’s time for the 1992-93 season wrap-up, an annual offering that enables me to put the growth of South Florida theater in perspective. This year, since both…
Welcome to another installment of Bad Career Move Derby. Today’s contestants are a pair of male actors whose professions began auspiciously enough but have spiraled inexorably downward ever since: Donald Sutherland and Gary Busey. Sutherland broke from the gate with a vengeance, lending his bug-eyed irreverence to such films as…
Life with Mikey is one of those execrable exercises in sitcom sentimentality that leaves even the uncritical viewer with one question: What were they thinking? Let’s be charitable. Maybe the filmmakers were inspired by Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose, but the only way they could obtain financing was to cast…
Poor Al D’Andrea. He’s doomed. It’s hard to look him in the eye because you know he’s going to die soon. Al is not an AIDS patient, a Somali warlord, a gangbanger, or a journalist in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It’s worse than that. Al is the latest guy to hold the job…
Susan Karrie Braun appears to be obsessed with the letter A. She’s taken the classic nineteenth-century Nathaniel Hawthorne novel, The Scarlet Letter, in which the initial worn on a young woman’s chest stood for adultery, and updated it to signify AIDS in a performance art/play/polemic called ‘A’ Scarlet Letter, currently…
The Firm is one of those so-so movies critics dread. It’s like generic vanilla ice cream A tasty enough to satisfy a craving, but not compelling enough to go out of your way for. It’s not bad. It’s just bland. Like Last Action Hero, five writers share in the blame…
Tina Turner is the heroine of What’s Love Got to Do With It. The dramatic sequences in the rock siren’s film bio hammer home the point that Turner (formerly Anna Mae Bullock from Nutbush, Tennessee) overcame huge odds and years of physical abuse to become the international megastar that she…
Along with passing out at the wheel because the car’s AC abruptly conks out at high noon, and showering six times a day, one of the charming oddities of the summer months in South Florida is the opportunity to view eccentric types of theater otherwise not presented or generally overlooked…
I never cease to be pleased by how much I learn on this job. When I first saw one of my personal favorite plays A Lanford Wilson’s lust story Burn This A in 1987 on Broadway, I would have sworn that above and beyond the brilliance of the work itself,…
Privately, so as not to give away your age, ask yourself a question: Do you remember when Ralph Bakshi’s Fritz the Cat was considered scandalous enough to merit an X rating from the MPAA? How the fun thing to do was smoke a couple of joints and head down to…
Yikes. Just when you thought Arnold was nearly as invincible at the box office as the on-screen characters he’s been playing, along comes Last Action Hero to put his survival skills to the test. Last Action Hero has the feel of a movie that can’t make up its mind what…
At last! A big-budget summer movie that actually lives up to the hype. Jurassic Park is the cinematic equivalent of a doctoral thesis on special effects wizardry from director Steven Spielberg. It’s also a heart-stopping, jaw-dropping, eye-popping spectacular that supplies all the vicarious thrills of a trip to Disney World…
Cute kids are a regular feature of Steven Spielberg’s movies, but it will be a cold day in Jurassic Park before a Spielberg film embraces a family like Leolo Lozone’s. “Because I dream, I’m not,” intones the youngster at the center of Jean-Claude Lauzon’s semiautobiographical tour de force, Leolo. Not…
When I was much younger and wanted something badly, such as a cable- knit sweater or a parakeet, I used to tell my mother that everybody had one. “Everyone?” she would inquire, with an arched left eyebrow. “If everyone jumped off the Woolworth building, would you do it, too?” I…
Seems like everywhere you look these days, something’s falling. America has fallen on hard times. The dollar has fallen in value against the yen. President Clinton’s approval rating, SAT scores, GNP, consumer confidence A falling, falling, falling, falling. Everywhere you look, standards are dropping, heroes are backsliding, institutions are toppling…
Snowbirds swiftly flying the co-op believe that the soggy South Florida summer results in nothing more than lethargic attempts at action and lazy, hazy days spotlighted largely by sweaty naps. Juan Cejas and Maria Romeu of the ACME Theater and Mario Ernesto Sanchez of Teatro Avante don’t agree. For these…
