The kitchen and the bedroom. In 1910 Mexico, a woman’s choices, bound by tradition and the macho ethic, were severely limited. Like Water for Chocolate, the film adapted by Laura Esquivel and her director/producer husband, Alfonso Arau, from Ms. Esquivel’s internationally best-selling novel, is the raunchy, romantic, dreamlike rendering of…
As a rule, the last place a movie critic wants to view a film is at a promotional screening. Such events, if successful, are usually loud and crowded, two factors that are not exactly conducive to thoughtful analysis of the motion picture in question. The WMXJ-FM (102.7)/Community Newspapers-sponsored showing of…
Successful dramas tend to deal with similar themes — lost romance, identity crises, loneliness, family tensions — partly because some subjects lend themselves more easily to the stage than others. Extraterrestrials (and other types of space matter), pornographic activity, gang warfare, and the like are difficult to translate into live…
Few dramatic scholars would argue against the assertion that Hamlet remains one of the greatest plays ever written. Unlike such masterpieces as Home Alone and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Shakespeare’s tragedy about the Prince of Denmark was not exactly crying out for a sequel. And few audiences, scholars or…
Il Ladro di Bambini (Stolen Children) is a small film that packs a mean wallop. You don’t realize what a tour de force you’re watching until midway through, and then not because of a Crying Game-like plot twist or a whiff of Scent of a Woman-ly bombast. Rather, Bambini wins…
Thank goodness for small favors: the new Disney release, A Far Off Place, is not a Newsies-magnitude bomb. On the other hand, the best thing about the film (a loose adaption of two books by Laurens van der Post, A Story Like the Wind and A Far Off Place) is…
“It is not a dance; [it is] synthetic sex turned into a spectator sport,” asserts choreographer Jeffrey Holder. “If they turned off the music, they’d all be arrested,” adds phlegmatic comedian Bob Hope. The object of such moral outrage? A vulgar, animalistic dance known as the Twist. Canadian documentary filmmaker…
If you’re feeling lethargic, spend an hour with Michael Hall, the artistic director and founder of the Caldwell Theatre Company, one of South Florida’s two state theaters. Immense funds of energy, optimism, and creativity fill the room from the moment he steps in. Immediately you understand why Jim Caldwell, the…
During the Seventeenth Century, aristocratic women often glued little dots of black taffeta to their faces or breasts to accentuate the whiteness of their skin. On the forehead such a mark was called a “majestique,” near the eye a “passionne,” and near the lip a “galante.” On the chin, it…
The NAACP once accused controversial FBI director J. Edgar Hoover of being prejudiced. The cross-dressing pit bull’s characteristically sensitive response was that he was buddies with Amos (Freeman Gosden) and Andy (Charles Correll), white men who played embarrassing black stereotypes on a popular radio program. Needless to say, the NAACP…
Donald Margulies, an already solid playwright, committed a strange and wonderful act a few years ago: he wrote an honest-to-goodness play. Not the usual cheesy sitcom disguised as drama, or a wild experiment in masturbatory avant-garde that no one understands but the author. He constructed instead a work of art,…
As a young actor, Robert De Niro learned a lot by studying, and occasionally emulating, Marlon Brando. Who would have guessed that De Niro would someday go so far as to mimic the Godfather’s penchant for taking the money and running? Chances are that Mad Dog and Glory wouldn’t have…
How’s this as the basis for a cute musical? A struggling but earnest theater group needs major structural renovations and secures grants from the county Cultural Affairs Council, among others. Things look bright. But just as the construction crews are about to begin, a major weather catastrophe A a hurricane…
Harvey Keitel plays the profane, heavy-betting, dope-sucking, whoremongering police officer of the title. It is a role that affords this underrated actor the kind of exposure that has eluded him to date: full frontal nudity. In addition to the family jewels, we get to see Keitel masturbating (fully clothed) in…
Especially before the age of information-packed technology, historians tended to obscure a great deal. Lately, in the new decade of “the woman” (thanks, Hillary!), scholars and artists appear to be discovering a whole crop of creators previously overlooked or completely ignored. Ask for the greats of the arts and you…
Nearly a decade ago film critic Vincent Canby of the New York Times vilified the work of French director Alain Corneau, dismissing it as “lethargic, pretentious, overblown, neopoetic nonsense.” Since that review, no American distributor has been daring (or batty) enough to market another of Corneau’s movies in this country…
In A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess’s brilliant novel (later made into an equally stunning film by Stanley Kubrick) about the way society controls individual thought, the violent lead character is captured by government officials and forced to undergo a unique form of torture/behavior modification. With eyelids forced open so that…
It’s about time Van Damme, Gibson, Stallone, and the rest of the macho fantasy boys got a good beating. It comes at the hands of Emilio Estevez and Samuel L. Jackson in the satirical Loaded Weapon 1. This goofy pair of police partners (Colt and Luger, of course — one…
Allow me to launch right into this commentary with no preamble, as my excitement can hardly be contained. The Miami Actor’s Studio has managed to present a brand-spanking-new play — Power in the Blood by Sarah E. Bewley, rightful winner of the 1992 State of Florida’s Individual Artist’s Grant for…
Despite what many playwrights like to think, I believe that any work is written three times: by the author, by the director, and by the participating actors. A produced play then could be compared to a three-story building. The all-important foundation and first floor of the structure is without a…
Extreme Close-Up was Paul N. Lazarus III’s first feature film, and the independent producer had delivered it on time and under budget. There was just one remaining hurdle — the rating. Lazarus had promised his backers the film would receive no worse than an R from the MPAA. This was…
As Peter Brook of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and so many others like him and after him realized, a classic play is most worth doing if the director bestows new insight, or a new interpretation on the work. Brook brought King Lear to powerful, violent life reflecting his explosive society…
