In 2006, the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, a project founded in Cambridge and cosupported by the Miami-based One Laptop per Child Association, implemented a project to give laptop computers to children in developing countries. The culture shock of people in locations without running water but possible internet connectivity…
This year’s MIFF offers more than 40 shorts, and with the notable exception of Cherry Pop: The World’s Fanciest Cat (directed by Miami’s own Kareem Tabsch), most of them are not about really fancy felines. They’re also about synchronized swimming, fugitive Mennonites, and Palestinian refugees, because, y’know, diversity. For those…
Man, woman, gay, straight, bi: There’s something for everyone in 300: Rise of an Empire, the XXL sequel to the also-larger-than-life Greeks-in-shinguards extravaganza 300. In that picture, directed by Zack Snyder and based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the three-day Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., the Spartans and…
First, the pleasant surprises. In puffing up the slight, absurd Mr. Peabody and Sherman shorts from Jay Ward’s The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show into an 82-minute 3D save-the-timestream child-distractor, director Rob Minkoff and his many writers have preserved a few of the hallmarks distinguishing the Dada, deadpan, almost primitive original,…
Does Miami Beach even realize how lucky we are to have the Miami Beach Cinematheque right in it’s backyard? The central nervous system of Miami’s art house film obsession has flowed through the velvet carpets on their walls, and placed itself firmly in their comfortably padded chairs for the past…
(Spoiler alert: The following piece discusses up to the February 16 episode of Looking.)HBO’s Looking has had a tough time winning over its intended fans. Upon its premiere, Gawker’s Rich Juzwiak yawningly summed up the political achievement of creator Michael Lannan’s wonderful half-hour dramedy about three homosexual men in San…
Not more than 6-months after Diana Nyad crossed the 110-mile open waters between Cuba and Key West, known as the Straits of Florida. Now, she takes on a challenge that is bound to be more aggravating, treacherous, and full of shark-infested waters than any challenge she’s yet faced. What could…
The word “dinosaur” translates to “terrible lizard,” and no lizard is more terrible than mothereffing Godzilla. Of course, by “terrible” we mean “completely awesome.” Awoken by nuclear bombs, Godzilla is a giant (s)he-beast (the gender switches, depending on the flick) who breathes radioactive fire and wallops alien invaders, plus half…
The digital age is upon us, and it’s not going anywhere. Humanity has either been freed by its own intelligent design or reduced to full-time screen watchers, depending on how you choose to look at it. Even now, you’re on your computer or smart mobile device, and chances are, you’re…
Whittling down a film festival of close to 100 films to only 10 seems rather cruel. But, let’s face it, this is Miami, and who really wants to spend 10 days in dark theaters all day long? If you have to choose a smattering of movies to catch at the…
Remember turning 31 years old? If you’re old enough, maybe you partied hard enough that you don’t recall. If you’re too young, it’s surely not a number you’re very concerned about achieving. For the Miami International Film Festival, the 31st anniversary is shaping up to be a year to remember…
When you think of Miami in the movies, what comes to mind? “Say hello to my little friend” perhaps, or possibly “shit just got real.” “I feel like all we have right now is Scarface, Bad Boys, and all those things,” said young filmmaker Monica Sorelle. “It’s a lot of…
That Bible miniseries, originally aired on the History Channel, won notoriety by casting an actor who resembles Barack Obama in the crowd-pleasing role of Satan. The producers — Roma Downey, who plays Mary here, and Mark Burnett, who pioneered the watch-skinny-people-suffer genre with Survivor — insisted that this was a…
Miami New Times’ Mastermind Awards honors the city’s most inspiring creatives. This year, we received more than 100 submissions, which our staff narrowed to an elite group of 30, and finally, nine. We’ll be profiling those finalists in the days to come. This year’s three Mastermind Award winners will be…
In 1998, Douglas Adams published a sweet, funny essay called “Riding the Rays,” about an excursion to Hayman Island to try a kind of underwater Jet Ski called a Sub Bug because it afforded an opportunity to swim with manta rays. And manta rays are cool. He wrote of his…
Think back to the worst thing you did in high school. Shoplifting? Busted with a joint? Trespassing while lit up on Boone’s Farm? Now, imagine you pulled your rite-of-passage no-goodnik routine in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in the early 2000s. You get busted, the cops get involved, you get hauled to the…
Created for German television, where it debuted last spring, the World War II epic Our Mothers, Our Fathers has since aired on Polish, Irish, and Swedish networks and now finds its way to a theatrical release, retitled Generation War for American audiences. Conceived and undertaken, in the words of producer…
Action heroes with nothing to lose are the best kind, perhaps the only kind worth watching. In the opening seconds of Jaume Collet-Serra’s Non-Stop, Liam Neeson’s federal air marshal Bill Marks slumps in his parked vehicle while sloshing a few glugs of whiskey into a paper cup and stirring it…
When we first meet the hero of Son of God, a kind of chintzy melodrama about the horrors of capital punishment, he’s approaching a fisherman with a classic boiler-room pitch: “Just give me an hour, and I will give you a whole new life,” Jesus (Diogo Morgado) promises Peter (Darwin…
In the admittedly dubious interest of using national stereotypes as a way of understanding human nature, let’s posit that while Americans have always emerged from the womb cheerfully, pleased with their right to pursue happiness, Russians were born to suffer. That may help explain why Fedor Bondarchuk’s 3D spectacle Stalingrad…
It was sad — Jay Leno’s 22 years hosting The Tonight Show ended with all the excitement of a guy farting at the mall. We all talked about his joke stealing and his talk-show stealing and how he’d played to the middle, threw away his talent. We were happy to…
“Sex films sell, and other stuff doesn’t . . . or at least not nearly as well,” says film preservationist Joe Rubin. Rubin, 24 years old, is one of the creators working Skinaflix, a VOD-style streaming video service he calls “the Netflix of porn.” At Vinegar Syndrome, a separate DVD/Blu-Ray–centric…
