Basketball Wives, Episode 8: B-Ball Broads Abroad

Oh Basketball Wives, how we have missed you. The show came back last night after its hiatus bigger and better than ever. Royce Reed continues to confuse us. In the first five minutes of her trip, she explains that her throat feels like “golf balls with razor blades.” First, great…

The Illusionist Hits a Sad, Charming Note

Originally written by legendary French filmmaker Jacques Tati, The Illusionist, which opens in Miami this Friday, is a touchingly simple and beautifully drawn film by renowned animator Sylvian Chomet. When Tati died in 1982, he left behind the screenplay for The Illusionist, which he had intended to be shot in…

The Illusionist hits a sad, charming note

Originally written by legendary French filmmaker Jacques Tati, The Illusionist (not to be confused with the live-action Edward Norton film of the same name) is a touchingly simple and beautifully drawn film by renowned animator Sylvian Chomet. When Tati died in 1982, he left behind the screenplay for The Illusionist,…

This year’s Oscar-nominated short films

In past years, the theatrical release of Oscar-nominated live-action and animated shorts has provided a fun peek into intriguing bite-sized cinema from across the globe. But for the 2011 edition, the series is at last making room for five nominated documentary shorts as well. Unfortunately, this year’s nonfiction crop largely…

Andrew Hevia Talks No Matter What, Premiering at SXSW Film Festival

We’re big fans of local filmmaker Andrew Hevia and his affiliated projects, whether it’s his raunchy web series The Adventures of a Sexual Miscreant or his work as one of the impresarios behind the increasingly influential Borscht Film Festival. So when the South By Southwest Film Festival announced it’s slate…

Bravo Announces Real Housewives Of Miami Premiere Date

For years, we have been hearing rumors that Miami would finally get a Housewives franchise of our very own. Everyone from singer Gloria Estefan to PR Guru/Queen of the night Tara Solomon was rumored to be in the cast. Then, a couple of months back, Bravo officially confirmed that there…

My Dog Tulip will make you cherish your pet

The antithesis of both Marley & Me cuddliness and Cesar Millan militance, J.R. Ackerley’s 1956 memoir about his recalcitrant German shepherd, My Dog Tulip, is one of the finest, most insightful chronicles of inter-species devotion. A complex love story, his book plumbs the inner lives of hounds: “I realized clearly…..

Now playing: Inside Job

Inside Job, Charles Ferguson’s followup to his Iraq War gut-twister No End in Sight, is a documentary that inspires sickening ire — 20 minutes into this lucid yet stupefying account of the 2008 global economic meltdown, my vision was clouded by the steam wafting from my ears. Inside Job makes…

Werner Herzog and Pitbull Announce Borscht Film Festival 2011

Mark your calendars. The Borscht Film Festival announced the date and location for their next cinema fest: April 23rd at the Arsht Center. At last year’s, we saw working cuts of a flaneur’s stroll through Liberty City in “Day N Night Out,” which later screened at Cannes, and “Xemoland,” an…

MasterMind Award Finalists: Narrative

There’s more than the one way to tell a story. The finalists in our next category of MasterMind awards spin yarns through dance, happenings, performance, theater, and cinema. And next week, on February 10, we’ll choose one the following three artists for a $1,500 genius grant during our annual Artopia…

Annoying characters in Another Year

Another Year, the tenth feature-length British soap written and directed by Mike Leigh, concerns a year in the life of Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen), the happiest post-middle-aged married couple in the whole of the London suburbs. Heading into their fifth decade together, Tom and Gerri are healthy…

Anthony Hopkins battles non-scary demons in The Rite

The Rite is the latest of at least a dozen widely released American movies in half as many years with demonic possession as a major plot-point. This doesn’t mean the subject is wrung out — its continuing resonance with audiences hasn’t been effaced by secular pop psychology or modernization within…

New in film: Barney’s Version

The late Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz) was a bellicose practitioner of Jewish fiction in the manner of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, with a mad helping of Joseph Heller. So it comes as a big letdown that director Richard J. Lewis (who made Whale Music…