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,…
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…
Less than a month after announcing the world premiere of Miami-based Rakontur’s Square Grouper: The Godfathers of Ganja would be shown at South By Southwest Film Festival, Wagner/ Cuban Company’s Magnolia Pictures announced that it had bought the film rights in a statement Tuesday. Terms of the deal include a…
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…
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…
Making a new marriage work is hard enough. Add a reality show to mix, and chances are you probably won’t even reach 8 years – the average length of first marriages. But we’re sure that won’t stop throngs of engaged couples from flocking to the Country Club of Coral Gables…
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…..
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…
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…
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…
Never trust somebody who doesn’t like dogs. Never. As well as being man’s best friend, they’re forgiving, generous and generally better people than people. So when you have a chance, make them feel special. That means showing up at Coral Gables Art Cinema this Friday at 6 p.m. as the…
In Mike Cahill’s Another Earth–a multiple prize-winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and one of two titles co-written by and starring the festival’s biggest break-out, Brit Marling–both hope and anxiety follow the discovery of Earth 2, a planet on which each resident of our globe has a doppelgänger living…
So very much went down on last night’s Basketball Wives episode, we’re not sure where to start. First, it is kind of insane that Shaunie O’neal and Gloria Govan hate each other so much. Well, Gloria hates everyone, but the mother of the pack, Shaunie, seems to be cool with…
Half the country will watch the Super Bowl on February 6 to see if the Pittsburgh Steelers kick the cheese out of the Green Bay Packers. The other half? They watch to see the commercials. And to see whether the $24 million Anheiser-Busch is spending for its 8 30-second commercials…
Chris Riley, AKA the Miami Heat President’s wife, said being a basketball wife is harder than being an actual player. Well, if that’s true, we wonder what its like to be a basketball girlfriend. Maybe it’s like the saying, “all guts, no glory.” You get the money and fame but…
Juan Carlos Valdivia’s Southern District (Zona Sur), which won Sundance awards for directing and screenwriting, opens at the Coral Gables Art Cinema tonight. It’s is a subtle film that comments on Bolivia’s dissolving upper class seen through the seemingly scattered lives of an affluent La Paz family. Matriarch Carola is…
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…
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…
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…
There’s not a Sunday night that goes by that as we watch VH1’s show Basketball Wives we don’t wonder: Why is it called that? None, literally not one of the women on the show is actually a basketball wife. So we wondered, what is it like to be the mate…
Okay, so maybe we’re a little tardy for the party on this one but Cultist did a double take when we saw longtime Miami bad boy Thomas Kramer cavorting with no other than Kim Zolciak from the Real Housewives of Atlanta earlier this week (we only caught the repeat, the…
The 83rd Annual Academy Award nominations were announced today. The King’s Speech (which was quite exceptional) leads the pack with 12 nominations. But the real story of the day is the Academy’s snubbing of Christopher Nolan as Best Director for Inception. And while The Social Network and True Grit were…
