Fri 5/16 Bird and Dizzy may be more famous, but Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell are equally responsible for creating bebop, the first radical shift in modern popular music. Even for geniuses, Monk and Powell were extraordinary artists. Monk was a brooding presence in the Harlem Renaissance while Powell was…
Sun 5/18 We must admit when we see a shaggy-haired guy playing an acoustic guitar with one of those harmonica-holding doohickeys attached, we want to run for cover. Few have the skills and the sense of irony — let alone the coordination — to carry the folk thing off without…
Thursday 5/15 Like the sour-apple martini, Chilean sea bass is perhaps one of the most fashionable items you can sample at your favorite bistro. But did you know that it’s WRONG? Just like wearing a mink coat might get you splattered with red paint by animal-rights activists, ordering the trendy…
The rainy season is back, the snowbirds have gone, but the theater season roars on. A number of plays currently on the boards are stories of dispossessed communities struggling to maintain their traditional identities and find new ones. One such is GableStage’s production of The Diary of Anne Frank, the…
Actor, writer, and director Larry Villanueva calls his play Allá Afuera Hay Fresco “una descarga.” The term descarga, usually reserved for music, refers to a jam session, but Villanueva asserts that in this case there’s no better word to describe what happens on the stage during this explosive one-act: “The…
“Shirin Neshat,” the latest show at the Miami Art Museum, with films and photographs of the exile Iranian artist, is a unique event, helping us to grasp the complexity of women’s struggle for social liberation under Islam. The exhibit brings a fresh perspective to difficult political and ethnic themes with…
Nobody can convey more, doing nothing, than Billy Bob Thornton. His minimalist style is appropriate for the ironically named Levity, but what is conveyed never quite generates the emotional charge of Sling Blade or Monster’s Ball. Writer-director Ed Solomon is best known as the screenwriter of the two Bill &…
Long ago Eddie Murphy had grown tired of Eddie Murphy parts: the fast-talking high-jiver, the preening put-on. Even before he began parodying himself in Bowfinger, Showtime, and I Spy, the latter two perhaps accidentally, he accepted high-paying roles in low-rent movies that neutered and humiliated the character he had sharpened…
To my darling husband, as I sit alone on the wooden bench at the Smoke Pit restaurant, watching that enticing pink pig sweating and slowly rotating on the spit, I’m reminded of the many wonderful years we’ve spent together, rolling with the punches, memories as rich and sweet as a…
Like a biochemist studying strains of reality, Cuba-based choreographer/performance artist Marianela Boan is constantly seeking new and bold mutations. Her work is a study of contrasts, a morphing of opposing influences without preconceived notions of what will turn out in the end. In her quest to discover new forms of…
Sat 5/10 It’s all around us. It’s in us — makes up 50 to 65 percent of our bodies, in fact. And soon it will fall from the sky on an almost daily basis. We’re talking about water. You know, the very precious resource that often tastes like bleach when…
Now 24/7 It’s majestic, weird, and completely erotic. Towering up to twelve feet tall and emitting an odor reminiscent of rotting flesh, the Titan arum or corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum) is prized by horticulturists as the world’s largest and most spectacular bloom. And to see the Sumatran native is to…
Sat 5/10 Little girls in leotards, their tights sagging around their ankles, dressed like fairy princesses, flowers, or that Blue dog from Blue’s Clues. Is there nothing cuter? Just the 25 youngsters who’ll participate in the Supertots in Concert, a Mother’s Day tribute to six busy local (and not) moms…
Sat 5/10 What if we put together a show where you can listen to some cool, locally grown rock bands while looking at an intriguing sculpture or painting or an artsy photograph? That was probably the question that sparked the collective flame now dubbed ArtedelBarrio (Art from the ‘Hood).This neighborhood’s…
Sun 5/11 Thrown as a benefit for the Relief for Life Foundation, an organization devoted to raising money to purchase wheelchairs for the Latin American poor, the Mother’s Day concert dubbed Bossa Nova on the Beach boasts its own bit of irony. The evening’s special guest will be Heloisa Pinheiro,…
Thursday 5/8 As far as we know, vocalist Nancy Wilson has never pulled the diva act. No preperformance tantrums. No firing her musical director during intermission. No demands for a dressing room decked out in white flowers and stocked with several bottles of pricey champagne. Of course she’s never had…
Summer weather hasn’t quite arrived in South Florida and we have a couple of months to go before the Fourth of July. But the Sol Theatre isn’t in the mood to wait. This Fort Lauderdale-based company is setting off some fireworks of a theatrical nature in an uneven but sometimes…
At some fast-approaching point in pop culture evolution, we’re due to hit Total Outsider Saturation, wherein everybody is an outsider and therefore there is no longer an outside. In the fleeting meantime we have scintillating reminders of the struggle like X-2: X-Men United, the latest bid from comic-book land to…
If you have never heard of Lizzie McGuire, you are not a female child between the ages of six and fourteen; nor are you a parent with a female child between those ages. For the uninitiated, then, Lizzie is the eponymous heroine of the three-year-old, wildly popular Disney Channel TV…
John Dufresne ponders the possibilities of a bread machine. Les Standiford’s fictional detective John Deal shares his recipe for yellowtail. Poet Elisa Albo finds romance in the produce section. Thirty-five South Florida writers contributed stories, poems, and other musings about food, which of course are never just about food but…
Thursday 5/1 “Get drunk with a hunk!” exclaims the press release promoting the Miami Beach Firefighters Celebrity Bartender Night. While it’s unlikely the firemen (or women) will be raising a glass and getting sloshed alongside you, they’ll be picking up the cocktail shakers and mixing all sorts of libations for…
“What’s the best performance you’ve seen in the last five years?” asked Michelle Heffner Hayes of her creative colleagues at a national conference of arts presenters. The executive director of the Cultural Affairs Department at Miami-Dade Community College was attempting to curate the Cultura del Lobo Performance Series for 2002-2003…
