Anyone familiar with Kenny Scharf’s work won’t be surprised to learn that the Pop Surrealist, painter of Jetsons and Flintstones characters, psychedelic space adventures and cool mutant creatures, has created an animated cartoon. Scharf’s half-hour The Groovenians premieres November 10 on the Cartoon Network and will be previewed at a…
Listen up, retards: Killing time is over. Melt down your weapons, now, forever. Wouldn’t it be nice if that sentiment echoed around the world? Well, certainly it does, every day, but weapons have a nasty tendency of drowning out sensible words. For this reason — now more than ever –…
More than just a funky film about a callow couple held captive by a transvestite mad scientist, featuring a youthful Susan Sarandon cavorting in her underwear, The Rocky Horror Show, the 1975 cult classic, is a live show too. The musical was originally written for the stage, and that’s the…
“Who sent you here?” aerobics instructor/dominatrix Michelle demands to know after the hour-long workout called Whipped. The hard-bodied mistress recently began teaching the class and judging by her puzzled expression, I could tell I’m the first sweaty subject ever to show up in full S&M regalia: a studded leather thong,…
As any wine lover can tell you, an excellent vintage is really two wines in one. When first opened, it may have a lovely, fresh bouquet and a satisfying taste. But allowed to breathe, a great wine will develop subtle complexities, new depth, and lingering flavors. That’s an apt analogy…
There are some things that are worth seeing, or hearing, or tasting, and you are probably better for it. Then there are those few things that cannot be missed, and you are definitely better for it. One of those is Daniel Senise’s “Recent Works” at Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts. Senise,…
If you’re a fan of the baseball cap-wearin’, Nader-votin’, muckrakin’, best-sellin’, corporation-confrontin’ son of a gun known as Michael Moore, all you need to know about his latest film, Bowling for Columbine, is that it’s more of the same. You know, the mix of easy humor, attempts (some successful, most…
Punch-Drunk Love is a Paul Thomas Anderson film — Paul Thomas Anderson of Magnolia and Boogie Nights fame. It is also an Adam Sandler film — Adam Sandler of Little Nicky and Wedding Singer fame. In terms of story, it has far more in common with Sandler’s previous work than…
You ever notice those people? You know, the so-called “stand-up comedians”? Who are those people? What’s the deal with them? And what does that mean, anyway, “stand-up”? I mean, it’s not like we’re gonna think they’re sitting down unless they tell us otherwise!Yes, a decade or so later, it’s easy…
Believe it or not, long before Yoko Ono became Mrs. John Lennon, she did have a life and identity of her own. As an avant-garde artist over the past 40 years, she has produced a significant and influential body of work. Yes, we’re talking about that Yoko Ono. The one…
Some people are contortionists. Hugo and Ines — who make their fists, fingers, feet, and legs into saxophone players, magicians, ballerinas, and sad old men — could be considered body-part puppeteers. Their poignant and funny Short Stories, which they’ll perform this weekend courtesy of Miami-Dade Community College’s Cultura del Lobo…
I might as well just come out and say it: Spirited Away is the best movie I’ve seen all year. Though it would be a masterpiece in any language, Hayao Miyazaki’s animated spectacular (and Japan’s highest-grossing film ever) is being released by Disney simultaneously in two versions — one in…
Much like a psychic, a cinema critic must look through a movie and see the other side. In the case of the new thriller The Ring — a remake of the 1998 Japanese hit Ringu — the formative forces swim into focus without effort. There’s a DreamWorks boardroom, some executives…
Those aggressive Latin Americans. First they take over the town, and now they’re hogging public transportation. Okay, that’s just our Latin side, making us prone to exaggeration. Actually only a trio of Metrobuses are commandeered for three hours at a time on Saturdays in October (Hispanic Heritage Month to you…
Using a blank canvas and buckets of paint, Miami artist Jonas Gerard stands onstage and creates colorful works of art. He calls it “spontaneous performance-painting.” To expand the concept, he’s going to paint while interacting with others, perhaps a saxophonist, a poet, and a dancer. The ensemble’s improvisational piece called…
There has been a lot of talk lately about the so-called Law of Unintended Consequences: that any course of action will produce an array of surprise results. I can’t be certain exactly what the Actors Playhouse in Coral Gables was intending with its season-opener Comic Potential, but the results are…
One of the fascinating oddities of theater in South Florida is the offbeat locations where it turns up. Local companies are found in some of the least likely places: The Caldwell Theatre and Florida Stage are in strip malls, the Broward Stage Door sits behind an IHOP. The Mosaic is…
At a time when painting seems to be metamorphosing into myriad subcategories, few of them include direct figurative images set out of the ordinary. Christian Curiel is an exception to this contemporary rule and his exhibit at Leonard Tachmes Gallery proves it. Curiel, who usually explores clannish young male scenarios…
Roger Avary’s screenplay for The Rules of Attraction is a remarkable work of literature: the disassembly and reconstruction of an impenetrable book by Bret Easton Ellis; a simplification and amplification of the 1987 novel’s attack on the bored, beautiful, and wealthy; a streamlined and mainlined version of a story originally…
The legend of director Werner Herzog goes something like this: Raised in a remote mountain village in the Black Forest of Germany, the young director-to-be lived with no television or telephone and had few lines of communication to the world outside. At age fourteen he began traveling long distances by…
Check beneath overpasses throughout Miami during the evening and you’re sure to find more than just the homeless, assures Greynolds Park naturalist Paula Schneeburger. Making their home there as well: bats. Yes, you’re not in Transylvania anymore, Dorothy. South Florida can lay claim to a small population of the world’s…
For the members of the Bonsai Society of Miami, size matters. Rather than dwell on the large, this assortment of tree lovers think diminutive is the desired scale — at least where miniature potted trees are concerned. Nevertheless the eight-year-old group (formed when the Bonsai Club of Miami and the…
