The Beatles in 1964: young, wild, and not exactly free. (John had already been married to Cynthia for two years.) But gaze at the black-and-white photographs hanging in a makeshift gallery in the Radisson Deauville Resort’s lobby and the world seems transformed to a more simple, magical place — pre-CD,…
A press pass, reporter-turned-novelist Gregory McDonald once said, is good for one thing: It allows the journalist to ask very smart people very stupid questions. Certainly, that’s how it feels after this 45-minute drive from downtown Dallas to the Allen home of Stan Liebowitz, professor of economics at the University…
After two months in chilly London, sultry Florida feels good. And propelled by a notebook full of observations from U.K. theater, it also seems a good time, before the fall season, to reflect on the good and the bad in our own scene. First off, the bad. Like any community,…
The first generation to be labeled with a letter suffered through some serious metaphysical shit in the Nineties (if you doubt this, try listening to the period-specific music — emphasis on try), but now this societal clusterfuck is searching for antidotes to its own pop-culture poison. Evidence of a renewed…
It’s not exactly a good sign when a movie starring Tim Allen, Christian Slater, and Richard Dreyfuss gets dumped into one or two arthouse theaters after a couple years on the shelf. Even if none of them is a guaranteed box office draw (though Allen was, until Joe Somebody and…
Cementing his reputation as one of the most important modern Italian filmmakers, writer-director Gianni Amelio’s latest drama, The Way We Laughed, deals with the plight of two Sicilian brothers who go north to Turin in search of a better life. Luchino Visconti’s 1960 film Rocco and His Brothers followed five…
Tune in to the television news and you’ll hear that Miami is one of the worst places in the country to drive. Take a short ride and find out firsthand. Speeding, running red lights, weaving in and out of lanes, turning without using blinkers, cutting other vehicles off — reckless…
Never mind getting behind the wheel of a dangerous Pinto, Pacer, or Gremlin, Lupe Sosa learned to drive in his grandfather’s work truck and has never had a coupe or sedan. At 37 years old the Texan has climbed to the top rankings in the monster-truck circuit, which features the…
In theater, as in life, we expect marriages to fail, lovers to betray, and family members to hurt us, but when friendship takes the center stage, one cannot help but take note. This familiar but unpredictable territory offers much dramatic potential, and GableStage’s current production Chinese Coffee makes the most…
If there’s any truth to reincarnation, the spirit of Napoleon may walk among us today. It’s not unreasonable to conjecture that he has taken up residence in Bill Gates or Joel Silver, but — perhaps more likely — the little conqueror with the big hat has fragmented and landed in…
Like George Clooney says in Ocean’s Eleven, do the math: four Canon XL1 digital cameras, one dual 800 MHz Power Mac G4, a copy of editing software Final Cut Pro 3, eighteen shooting days, a two-million-buck budget, one Oscar-winning Best Director, and nine high-profile actors (among them Julia Roberts, Brad…
Actor/musician Philip Michael Thomas seems to be spending his career surrounded by animals. TV partner Sonny Crockett’s pet, Elvis the alligator, and brutal drug kingpins bedeviled him on the Eighties drama Miami Vice. Now he is coming up against creatures again — Martin the Frog, Dolly the Duck, Harriet the…
As the half-moon beams on a recent Thursday night, I stand at the ocean’s edge among a group of nearly 50 Miami urbanites and suburbanites, hoping for a thrilling encounter with nature. Young mommies and daddies, grandparents, and droves of their curious offspring are on Crandon Park Beach to witness…
Anyone looking for the theatrical capital of the world will unquestionably end that search here in London, where a strong theatrical tradition has been nurtured, almost unbroken, for well over 400 years. The city is looking more prosperous and confident than it has in many decades, choked with new construction…
I have always resisted the cliché of the summer as an idle season. In Miami we are habituated to traveler-imposed absurdity: Summer and apathy are a tradition — and a curse. This year, for a nice change, a group of young artists/curators has decided to keep us awake. They’ve manufactured…
Not much has changed in the eleven years since Mike Myers used the Wayne’s World movies as a personal launch pad, only tipping his James Bond-spoofing Austin Powers hand when he was strong enough box office to reap the rewards of his licensed characters. Now those spy-movie sendups — the…
Merchant Ivory productions — Howard’s End and A Room With a View being two of the most notable — are famous for their almost tactile sense of time and place. The company’s latest effort, The Mystic Masseur, which was not directed by the team’s customary director, James Ivory, but by…
Long before chart-toppers We Are The World and Feed the World, French woodworker and lyricist Eugene Pottier accomplished what Michael Jackson and Sir Bob Geldoff only feigned at doing: igniting a social movement and uniting the world with a simple song. With the words to the 1871 Internationale, the Frenchman…
From the early 1930s through the late 1950s, the joint, as the phrase goes, was jumping in Overtown. Back then locals called the area Colored Town, and the stretch along Second Avenue between Sixth and Tenth streets — known variously as Little Broadway, the Strip, and the Great Black Way…
Learning through laughing has been the mission of South Florida’s Fantasy Theatre Factory for more than twenty years. Founded in New York by Mimi Schultz and Ed Allen, two energetic teachers who would later become husband and wife, the touring theater troupe arose from the couple’s frustration with the limitations…
At this very moment, members of the Television Critics Association are gathered at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena, California, to preview this fall’s new series, interview those responsible for them and, finally, gorge themselves silly and drink themselves stupid on the networks’ dwindling dime. This event, the so-called “press tour,” takes…
Think of it as Todd Solondz light — loads of dysfunction but, thankfully, none of the perversion. In fact despite deep-seated neuroses, occasionally inappropriate behavior, and a propensity for unhealthy relationships, the four females who are the Marks family are a fairly benevolent lot. As observed by writer-director Nicole Holofcener,…
