Quick! Name a brilliant mathematician at one of the country’s leading academic institutions who, despite obvious emotional problems that keep him on the edge of a nervous breakdown, is enlisted by his government to decipher seemingly impenetrable military communications that the enemy sends to its operatives around the world. If…
Perhaps you swatted croquet balls in the back yard years ago and then cooled off with a splash in your inflatable wading pool. If that desire for whacking balls through wickets remains, a fresh opportunity to play the oh-so-sophisticated sport beckons. The Tropees, an organization that raises money for the…
They move blithely with abandon, young women clad in filmy tunics like Greek goddesses, barefoot, long hair cascading down their backs. A gathering of fairies in the forest? A hippie wedding in a meadow? More like a performance by the Isadora Duncan Dance Ensemble, a local group devoted to preserving…
At first glance you wouldn’t think there’s much in common between the ragtag Mad Cat in dirty downtown Miami and the stylish Dreamers Theatre in restaurant-infested Coral Gables. Mad Cat goes for in-your-face gonzo drama and aims for a pierced, punk crowd, while Dreamers opts for more elegant, refined material…
When the concept of food is brought up in film, the classic Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man” cannot be ignored. In it seemingly benign space aliens befriend humans and convince them to visit their planet. The scheme is busted when a decoding buff discovers that the book left behind…
To the woman who broke Adrian Lyne’s heart all those years ago: Stop what you’re doing right this minute. Drop everything, pick up the phone, and call him. Apologize profusely for cheating on him. Tell him it’s all your fault and you’re a worse person for leaving him. Offer him…
It’s hard to go wrong with a story by Peruvian master Mario Vargas Llosa. The naughty premise of his novel Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, about an upright military man ordered to start a prostitution service for soldiers quartered in the Amazon, is enough to keep the film adaptation…
Last month GQ ran a disquietingly flattering profile of Joe Roth, who, in January 2000, quit his gig as Walt Disney Studios chairman to “revolutionize the industry” (GQ’s words) by forming his own studio. With a billion bucks on loan from men with money and bridges to burn — among…
The first day of May is significant for many people. Ancient Celts and Saxons commemorated it to mark the end of winter and the start of spring planting season. Medieval craft guilds elected a May queen and danced around the maypole in hopes of a fruitful harvest. In 1889 Paris,…
“How to be a Non-Stop Beauty” promises a line on a colorful Harper’s Bazaar cover from January 1970, where an electric-blue female swimmer clad in a white bikini and red-and-white bathing cap crouches. Her arms lifted straight up and head bent down, she appears more than ready to take a…
Most everyone knows the two masks of the theater: the sorrowful mask of tragedy and the gleeful one of comedy. Tragedy (or at least drama) is usually serious and “elevated” and therefore tends toward social acceptability: Because drama is serious, the society it portrays is to be taken seriously. Comedy,…
Combine sinuous DNA-like patterns, a mandala chart, geodesic marks, disco glitter, third-eye cut-ups, Arabic calligraphy, and kabbalah clues and you get a pretty disparate global vision. But if it’s Gean Moreno doing the combining, it seems to make sense. His “Nannies, Narcos, Suicide Girl Six, and Makbara’s Miraculous Ice Palace…
“This is contrary to how we grew up,” Stacy Peralta is saying a few minutes after getting dropped off at a newspaper office by a limo driver. The 45-year-old Peralta, still SoCal handsome and boyish beneath a ball cap and behind a well-trimmed beard, grins long and hard–a real hell-yeah…
American entries to the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in short supply this year? Fine. Let’s see how lesbians in Slovenia do it. That’s right, Slovenia. And judging from Maja Weiss’s excellent feature Guardian of the Frontier (Varuh Meje), they do it damn well. It being filmmaking, of course…
The covered pavilion was sparse, psychics scattered, one to a table. A purveyor of New Age relics — incense and oils, stones and jewelry — chatted into her cell phone. The occasional hot dog and soda sold at the concession. On the lawn nearby, a lone man played creepy, upbeat…
Straining to describe to a tropical fish dummy the appearance of the moorish idol, one of the dozens of different species he keeps in his sixteen home aquaria, Rafael Estenoz resorts to the more familiar realm of home furnishings. “You’ll see them on a lot of bathroom curtains that depict…
Peter Bogdanovich, maybe the last man alive who wears a neckerchief without irony, holds a copy of a newspaper article in which his old friend Larry McMurtry is saying nice, or not nice, things about him–Bogdanovich can’t tell which. “He’s kind of risen from the dead,” McMurtry was quoted as…
So the issue of identity as a theme in a gay and lesbian festival may seem redundant — aren’t all gay films by nature dealing with sexual identity? Well, here comes a surprise at this year’s fest: Identity in a much broader sense is indeed the theme, including what should…
As a child Miami-born-and-raised Glenn Terry didn’t own a Water Wiggle or a Slip ‘n’ Slide, and he only recently began drinking the recommended eight glasses of water a day. So what led to his affinity for liquid? “I’m a Pisces,” he giggles. And what ignited the idea for the…
In nature (and on lottery tickets), flamingos seem perfectly happy being pink. On South Beach, of course, fabulous fashion rules. There flamingos sport high heels, hats, and bikinis. Such creativity ensues when dozens of South Florida artists apply their talents to seven-foot likenesses of the tropical icon. Separate public art…
What’s your pleasure, the sizzle or the steak? The Coconut Grove Playhouse offers both in its latest production, a musical revue called The Soul of George Gershwin: the Musical Journey of an American Klezmer. It’s a studious, educational show that also happens to offer some outstanding vocal and instrumental artistry…
After more than two years writing for this column, I’ve witnessed a tremendous growth in the arts in Miami: New galleries, better shows, a fresh breed of young local talent, exciting alternative projects, involved museums, and upcoming this year, an international art fair. But there are also other voices within…
