Gregory Nava’s Hollywood epic My Family/Mi Familia (1995) turns the travails of a Chicano family in Los Angeles into a saccharine-sweet elegy. Maria Escobedo’s fluffy romantic comedy Rum and Coke (1999) sends a hunky firefighter to rescue the Cuban identity of a confused New York damsel. Ela Troyano’s Latin Boys…
Had Julian Glover not broken his leg at the beginning of January, it’s quite likely he would be off filming a movie. But, Glover reminds, having a broken leg in the movie business is like being pregnant in the movie business: “It lasts five years,” meaning casting agents don’t phone…
A strong monologue, very much like a steaming jazz solo, should always seem improvisational, even if it’s not. Like music it moves and gathers momentum and in doing so, meaning. No long-winded plot summary or a pedantic sermon, the final monologue in GableStage’s production of Warren Leight’s Side Man does…
The press kit for The Perfect Storm contains the damnedest thing I’ve ever read: a “special request” that reads, in full, “Warner Bros. Pictures would appreciate the press’ cooperation in not revealing the ending of this film to their readers, viewers, or listeners.” All due apologies but that seems highly…
It has taken moviemakers and, more crucially, foot-dragging movie investors, almost a decade to catch up with rave culture, the heady mix of secret warehouses, electronic music, designer drugs, and ecstatic dancing that has come to define the yearning and the restlessness of a generation. But now, the 5:00 a.m…
Kikujiro, the latest release from Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano, is likely to be a surprise — possibly even a disappointment — to his American fans if they walk in unprepared. In fact the movie is altogether worthwhile, so just get yourselves prepared.Kitano attracted international attention when his first two movies…
It’s summertime and the livin’ is compas. Miami’s second annual Haitian Compas Festival coincides with the glut of new compas albums released each July. The sales barometer rises just before August, when the Haitian diaspora in Miami and New York heads home for the annual town festivals bearing gifts for…
Remember those old Mickey Rooney flicks where all the “kids” would be sittin’ around just shootin’ the breeze? Suddenly Mickey would jump up and declare: “Hey, kids, I got a great idea. Let’s put on a show!” In a matter of seconds, a piano rolls in. Judy Garland strikes a…
Nick Park speaks so softly that the tape recorder barely registers him at all. His is a whisper of a voice, the sound of a man who has spent years in isolation talking to no one but himself. Transcribing an interview with him is like trying to decipher a man’s…
Ceremonia Inconclusa (Unfinished Ceremony).
Created by, directed by, and starring Magaly Agüero. Artemis Performance Network’s Performance Space 742, 742 SW 16th Ave; 305-643-6611.
In the new Jim Carrey farce, Me, Myself & Irene, the rubber-faced comedian plays a meek Rhode Island state trooper named Charlie, whose aggressions are so pent up that they finally break out in the form of a second personality called Hank. Where Charlie silently endures potty-mouth curses from little…
I never imagined the day would come when I would cringe to see Ralph Fiennes onscreen. Not only is he shamelessly good-looking but, whether playing the brooding, remote figure doomed by love in The English Patient or the bloodless commandant of a Nazi death camp in Schindler’s List, he projects…
Holy moly! Yet another version of Hamlet? Will they never stop? Ah well, at least Michael Almereyda’s new adaptation is one of those really different takes on the venerable play. While the last two widely seen versions (the 1990 Mel Gibson/Franco Zeffirelli film and the four-hour-plus 1996 Kenneth Branagh/Kenneth Branagh…
Round about two in the morning on weekends from the 1930s through the 1950s, the smartly dressed residents of what was then known in Miami as Colored Town would gather at the doors of the hotels on NW Second Avenue. There they would wait for jazz greats like Count Basie,…
If you were around during the Roaring Twenties and you had the nerve to call Peggy Hopkins Joyce a gold digger, she probably wouldn’t have responded by delivering a stinging slap to your face. The former Ziegfeld girl, sometime Hollywood actress, and five-time divorcée most likely would have smiled flirtatiously…
There exists deep within any man who once read comic books and collected them–protected them, actually, with plastic sleeves and cardboard backs and boxes that fought off the yellowing of time–the mythical being known as The Fanboy. A long time ago, The Fanboy pored over every issue of World’s Finest…
We take a seat in front of the screen, stage, or box to disengage. Sometimes it has to do with art — a riveting portrayal of the human drama — sometimes not. TV and film provide many ways to disengage, through electronic hypnosis, Surround sound inoculation, big-screen digital imagery, and…
There is no doubt about it: Little Havana is bubbling over. The 6street visual arts collective phenomenon seems to have spread. Even a cautious observer would have been impressed by what happened on Friday, May 26, when about seven blocks of SW Eighth Street — between Twelfth and Nineteenth avenues…
Sixty years after Walt Disney’s original plans to expand on 1940’s Fantasia, Walt Disney Pictures has finally gotten around to making new musical segments for a reprise of the film’s classical-music-cum-animation concept. Fantasia/2000 has seven new sequences, with that old favorite, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” thrown in for old times’ sake…
It’s the year 3028, and man … is an endangered species! (Haven’t we heard that somewhere before, like last month?) But this time around, the threat is a little more intimidating than those effeminate, Xenu-worshipping Conehead psychologists in platform boots. The villains in Fox’s new animated spectacular Titan A.E. are…
Blink — or, more likely, doze — and you will miss it, this tiny, beautiful oasis in the middle of an otherwise barren wasteland. For a moment, a precious, frustrating moment to be treasured in a movie that flaunts its disposability, Nicolas Cage reminds us how good an actor he…
Say the word Juneteenth and it’s pretty much a given that most people won’t have the faintest concept of what you’re talking about, let alone realize that in some states (including this one) it is a holiday. An eventful day in history, most notably for blacks, Juneteenth is an abbreviation…
