thursday june 18 Attention all you hep cats and the rest who take to heart Duke Ellington’s 1932 tune “It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing.” The band Seven Foot Politic is riding the swing-ska-rock wave, popularized by Squirrel Nut Zippers and Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, into…
The X-Files is a movie that answers questions…. No, wait a minute: The X-Files is a movie that asks questions…. All right, The X-Files is a movie that makes me wanna ask some questions, like: What the hell does “Fight the future” mean? Look, I can understand “The truth is…
Hurricane Streets comes on like a tough cookie but ends up just plain stale. First-time writer-director Morgan J. Freeman (no relation to actor Morgan Freeman) plies the kind of beat-up, trash-can naturalism that went out with Sal Mineo films like 1957’s Dino. Set in New York City’s Lower East Side,…
It’s Christmas vacation, 1958. The movie my dad has chosen for a first-grade pal and me to see is the new Disney live-action adventure Tonka, starring Sal Mineo as a young Sioux named White Bull who traps and domesticates a clear-eyed, spirited wild horse named Tonka. Having seen The King…
Imagine country-western heartthrob Clint Black inhabiting the body of Wagner’s romantic hero Siegfried and you’ll get the spirit of Das Barbecu, the Hee Haw-inspired adaptation of Wagner’s Ring cycle. Yes, that particular Ring cycle. It’s the same nineteenth-century opera series (Die Gotterdammerung, Das Rheingold, Siegfried, and Die Walkurie) that retells…
Q: How many gay men does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Two. One to screw in the bulb, and one to shriek, “Faaabulous!” Q: How many lesbian feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Not funny! Darn straight it’s not. Fortunately Miami…
thursday june 11 Even though Masterpiece Theater is on hiatus for the summer, you can still satisfy your craving for a cinematic period piece at the Alliance Cinema (927 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach) during Views of Merchant-Ivory: Three Continents, Fourteen Films. This festival, which began last week, highlights some of…
“It’s like eating a great meal: You don’t always like every single thing on your plate, but you’ve got to taste everything, and you might like it.” So says Sheldon Schwartz, director of the Florida Dance Association, referring to the mind-boggling variety of offerings that constitute the Florida Dance Festival,…
Rule number one: When crafting a thriller, make sure the audience can relate to, identify with, or empathize with at least one of the characters. Rule number two: Make sure the characters’ motivations are clear. Fail in either area — or, worse, in both — and you end up with…
By June 28, the end of its third season, City Theatre’s Summer Shorts festival will have put on 48 new plays on its main stage, about three times the number of productions from your average professional company. In fact, as you read this, fifteen premieres of black-out sketches, comic monologues,…
thursday june 4 Suffering from a chronically short attention span? Then you’ll love City Theatre’s Summer Shorts. Two different programs consisting of comedies, musicals, and dramas, each less than twenty minutes long, will alternate over the next four weeks at the Ring Theatre on the University of Miami campus (1380…
In a perfect world, Mario Ernesto Sanchez would be able to squeeze an entire troupe of Colombian actors through the tight door of immigration regulations for visiting artists, but this year he’s happy to have a clown. “I haven’t been able to bring a group from Colombia for the past…
Long before the Pope’s visit filled the world’s television screens with pictures of Havana, local audiences were imagining contemporary Cuba in the darkness of the MDCC Wolfson Campus auditorium. Since 1993 the Wolfson Cuban Cinema Series, organized by Alejandro Rios, has presented films and videos portraying Cuban life from every…
Most people associate the disco era with hedonism, homosexuality, a sense of community, tacky fashions, and awful music. But in his new The Last Days of Disco, writer-director Whit Stillman imagines the era as merely a singles bar for romantics in search of soulmates, mostly heterosexual and hardly debauchees. The…
The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey, is the Zeitgeist movie of the hour. How could it not be? It’s all about the omnipotence of television and how our lives seem scripted by some unseen force — a TV producer, perhaps? Zeitgeist movies, almost by definition, are discussed not only by…
There’s nothing like a loud bang at the end of Act One to make you impatient for the end of the intermission so you can scurry back to your seat and find out what happens next. Especially if that bang shreds every notion you had about the play up to…
thursday may 28 Heard at spas and wellness centers around the world, the jazzy new-age music of guitarist Nicholas is said by some to have healing qualities. Find out for yourself how soothing the sounds can be as he performs two shows at South Beach’s new wine and champagne bar…
After working for eight years as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Chris Mancini retreated into private practice. That was in 1987. He still thrives on crime, though — for fun. Along with historian Paul George, Mancini has conducted the Miami Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem Tour since 1995. What…
For a guy who possesses such a refined touch when it comes to designing objects and interiors, Philippe Starck can be downright clumsy with words. Three years ago, just as the snazzy Starck-ified Delano Hotel was set to open, the Frenchman candidly decried Miami’s terrible style and lack of sophistication…
Only one week after lizards crawled across the country’s screens in Godzilla and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, along comes the bloated Hope Floats, toting a barge full of saccharine sentimentality and bogus emotions. Let’s start with the title, two words whose juxtaposition is neither evocative nor yielding of…
The “Size Does Matter” marketing campaign for Godzilla is far more ingenious than the actual movie. It’s also highly annoying, and has spawned a spinoff: The ads for a new film called Plump Fiction inform us that “Width matters too.” Perhaps the best thing about the much-ballyhooed arrival of Godzilla…
Of all the theatrical hams that have wandered across the stage of American pop culture, none have endeared themselves as much as the tiny papier-mache morsel that wanders home atop the legs of Scout Finch near the end of To Kill a Mockingbird. She has just appeared in a school…
