Will Shortz pretty much lives crossword puzzles. The editor of the esteemed New York Times crossword puzzle, the puzzle master for NPR’s Weekend Sunday, and the founder of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, Shortz has a hand in every professional puzzle pie. Shortz sold his first puzzle at age 14…
Overtown was once the hottest black community anywhere in the South, including Atlanta. The neighborhood had a Cotton Club, the Rockland Palace, the Harlem Square Club, and, of course, the Lyric Theater. Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, Cab Calloway, and Billie Holiday all played gigs in Overtown in what…
The Caldwell Theatre likes plays that push the envelope. Productions tend to portray twisted relationships that explain the devious nature of lifestyles that remain hush-hushed in American society. And the theater’s newest play, God of Carnage, appears to be no different. Although it has a serious subject matter, Caldwell assures…
Steven Fales was the perfect Mormon, with a six-generation religious lineage, Eagle Scout honors, a BYU degree — that is, until he came out as gay, got excommunicated, moved to New York, and became a methhead manwhore. The award-winning playwright chronicled his transformation in a one-man show, Confessions of a…
In God, his 2007 video installation, Ragnar Kjartansson channels the spirit of a Vegas lounge lizard, warbling “sorrow conquers happiness” over and over until he shatters your nerves and rattles your brain. The work is on view in “At Capacity: Large-Scale Works From the Permanent Collection” at the Museum of…
The Norton Museum of Art (1451 S. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach) has your fix in four of today’s biggest artists. First is Jose Alvarez, one of Florida’s most innovative minds. With the care of an ikebanist (an artist in Japanese floral arrangement), he positions feathers, minerals, and other materials…
Talk-show host Bill Maher believes that the way we live in the West is not just different from life in the Muslim world — it’s better. This sounds pretty reasonable, rational, and true, particularly when focusing on the restrictions on Muslim women. But good P.C. liberal Tavis Smiley argued on…
Director Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) fragments Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel, introducing us to Jane (Mia Wasikowska) as a young woman run ragged, fleeing an unspecified threat. Setting up Jane’s tale as a mystery — what was she running from, and why? — Fukunaga skips back and forth across years to…
With stick figures and crisply funny journal entries, Jeff Kinney’s cartoon series breathed fresh life into preteen lit’s most exhausted trope — the twisted tribal etiquette of middle school. Screenwriters Jackie and Jeff Filgo’s respect for Kinney’s sharply observant dialogue is the chief virtue of this fairly capable screen version…
Tender irony and dark humor abound in Israeli director Eran Riklis’ latest account of bureaucracy colliding with burgeoning compassion. This follow-up to 2008’s Lemon Tree, based on the novel A Woman in Jerusalem by A.B. Yehoshua, hits the road when the restless personnel director (Mark Ivanir) of a large Jerusalem…
As spacey as its title suggests, Gregg Araki’s latest youth film is an occult mystery set in the ultimate SoCal college playpen. Kaboom is Scooby Doo with sex, drugs, and tattooed hotties; following on the heels of Araki’s relatively commercial stoner farce Smiley Face (2007), the movie makes you wonder…
The eight gentle Trappist monks depicted in Of Gods and Men uphold the faith that brought them from France to Algeria only to be abducted and massacred, presumably by fanatics of a rival religious persuasion. The movie, based on a 1996 event that continues to resonate in France, opens on…
As in his equally exceptional last film, Secret Sunshine (2007), Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry is a perfectly paced and performed character study of a woman raising a child on her own who must contend with a heinous act of violence. In her 60s, Mija (the marvelous Korean screen vet Yun Jung-hee)…
Crazy for You is classic Broadway. The multiple Tony Award-winning musical is young — it debuted in 1992 and ran for more than a thousand shows — but the plot and music hark back to the culture of the 1930s. In the spotlight is a misbehaving, Depression-era playboy, who escapes…
Gather ’round, young people, and we’ll tell you a story. Our protagonist is Martin Short. You might remember Short from such seminal roles as Ned Nederlander in ¡Three Amigos! or Franck Eggelhoffer from Father of the Bride. No? Come on! Franck, the wedding planner? “The chipper chicken”? Still no? Well,…
There’s no music in the world more evocative than the theme songs to our favorite videogames. To test out this little hypothesis, just try humming the title track to Super Mario Brothers and see if you don’t instantly imagine yourself as a mustached Italian plumber in red overalls, hopping over…
One of our MasterMind Awards judges this year was filmmaker V. Alex Marquez. We don’t choose an unworthy artist to help us judge all the other artists Broward and Palm Beach counties have to offer. A Palm Beach County resident, Marquez is known within the film circuit. His short film…
Happy birthday. Wow, has it been 100 years already? It seems just yesterday you were a pioneering young settlement for traders looking to make it on the New River. And who could forget your heyday as the nation’s premier destination for raucous spring breakers? Despite your predisposition toward wet T-shirts…
Doug MacCraw is a certified hypnotist and a nationally touring comedian — with credentials like those, he’s likely to make you laugh and then quickly make you do things you’d soon regret. His highly interactive live show, usually performed at corporate events (though he’s appeared on Comedy Central, Fox, and…
Oh, art — that indeterminable and elusive thing — that which, like beauty, exists only in the eye of the beholder. One man’s art is another man’s refuse. Art. What is it good for? Art is meant to be communication. And a lot of times, artists get away with being…
If you non-Italians are being honest, you have to admit that you’re a little jealous of those of us who descended from the boot. As children, our elders gave us authentic food of love and goodness while you suffered trips to the Olive Garden. You were robbed, and you’re right…
The Broward Center is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a big, snazzy spectacle, Cirque Dreams Broadway, which blasts you down memory lane on a rocket. It’s the Cliff’s Notes of Broadway hits, with revivals of songs from The Phantom of the Opera, Fiddler on the Roof, Cats, Hairspray, Chicago, La…
