A week after having seen Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, no memory of it remains save some scribblings in my notepad, such is the slight nature of this woeful, forgettable sequel. Squandering the goodwill that lingers from the original, now a beloved relic among the singletons and smug marrieds…
Editor’s note: The Florida International Film Festival continues this week with couples in counseling, the dark side of North Korea, and the ever-popular wacky housewife. Unscrewed It’s easy to think of this film (formerly Dogs in the Basement) as a documentary, when it’s actually a faux-documentary in the vein of…
The official motto of the Coconut Grove Playhouse is “Broadway by the Bay,” but its unofficial one should be “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The Playhouse has featured a string of successful if skimpy “biomusicals” about great American songwriters and singing stars — Al Jolson, Al Dubin, Alberta…
Vampire Lesbians of Sodom is Charles Busch’s 1984 camp classic, which became one of off-Broadway’s longest-running hits. The story moves from the original Twin Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to Hollywood in the Jazz Age, then on to Las Vegas today. A Vampire Succubus and a Reluctant Virgin Sacrifice return…
Art students eager to shed the confines of convention don’t always understand that skewed perspectives and mutated forms work only after mastering traditional form. According to Florida Atlantic University art professors Walter Hnatysh and John McCoy, many of their colleagues not only encourage such thinking but actively promote it. In…
It’s summer 1995, and the Zipperhead Room in Fort Lauderdale is filled to the rafters with safety pins and funny haircuts. It’s the first South Florida show for England’s Citizen Fish, a band composed of former members of early ’80s punk icons the Subhumans — in a word, a young…
THU 4 If the Red Sox can win the World Series, then hell must be frozen over, and yes, those are indeed pigs in the air. So it’s an appropriate time for the Broward Center for the Performing Arts (201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale) to stage When Pigs Fly…
Four major hurricanes in one summer. Elections. Al Qaeda. The flu. Terrified yet? If not, Pete Mongelli and Blaine Kimball, the kindhearted sickos at Spooky Empire Productions, have just the thing: Screamfest, the two-day horror convention/celebration that’ll overrun the Holiday Inn Plantation Sawgrass this weekend. The plywood may be taken…
Lunafest passes through SAT 11/6 How can you perk up downtrodden women without stuffing thousands of plastic surgery dollars into their chest compartments? Easy. Go to the movies. Lunafest — a national showing of short films by, for, and about women — explores the mysterious craters and dark sides of…
Heat looks to Shaq for title THU 11/4 The Miami Heat made a few changes over the summer. They drafted high school small forward Dorrel Wright, who is expected to help fill the shoes of departed wingmen Caron Butler and Lamar Odom. They signed guards Wesley Person and Damon Jones,…
And authors! Authors! Authors! SUN 11/7 For nerds like us, our biggest fear is not that terrorists will bomb the Capitol when all of the congressmen gather to hear the State of the Union address but that stupid people might one day attack the Miami Book Fair. They will turn…
No big deal SAT 11/6 Dark Star Orchestra takes the idea of impersonation to new heights. You know how Grateful Dead fans always bootlegged shows? How they swapped concert tapes? How they’d freak if the band busted out “Monkey and the Engineer” on a rare occasion? Well, the DSO chooses…
Editor’s note: The three-county, monthlong Florida International Film Festival continues this week with an array of foreign films and an American potboiler. Beat the Drum Earnest and obvious in the manner of a made-for-TV movie, this first feature from South African director David Hickson at least means well. It’s about…
If South Florida theaters were planets, Miami’s Mad Cat would be off in a separate galaxy. The gritty, award-winning ensemble works out of a small performance space on lackluster Biscayne Boulevard, putting on shows that are unique to this region. They’re mostly about ordinary South Floridians with basic problems of…
Hello Dolly!: Dolly Levi (Jodi-Lynne Sylvester) meddles as a career choice. With a business card for every occasion, this Yonkers matchmaker and her prodigious skills take centerstage. Dolly interferes in everybody’s life, including two disgruntled clerks who leave Yonkers to go to New York to find adventure. Brance Cornelius as…
It gives me no great pleasure to point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes, especially when he’s traipsing through the galleries of one of my favorite South Florida venues (the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood) at the invitation of one of my favorite curators (Samantha Salzinger). The…
For painter Chuanwen “John” Wang, Fort Lauderdale offers a rich cache of subject matter. Although born in China, Wang has the eye of a native Floridian, colorfully emphasizing our area’s subtropical tone with vibrant images of waterfront and metropolitan landscapes. In his exhibit “Life in Paradise,” Wang’s expressionistic choice of…
Amadeus: Peter Shaffer’s play about the life and death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a satisfying potboiler, and John Felix is splendid as the villainous Antonio Salieri, a hard-working but mediocre composer who seethes with jealousy and despair when Mozart effortlessly proves his musical genius. Director Richard Jay Simon ably…
Trying to decipher a painting — or even knowing where to look — can be like trying to find one’s car keys at 4 a.m. in a drunken stupor. But that’s not the case in Pamela Larkin Caruso’s exhibit “Colors of the Heart, Mind, and Soul.” Her minimalist oil paintings…
Let’s review what we already know about witches. First of all, like women in hotel-room porn, they sometimes travel in threesomes (see Macbeth and Charmed). Second, if you suspect someone of being a witch, weigh her. If she weighs the same as a duck, then she must be made of…
THU 28 The edgy Sol Theatre specializes in productions that are sexy, controversial, or just plain weird. So it doesn’t really need Halloween. Vampire Lesbians of Sodom is the type of play it might stage on any old Thursday, or on Christmas Eve, or during Ramadan, or for Grandma’s birthday…
Get to the beauty salon for a butt waxing, ’cause it’s time for Moonfest — when thousands of partiers clog Clematis Street and moon one another! That would be really funny, but alas, we’re kidding. Moonfest is actually South Florida’s massive Halloween street party. Everybody knows about the healthy rivalry…
