Give Super Troopers a little credit. It’s slightly better than its abysmal trailer, which manages to intersperse the least-funny scenes from the film with a moronic rave from an anonymous poster at the Ain’t It Cool News Website. And it may appeal to some: The screening audience was laughing hard…
From the first moments of Red Herring, Florida Stage’s sly new comedy, you know something’s up: A billboard advertising kippers reads: “Put a Fish in Your Pocket.” Characters talk intensely into phones that have no cords. In this wacky 1950s of playwright Michael Hollinger’s imagination, what seems normal and straight-faced…
Maybe this won’t seem like such a big deal to you, since you don’t watch The Education of Max Bickford–which is on CBS Sunday nights. Or maybe you’re one of the 9 million who do, in which case, well, sorry about that. But stay tuned nonetheless, because this small tale…
How about an intimate dinner with 1000 of your closest friends? For a change, this one isn’t a fancy fundraiser in a hotel ballroom or an Intracoastal mansion, it’s ten bucks a head, and the table is in the middle of the street: 125 tables lined up for more than…
Miguel Piñero was poet, playwright, and actor — and thief, liar, and junkie. If everyone has within him a mix of the beautiful and the ugly, few of us have either to the extremes that Piñero did. He was in Sing Sing by his early 20s, the iconic leader of…
If they teach the work of Todd Solondz someday, the lectures are bound to be rather short. To grasp the material without actually attending, just bone up on a little bargain-basement Freud, a whiff of primal therapy, and a sprinkle of Jerry Springer. The quizzes will be a breeze, and…
Heaven and hell have long been subjects for human speculation, but when it comes to fiction, let’s face it: Perfection isn’t very interesting, and hell wins hands down. Writers love going to hell; it’s dramatic, dangerous, and sometimes funny. Witness the production at Fort Lauderdale’s Sol Theatre of Hell on…
When Joe Quesada, writer and illustrator of comic books, went to work as a freelance contractor for Marvel Comics three years ago, he found the so-called House of Ideas in ruin. The comic-book industry was, as Quesada recalls, “going down the toilet”: Every month, 10 to 15 percent of readers…
A bowl of hot chicken soup has gained a reputation as the cure for a cold, while a series of more than 40 Chicken Soup books is regarded as the cure-all for the soul. To get an up-close look at the production of the sickeningly sweet Chicken Soup for the…
For those who truly want to understand the artistic process, staring at a canvas on a gallery wall just won’t do. Outdoor art festivals? Well, one can actually meet some artists, but their works always look so out of context in those little white tents. If you’d rather hang out…
State fairs are undeniably the home of country music. Artists of this genre, well aware that they are unlikely to sell out large arenas, stick to the familiar. And rockers know better than to try to get their leather jackets and loud guitars through fair gates. The redneck crowd just…
You’ve got to hand it to any romantic comedy that makes The Mexican and the Sweet November remake seem like classics, which appears to be the chief objective of Birthday Girl. This slipshod sophomore effort from Jez Butterworth (Mojo) has been sitting on the shelf since its original release date…
It’s astonishing just how open Screen Gems has been about showing Slackers to the reviewing press well in advance of deadlines. Dim, youth-oriented sex comedies like this often slip into theaters under cover of darkness. Not that critical appraisal really matters to such films; if it did, Freddie Prinze Jr…
I went to the Museum of Art (MoA) in Fort Lauderdale expecting to see “Fashion: The Greatest Show on Earth,” a multimedia exhibition purporting to examine fashion shows as an art form. Just about every South Florida newspaper, including this one, had the exhibition in its listings, as did the…
There is nothing terribly wrong with Kevin Reynolds’s The Count of Monte Cristo, which the Internet Movie Database lists as the 18th remake of Alexandre Dumas’s tale of innocence betrayed and avenged. It is neither a drag nor a gas; it neither betrays its source material nor adheres too slavishly…
Talk long enough with any television exec over 55, and sooner or later he’ll get around to mentioning the La Brea Tar Pits, that enormous shimmering stinkhole in Los Angeles where the liquefied remains of some 660 species of organisms still burble. These old-timers, with skin light brown and pockets…
A positive sign in South Florida’s stage scene is the vitality of its fringe community, individual artists and tiny companies who create a range of intriguing, unique projects. But much of this flies under the radar of the major media and most theatergoers; searching out this kind of show takes…
While it lacks the grandeur of Mardi Gras and the drunken, flesh-baring revelers of the French Quarter, downtown Delray Beach does offer a chance to get a taste of New Orleans with a side dish of art appreciation during “Art & Jazz on the Avenue.” The family-oriented music and art…
Comedian and improvisationist extraordinaire Wayne Brady returns to his home state of Florida on Friday with Wayne Brady and Friends, his touring improv comedy show. Although he unfortunately hails from the wasteland of Orlando, Brady nevertheless defends the soulless heart of the Disney empire. “You have to move on at…
Just in time to take our tired minds off the twin terrors of Osama and Enron comes The Mothman Prophecies, an enjoyable if utterly stupid upscale entry in the old Amityville Horror genre — that is, a horror film allegedly based on spooky and inexplicable real-life events. The fashionable sheen…
With bluegrass now more than 60 years old, you’d think there’d be nothing new under the sun when it comes to the high lonesome sound that Bill Monroe fashioned in the mid-1940s. The rock-bluegrass hybrid is at least 30 years old itself, tracing its roots back at least to the…
Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, based on reporter Mark Bowden’s factual account of a 1993 U.S. Army operation gone dreadfully awry in Somalia, doesn’t just kick your ass. It pummels your entire body and leaves you trembling. Once the premise and setting are established, this brutal combat adventure doesn’t catch…
