Serious theater? In Broward County? Don’t chuckle. You’ve been asleep if you haven’t noticed some decided cultural shifts in what used to be the Land of Laughs and Musicals. Broward stage companies have long leaned toward the sweet and silly when programming their seasons, usually top-heavy with musical reviews and…
When he first auditioned for Any Given Sunday director Oliver Stone to play quarterback Willie Beamen, an embittered bench-warmer prone to fits of vomiting before each snap, Jamie Foxx was sure he’d blown it. Stone, as subtle as an ice pick to the cornea, said as much–loud enough so Foxx,…
The supermarket-turned-concert venue called Orbit has a problem, and it’s not just the acoustics. It’s the dilemma most venues in South Florida face, and it is this: Not a whole lot of people go to concerts. So how does one make money? Well, down here in the Land of the…
“I looked in my turn, and could not repress a gesture of disgust. Before my eyes was a horrible monster, worthy to figure in the legends of the marvelous. It was an immense cuttlefish, being eight yards long. It swam crossways in the direction of the Nautilus with great speed,…
Since the horrors of dominator culture — destruction, devastation, dumbassness — do not appear to be receding of their own accord, there’s great poignancy to the new cinematic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The film succeeds as massive, astonishing entertainment; enthralling…
Having given us The Shawshank Redemption in 1994 and The Green Mile five years later, director Frank Darabont finally busts out of prison with his third feature, The Majestic (which, incidentally, has the worst ad art since Green Mile). Working from a script by Michael Sloane — no Stephen King…
This is a busy time of the year, so let’s get to the point of this review fast. If you want to see a classic example of sitcom at its silliest, get over to Ray Cooney’s Caught in the Net at the Coconut Grove Playhouse. No, that’s not a sneer;…
David Salo’s colleagues and classmates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have absolutely no idea how he spends his free time. It’s not that the 32-year-old linguistics grad student is ashamed of his hobby (or obsession), which has occupied him for some 26 years. They simply cannot be bothered with it…
Aventura-based businessman Andy Rothman, who boasts a large and impressively diverse CD collection, had an idea. In an effort to alleviate the mind-numbing ennui of hospital stays and promote healing, he thought, why not equip hospitals, especially children’s hospitals, with a CD library? After all, music heals the soul, and…
Although it was once known as underground art, the cartoonish world of lowbrow art has stepped into the limelight in recent years, mainly thanks to the work of a Los Angeles-based group of artists including Todd Schorr. But Schorr feels he may have created a monster — which is ironic,…
Beneath the hazy, mystifying layers of Vanilla Sky lies a remarkable Tom Cruise performance — one that, to a large extent, takes place beneath a makeup artist’s piled-on scars and a costumer’s blank “prosthetic” mask. As David Aames, hipster publisher of Maxim-like magazines, Cruise plays a lothario so vain he…
It took five men to concoct the hackneyed plot and conceive the brainless jokes that constitute Not Another Teen Movie, meaning that right now, five men in Los Angeles are still trying to wash that stink off their soft, idle hands. Five men — five men… the very thought boggles…
If, like me, you find yourself laid up with one of the many nasty bugs that seem to be in constant circulation this season, you needn’t be deprived of art — that is, not if you have a computer. Just about any art organization worth its endowment has a Website…
It is December 5, the day AOL Time Warner-owned DC Comics has been anxiously awaiting for almost 15 years–the day writer-illustrator Frank Miller once more dons cape and cowl to resurrect the Dark Knight, his fiercely rendered vision of an obscenely obsessed middle-aged Batman. Today, stores will finally open their…
For those of you who have given up on Delray Beach’s Atlantic Avenue ever having a real nightlife, there is hope. Scott Frielich and Rodney Mayo — owners of the Lounge, Lost Weekend, and Respectable Street on Clematis Street in West Palm Beach, Dada in Delray Beach, and Blue Lounge…
This holiday season, two concerts will expand the season’s color palette from plain old red and green to the entire rainbow. The Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida performs “Light,” its holiday concert, on December 8; on December 16, the chorus joins the Flamingo Freedom Band for the band’s annual…
The lights go down, and the puzzlement begins. Ensemble cast of superstars? Check. Loose remake of amusing curiosity? Check. Built-in, pre-fab sense of cool? Check. A little something for wistful fans of Dino and Sammy? Check. So… wait a minute. Is this The Cannonball Run Redux? With his ambitious but…
If you came across Edward Burns’s Sidewalks of New York on cable TV and didn’t recognize any of the actors, chances are you’d assume it was part of MTV’s massive reality-TV franchise: Handheld cameras follow the protagonists around in their daily routines (during the course of which they try to…
In the peculiar little world of theater, there has always been and always will be an ongoing debate between the aficionados of art and those of entertainment. Aesthetes tend to roll their eyes at anything corny, sweet, or obvious, while fun-loving fans head for the door at the first sign…
“Mr. Human Rights,” they once called him, and though his was never the most famous name on the bill–that was Bono or Bruce Springsteen, Sting or Peter Gabriel–as the organizer of the Conspiracy of Hope concerts in 1986 and the Human Rights Now! world tour two years later, Jack Healey…
Florida’s New Rock Alternative, as it calls itself, cooks up a festival of piping-hot alterna-rock goodness with the Buzz Bake Sale this Saturday. The daylong concert, benefiting the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, is brought together by Smirnoff Ice and Buzz 103.1 FM and offers a lineup of 17…
Snow, schmow. Here in the subtropics, we create a festive holiday feel by cranking up the wattage. We string lights on our palm trees, our pool decks, our pleasure boats. And then there are the flying dinosaurs, the unicorn, and a fire-breathing dragon. Of course, you probably won’t see these…
