If Robert Johnson made a deal with the devil, then Bessie Smith drank gin with ol’ Lucifer — and put him under the table. As soon as she steps onto the set of Florida Stage’s production of The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith, Smith (Miche Braden)…
This is how famous Denis Leary is: He begins and ends a story by saying, “To this day, when I see Mick…,” and by Mick, he means Mick Jagger. They became pals, oh, seven years back, when the Rolling Stones were on that week’s farewell tour, kickin’ it in the…
The Hollywood Boulevard Theatre building will be coming down by the end of the summer, and the news has sent South Florida’s brightest comedy troupes into a nomadic quest for a new home. After all, they won’t be welcome at HBT’s new location. “It had been three years, and they…
The gap between whites and people of color in this country exists in all facets of life, including education, earning ability, and health care. Yet the existing fixes, including affirmative action and minority set-asides, are under increasing political attack by those who see such measures as unfair. So how will…
Hello, what’s this? Why, could it be another cautionary tale from Hollywood about recreational drugs being — alert the media! — not particularly good for people? (If only they could try the same with guns. Messrs. Heston and Silver: You awake yet?) Indeed Blow director Ted Demme (Beautiful Girls, Monument…
French director Patrice Leconte is a chameleonic talent: Among his films to reach American screens are the psychological thriller Mr. Hire, the period satire Ridicule, and the offbeat comic romance The Girl on the Bridge. But in truth all Leconte’s films are romances at heart, though they are often complex…
When one thinks of William Shakespeare, great cities such as London come to mind. That’s why much ado is being made about the 29th annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, which will be held April 12 through 14 in Miami. Each year a different city is chosen as…
Curator Bonnie Clearwater succinctly states the premise of “Mythic Proportions: Painting in the 1980s,” now at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, in the introduction to the show’s catalog: “This examination of the decade of the 1980s is not an arbitrary chronological focus: 1979 was a watershed year…
Ennio Morricone can tell you stories about each of his 400 children–where they were conceived, what they mean to him, why each one remains so singular and special he cannot and will not choose a favorite. He’s proud even of the orphans, the runts, the bastards, the children long ago…
Separated from the rest of the world by approximately one million square miles of water, the island nations of the Caribbean have developed unique cultures. The Florida Atlantic University Caribbean Festival, which kicked off March 26 and wraps up Saturday, has done a nice job of representing this diversity. And…
The heroine of Andrucha Waddington’s Me You Them is a force of nature who holds men in her thrall and deftly reshapes them to suit life. Without knowing it they fall prey to her charms, her spirit, her very scent. But she’s no Cleopatra dripping with jewels, no Lucrezia Borgia…
As its title suggests, Spy Kids is an action fantasy aimed primarily at the preteen/early-teen audience. For all its thrills — and it has plenty — it’s strictly a PG film. That fact is all the more surprising when one considers its source: Robert Rodriguez, master of bloody gunplay and…
You’d think using victuals to solve hunger would be an obvious concept, but it took a group of chefs, restaurateurs, and other food-industry professionals to bring this idea to life. The creators of Fort Lauderdale’s Taste of the Nation 2001: A Food Odysseyhope to raise $150,000 for that purpose April…
Drinking green beer. Vomiting green beer. Pinching fellow green-beer drinkers who are not wearing an article of green clothing. Let’s face it, this is the stuff of Saint Patrick’s Day. But that’s in the rest of the nation. South Florida doesn’t have many bars that attract would-be bagpipers and other…
Mom, pop, and two boys stand in front of what looks like a carnival midway game. They madly pump away on hydraulic levers as four creatures skim across the playing field. But it’s not a game; it’s actually a demonstration of how squid move through water by jet propulsion. By…
Comedian Jackie Mason jokes that people go to the ballet just to be seen there, not actually to watch ballet. He adds that, for organizers to sell more tickets, they should supply beds instead of seats. Mason’s admonitions aside, this weekend’s production by Ballet Florida should keep its audiences not…
It’s a scenario with which we’re all familiar by now: young single guys in search of hot babes, firing one-liners at each other, making pop-cultural references ad nauseam, and ultimately finding out that women are somewhat less shallow than they’ve been led to believe. At least it’s a scenario you…
We can run, we can hide, we can even try switching theaters, but there’s just no escaping that pesky Gene Hackman. He starred in The Conversation, he is ubiquitous, and revere him we must — virtually every single time we go to the movies. (Robyn Hitchcock even has a song…
Violet represents the quintessentially American spiritual journey — the road trip. Set in 1964, it is the story of a young woman named Violet (Jennifer Hughes), who travels by Greyhound bus, her late mother’s confessional in hand, from her mountaintop home in rural North Carolina to the Hope and Glory…
Anyone unfamiliar with the name Pablo Picasso and all it entails — could such a creature exist? — might wander through “Picasso: Passion and Creation — The Last Thirty Years,” now at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, in all but complete bewilderment. The works on display focus almost exclusively…
Gil Cates takes a long, deep breath before answering the question: Is producing the Academy Awards show the ultimate no-win situation? Cates has produced nine of the past 11 Oscar telecasts, and he returns March 25 after a year’s layoff; for those scoring at home, Cates is not to blame…
Bread & Puppet Theater was unlike any other puppet show in the world. The puppets were massive affairs, used originally in the 1960s in New York City to celebrate events like Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving with a puppetry display to rival all others. By 1970 the theater moved to Vermont,…
