When Paul Thomas Anderson’s second feature, Boogie Nights, was released in 1997, critics and film-industry types fell over themselves to designate Anderson the next big thing, an auteur in the footsteps of Scorsese and Coppola. His film turned Mark Wahlberg from a has-been underwear model and rapper into a leading…
Of all the versions of Cuba that exist, few are as fragmented or elusive as those that live in the memory of exiles. Anyone who left the island before his or her own memories really began or grew up in the United States with exile parents knows stories of how…
If you’re looking for provocative art this season, look no further than the Boca Raton campus of Florida Atlantic University (FAU), where the Schmidt Center Gallery is hosting an unsettling site-specific installation with the unwieldy title “Body Buy Back: A Temporary Installation Reflecting on the Practice and Social Dimensions of…
“We’re transforming what is essentially cattle pastureland into a giant campground/wonderland/playground for 75,000 rabid Phish fans,” claims Dave Werlin. The president of Great Northeast Productions, the company responsible for conceptualizing festivals for the jam band Phish, Werlin is a week out from the group’s four-day millennium blowout as he talks…
Lake Worth speech pathologist Ken Mylott first encountered Epicureanism at Florida State University, where he graduated with a speech degree but concentrated in philosophy. Being a nonjudgmental type of guy, he took immediately to the precepts of simplicity and living in the “now” set forth some 300 years before Christ…
Top Ten of 1999By Andy Klein Film critics are by nature a sour lot, so it is with truly great pleasure that I suggest that 1999 has been the best year for cinema — certainly for American cinema and even for the major studios — in my 15 years on…
By sheer coincidence, A Bicycle Country, Nilo Cruz’s bewitching play about the fate of three balseros, is premiering against the backdrop of the political drama of the young rafter Elián Gonzalez. Or is it just coincidence? If six-year-old Elián hadn’t been rescued off Palm Beach on Thanksgiving Day, then perhaps…
By the stroke of midnight, the actors and audience may already be in the lobby sipping champagne. But in the final hours that lead up to the year 2000, old friends John Felix, Steve Wise, George Kapetan, Vicki Boyle, Pat Nesbit, Ken Kay, Kim Cozort, Tom Wahl, and newcomer Michael…
It’s a cool Tuesday evening, perfect patio weather, and the bistro tables outside the Coffee Beanery in Coral Springs are filled to capacity. The crowd’s collective attention is focused on a preteen girl near the entrance to the gourmet coffee shop, where she stands behind a microphone in front of…
Ah, what a miracle that Andy Kaufman was. So sublime his wit, so pioneering his spirit. Astonishing! A hero to be loved, adored, and emulated by all artists and performers for the rest of eternity. An opener of doors, a smasher down of barriers, a glorious, luminous, intrepid spirit without…
Let’s hear it for sports movies! The most avid sports fan can occasionally be bored by lackluster games, but even the casual spectator can appreciate what the big screen can do for an athletic contest, even one played by actors rather than athletes: the closer-than-life closeups, the dramatic use of…
The single poignant moment in Buddy — The Buddy Holly Story depicts an imperiously fragile moment of rock ‘n’ roll history, the one in which proto-rocker Buddy Holly wrote the song “Everyday.” Not the best or the most popular of Holly’s work, the tune is nonetheless charming, and so much…
The introductory essay in the fine catalog for “American Glass: Masters of the Art,” now at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, gets right to the point: “Glass is one of the world’s oldest materials for art and, in America, one of the newest.” It’s a simple statement that…
On the uppermost observation deck of a cruise ship, the pinpoint silhouettes of human heads are visible against the pink afterglow of sunset, giving a sense of the pleasure boat’s massive scale. Off in the distance, the skeletal arms of multistory cranes are visible; at their bases are rows of…
“Ewww,” squeals a young girl, pointing a finger at a very large, very hairy spider in a glass enclosure. “Wow, what’s that!?” exclaims a young boy, cramming his nose against the glass for a better view. Sherwood “Woody” Wilkes, director of science and technology at the Museum of Discovery and…
It is rare to find a movie that is as accomplished, multilayered, and rewarding as the novel from which it was adapted, but The Cider House Rules is such a film. Directed by Lasse Hallström (My Life as a Dog, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape), the film displays the kind of…
I sincerely hope that Jodie Foster gets a chance to relax and unwind this holiday season, because the lady has obviously worked like a horse to instill her latest role with humanity and significance. As intrepid British widow Anna Leonowens in the huge and poetic new Anna and the King,…
Like most people at a recent performance of Arje Shaw’s powerful work The Gathering, I had tears in my eyes by the end of the two-hour drama. And like many around me, I suspect, I found the plight of Gabe, the Holocaust survivor at its center, imperiously heart-wrenching. All the…
Gordon Parks was already a renowned photojournalist when he first stepped behind a movie camera. He worked for Life magazine from 1948 to 1968, yet within a few years of switching to motion pictures in the late ’60s, Parks had established himself as one of the most influential American moviemakers…
Sitting around at a meeting some months back, the board members of Fort Lauderdale’s Public Theatre were challenged by executive director Vince Rhomberg to come up with something beyond the typical raffle or dinner gala for the next fundraiser. The theater relies on private donations and benefits to stay afloat,…
Have you ever endured a relationship in which your partner beat you up mercilessly, just so he or she could “heal” you and play the redeemer later on? Granted, that’s a weird question and perhaps one better explored via Akbar and Jeff in Matt Groening’s Life in Hell strip, but…
The hipster wisdom about America in the 1950s holds that the entire war-weary nation was at political and spiritual rest, straitjacketed by conformity and loathe to utter a peep of protest — not even when Joe McCarthy went hunting for communists from the bowels of Hollywood to the feed stores…
