Stuffed full of fantasy comics, addicted to action, and steeped in digital technology, the frenetic moviemakers Andy and Larry Wachowski have done what they must — that is, to create an eye-popping, morph-mad, quasi-mythical sci-fi flick that will thrill computer nerds as it kicks serious ass. The Matrix also presumes…
David Mamet’s war-between-the-sexes conundrum is nothing if not a tense night out at the theater. That’s true if you’re male, female, a college student, a professor, or merely an innocent bystander trying to figure out whether there actually is a watertight argument inside this situation tragedy. Oleanna is about a…
When he died a decade ago at the age of 85, Salvador Dali left behind an output vast enough to make him one of the most prolific artists of the 20th Century. The flamboyant Spaniard’s legacy also includes a reputation as one of the shrewdest — some would say most…
The late Keith Haring was anything but secretive about his homosexuality. During the mid-’80s, when AIDS was still considered a “gay” disease, the popular New York City artist was one of the first to address the issue in his work, and graphically so. A cartoonish, two-panel Haring piece from the…
It’s a good thing Shakespeare’s Romeo didn’t swear his love for Juliet by a blue moon. After all, his choice of a regular moon didn’t sit well with her. “O! swear not by the moon,” she said, “the inconstant moon,/That monthly changes in her circled orb,/Lest that thy love prove…
The FLO Film Fest is as unpretentious as they come. Organizer Kris Kemp doesn’t go for the glitzy gala thing. He wants you to plop down on a cushioned couch, sip coffee or soda, and munch some popcorn — maybe even a Pop-Tart — while checking out short films by…
Thursday March 25 Ready to sacrifice your liver for other people’s lungs? Check out the Las Olas Wine Festival. Now, sipping spirits in moderation is probably nothing compared to the damage your liver suffered during your high-school and/or college years, but with wine being poured at 24 shops and galleries…
Self-serving confessions are a mainstay of bestseller lists; now we’re doomed to see their ilk on screen. 20 Dates is the not-so-verite story of Myles Berkowitz, a tyro filmmaker in his mid thirties who tries to advance his career and up his happiness quotient by filming himself on a score…
“I hope it’s better than The Truman Show,” said the woman in line behind me at the publicized “sneak preview” of EDtv. Afterward, a man in my row declared, “That was a lot better than The Truman Show.” Pretentious high-concept films like The Truman Show often garner accolades and let…
The “dinner party for dead people” play, in which an author gathers together people who may or may not have met in real life and plops them into the same room for supper, isn’t officially recognized as a dramatic genre. But it’s so popular that maybe it ought to be…
A large machine called a planer screams in the background as it turns a rough piece of wood into a smooth-sided plank, and the smell of fresh-cut wood shavings fills the air. But the noise doesn’t seem to bother Roy Lapidus, who’s busy fitting new wooden handles onto some antique…
Thursday March 18 When you think Mattel, you don’t think clothing, but the toy company is actually one of the largest clothing manufacturers in the world. Since the introduction of Barbie back in 1959, more than 105 million yards of fabric have been used to make 120 new outfits each…
When you’re writing true-crime novels, you have to be picky about your subject, says Carol Soret Cope, author and assistant dean for external affairs at the University of Miami School of Law. “You are bound by the facts,” she explains. “You can’t just make up something sexier.” Her first book,…
In the three decades that director Ken Loach has been a steadfast champion of the British working class, his films have lost none of their sting. Whether examining a brutal Belfast police incident in Hidden Agenda (1990) or the plight of an unemployed man struggling to buy his daughter a…
At the movies the fun-loving temptress has been liberating the buttoned-up clod ever since Katharine Hepburn’s leopard made off with Cary Grant’s dinosaur bone in Bringing Up Baby 61 years ago. Maybe even longer, if you count pioneer vamp Theda Bara’s effect on a long succession of speechless men. In…
Imagine a brainy spider battling cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn and you’ll get some idea of the shenanigans on stage in the National Actors Theatre touring production of The Gin Game, starring Julie Harris and Charles Durning. The Tony Randall-produced revival, which just left the Royal Poinciana Playhouse to take up…
The Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale has been abuzz with excitement since last month’s opening of “Herb Ritts: Work” and understandably so. South Florida is only the second stop for this photography retrospective, assembled by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in late 1996, and the exhibition is…
Thursday March 11 The actors and producers of Miami’s City Theatre company have the producing and acting part down. They just find it difficult to decide what to perform at their annual Summer Shorts festival at the University of Miami. The company receives hundreds of entries from playwrights around the…
When Joan Mazza was growing up in Brooklyn during the ’50s, her mom thought that searching for underlying meanings in dreams was a bunch of baloney. She discouraged her daughter from discussing the disjointed scenes that played out in her adolescent brain at night. “My mother hated dreams,” recalls Mazza…
A paintbrush and paint tube meet to make an A, ballet slippers arch into an R, a bow crosses a violin to form a T, and a strip of film curls into an S. Molding the bold letters with talent and imagination, an eighth-grade student embodies in her poster the…
The Deep End of the Ocean starts out as a maternal horror movie and ends up as a family therapy session. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Beth Cappadora, the photographer wife of restaurateur Pat (Treat Williams) and mother of two sons and an infant daughter. While checking into a jammed hotel for…
It’s a typical day in the American West of the 1880s, and you’re strolling into Burritoville, minding your own business, when suddenly the peace and quiet is shattered by gunfire. As you take cover and load your pistols, you realize the Hatfields are looking for revenge. You’re in for a…
