Even if Frederic Clay Bartlett had never picked up a paintbrush, he would merit at least a footnote in the history of modern art for his many other art-related ventures. Muralist, architect, and interior designer, the Chicago-born Bartlett spent much of his 80 years studying art in Munich and Paris,…
Thursday July 30 Les Standiford, director of the creative writing program at Florida Atlantic University, is also a novelist. And his Miami crime thrillers have fans, namely best-selling crime author James Ellroy, declaring him, “the unassailable new kingpin of the South Florida crime novel… inheritor of the [Elmore] Leonard mantle.”…
Thursday July 23 His nickname is “Captain Fingers,” and if that sounds a little cheesy, consider when he got it. Pop and jazz-fusion guitarist Lee Ritenour earned the title in the mid-’70s. In his early twenties at the time, the classically trained Ritenour was logging many studio hours as one…
Mimi Shapiro’s books bear only the slightest resemblance to their conservative cousins in bookstores, and for good reason. Shapiro is an artist first, a writer second, and her volumes are pieces of art, with some literary content thrown in for good measure. The cover of one of the Fort Lauderdale…
It’s a weekday evening, and John Gage and his buddies are going canoeing, which is a great way to go nowhere special. They’re pushing off from the sand of Fort Lauderdale beach, hopping in their boat, and making a round trip from Oasis Cafe to BeachPlace, a journey of about…
The first shot in Steven Spielberg’s remarkable World War II epic Saving Private Ryan is an American flag with the sun behind it. The image is somewhat diaphanous, the fabric having the transparent delicacy of a chrysalis. This is the perfect introduction to a movie about the fragility — and…
The last place you want to visit in midwinter is gray, freezing Buffalo, New York. The last people you want to see in the last place you want to visit are Jimmy and Janet Brown, a pair of comic demons so indifferent, so surreally out of touch, that they scarcely…
The most startling scene in Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde — making its Florida premiere at the Caldwell Theatre Company in Boca Raton — is the one that opens the second act. It’s set on the stage of a 20th-century talk show, where a fatuous TV host…
Thursday July 16 El Nino-driven weather catastrophes — floods in California and the Midwest, tornadoes and wildfires in Central Florida — have taken their toll, but the Buehler Planetarium show Stormy Weather makes them seem like mere inconveniences. Assistant planetarium director Susan Barnett begins the show by talking about the…
Ryszard Fechtner, inventor, is inspired by fish. The bearded, cheerful man has admired sea life since he swam marathons in the lakes of his native Poland. He kicked and paddled through miles of water, while fish darted beneath the surface with ease and grace. “You look and see how easy…
During the first LoveFest two summers ago, I spent more than two hours in Hollywood’s Young Circle getting shiatsued, Reikied, and generally being pampered. My muscles were relaxed, my mind flowed with random thoughts, and my wallet was just a little lighter than it was when I started the day…
Unlike Hollywood fare such as Dances With Wolves (1990), Smoke Signals is that rare drama about modern Native Americans that has actually been written and directed by Native Americans. It feels genuine and heartfelt, quirky and whimsical, with a deft understanding of its characters’ problems. But the film is also…
In The Mask of Zorro, Anthony Hopkins plays the eponymous masked man as if he were doing Shakespeare. He’s trying to turn a kitsch hero into a real one, and his efforts are so weirdly off-key that you don’t know whether to cheer him on or titter. This dolorous Don…
In his five-decade career, Cole Porter wrote songs for Fanny Brice, Fred Astaire, Ethel Merman, Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Durante, and Bert Lahr, to name just a few. One measure of his virtuosity as a composer, however, is that no one singer really owns a Porter tune. Not even Frank Sinatra,…
The catalog for “Postcards on the Edge,” a show on display at ArtServe in Fort Lauderdale, describes it as “a multifaceted progressive traveling exhibition examining a historic means of casual communication facing the possibility of future extinction in this electronic age.” That’s artspeak for “This is a show about postcards.”…
Flip Schultz is on stage at Uncle Funny’s Comedy Club in Davie, asking if there’s a cop in the audience. Somewhere out in the dark, silhouetted crowd, a guy — brave, naive, or both — raises his hand. Taking his cue, Schultz says hello, then delivers an array of exaggerated…
“Excuse me waiter, is that a pistol under my prime rib?” Diners at Dave and Buster’s restaurant in Hollywood might ask just that while attending one of the establishment’s Saturday murder-mystery dinners. During the show, members of the Murder Mystery Players get patrons to stash weapons for them and back…
Thursday July 9 When artist Michael Joseph moved from Connecticut to Fort Lauderdale seven years ago, he felt pretty disconnected. But after landing a job at the now-defunct Squeeze, where he helped design the nightclub’s ever-evolving decor, he was invited by owner Jack Kearney to put some of his own…
High Art is a low-budget, American independent movie about junkie, lesbian photographer Lucy Berliner (Ally Sheedy), who spends most of her time looking romantically mournful. She’s famished and abrasive and oh-so-world-weary. When she smokes cigarettes, she exhales in a way that can best be described as existential; the smoke curls…
The winds that sweep across the Sahara kick up ferocious sandstorms. Dunes change shape by the hour, flying particles blind the eye, and all sense of direction and reason can be lost. In such disorienting surroundings, reality and hallucination converge, and the most inexplicable, unimaginable events can occur. Passion in…
Milton Berle isn’t actually backstage at The Last Supper, but his voice is, if only on Memorex. The Borscht Belt comedian has loaned his name and endorsement to Artie Butler’s hapless and ambitious new musical about a hapless but ambitious guy trying to sell a musical comedy to a Broadway…
Inside the butterfly house at the Secret Woods Nature Center in Fort Lauderdale, graceful insects flutter among potted flowers and hanging plants. It’s an idyllic scene, one that would satisfy just about any weekend nature-admirer. But because Scott Bryan, a volunteer at the center, is an insect enthusiast, he has…
