Fort Lauderdale Scene and Screen

The most famous film festivals conjure up images of cinema royalty gracing the red carpet and rubbing elbows with indie up-and-comers. By contrast, there are loads of festivals you’ve never heard of that take place in neighborhoods or remote farms around the world. In its 24 years of existence (a…

Hands-On Movement

Our days are infiltrated with machines: assembly lines, bulldozers, the corporate machine. Technology has also influenced the pop and conceptual art movements. These days, plenty of art is made by machines. In some cases, machines are art! But the new exhibit, “Set to Manual,” at the Girl’s Club Gallery (117…

Dancing With the Not-Exactly Stars

So You Think You Can Dance is one of those shows that someone probably has to turn you on to. Unless you’re a dance major or aspiring choreographer, your reality-television-dance-show quotient is likely nil, or already filled by Dancing With the Stars. That’s a damn shame. Although SYTYCD doesn’t have…

Scare U

The possessed university you saunter through is dark, horrific, and haunting – with creepy things lurking around each corner. Four witches carried unto this university an ancient book of spells, and although they discovered the book was possessed by an evil spirit, they still translated the text. Once they spoke…

Ain’t Nothin’ Wrong, With a Little Bump and Grind

Pull up to designated outsider haunts (municipal building front steps, sanctioned skate parks, or poorly lit parking lots) this evening, and you’ll feel ill at ease. That comforting sound: the familiar click, rattle, and hum of skateboard trucks, will be absent. No, the culprit isn’t a new city ordinance or…

Let’s Talk About Sex Education

Among states, Florida ranks sixth for unintended teen pregnancy, and receives the second-highest amount of abstinence-only education funding — falling just behind Texas, which has the third-highest teen birth rate. This isn’t college football. We don’t want to beat Texas. For 90 years, Planned Parenthood has made it its mission…

Stonefox Closes the Alley

Sad news for music fans throughout South Florida. Alligator Alley, home to the best combination of food, beer, and music in Broward County, is shutting its doors for good after this weekend. The two-day farewell party begins tomorrow night with Alley staple Albert Castiglia; Jeff Watkins, John Yarling, and Kilmo…

Can He Borrow That Fire Alarm?

Dutch-born Han Bennink is arguably one of the most venerated drummers on the European jazz scene. Throughout his half-century career, Bennink has performed with legends such as Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon while making a name for himself as an unpredictable free-jazz improviser. His madcap performances go way beyond the…

See You Later Alligator Alley

Sad news for music fans throughout South Florida. Alligator Alley, home to the best combination of food, beer, and music in Broward County, is shutting its doors for good after this weekend. The two-day farewell party begins Friday night with Alley staple Albert Castiglia; Jeff Watkins, John Yarling, and Kilmo…

Walk Like A Fundraiser

It’s unsettling that many diseases out there don’t have cures yet. But when we band together for awareness, the result is nothing short of empowering. For instance, in the month of October, pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness were found on football helmets during NFL games. So while we threw…

Overacting Ruins A Doll House at Palm Beach Dramaworks

A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen There is a thick film of half-digested plaster and pressboard coating the streets of downtown West Palm Beach this week. It is all that remains of the once-proud scenery that actress Margery Lowe, in a frenzy of dramatic overachievement, chewed and swallowed and regurgitated…

Culturebeat

“George Segal: Street Scenes.” Through December 6 at the Norton Museum of Art, 1451 S. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach. Call 561-832-5196, or click here. There are 13 life-sized plaster casts of the human figure in this mini-retrospective — sometimes alone, often in pairs or groups, usually in public places…

Let the Mild Rumpus Start!

Directed by Spike Jonze from a 400-word children’s picture book first published in 1963, Where the Wild Things Are may be the toughest adaptation since Tim Burton fashioned a series of bubblegum cards into Mars Attacks! Tougher, actually: Burton was working with ephemeral, anonymous trash; Jonze is elaborating on a…

Law Abiding Citizen Peddles Cheap Revenge Thrills

The movie wastes no time: Before the opening credits, a man watches two home invaders slaughter his wife and daughter — and we don’t even know their names. And then: Deals are cut, the murderer walks while his less culpable accomplice is sentenced to death, and the dad wonders, “But…

More Than a Game Follows Akron’s Fab Four

More Than a Game follows Akron’s Fab Four (later Five) kids on the basketball court, from their “Shooting Stars” traveling youth team into high school and a run of championships. The reason this documentary tells their story — instead of that of the team that miraculously upsets the by-then-nationally recognized…

New York, I Love You Offers Corny Big Apple Collisions

Billed as a “collective feature film,” New York, I Love You is the second in the “Cities of Love” series, an idea that has so far proved better in theory than execution. As with its predecessor, Paris je t’aime, there are hits and misses. Producer Emmanuel Benbihy decreed that each…

Tickling Leo Reveals Wartime Secret Suspended by a Succeeding Generation

A new Holocaust film grammar is forming about what it means to be a succeeding generation, suspended between the impulse to forget and the urgent need to remember—and to understand how suppressed memories have warped families. I don’t know how close writer-director Jeremy Davidson’s own family is to the Shoah,…

Riding in Style

The Roaring Twenties marked a profound shift in American life. Technological innovations like the telephone and radio allowed for increased communication, while advances in art and design reflected a new interest in pop culture and exposed some troubling trends toward consumerism. But nothing symbolized New America more than the automobile…

‘Til Debt Do Us Part

It’s hard to pull away from the vortex of coverage of Jon and Kate Gosselin’s incredibly shrinking bank account, but, if you can, you’d see that the Gosselins’ marital troubles are part of a script that’s been played out for ages. It’s just that today’s characters have changed to ones…

Feeding Faces

If you are one of the unlucky TV viewers that hasn’t succumbed to the greatness of DVR, you may have caught one or two (or 200) commercial spots for Macy’s new “Come Together” campaign. Yeah, you know the one: A bunch of celebrities like Martha Stewart, Usher, and Tommy Hilfiger…

Scarier than a Gun Show and Craft Show… Combined

There have been more than a few scary things going on at the South Florida Fairgrounds. Gun shows, craft shows, and hundreds of carnies could scare just about any sane, unarmed person. But starting at 6 tonight, the fairgrounds are getting even scarier. Fright Nights is back with three new…