Since its heyday in the ’80s, standup comedy has gone through more ups and downs than Anna Nicole Smith on a pogo stick. But with the recent success of the reality show Last Comic Standing and Comedy Central’s latest hit Shorties Watching Shorties, it seems the standup stage is in…
Poets are like rock stars FRI 1/21 In 1998, just after she’d been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, writer Patricia Smith was fired from the Boston Globe for having fabricated material in her columns. The scandal pretty much spelled the end of Smith’s journalism career. From her home in Westchester…
Mayweather headlines Miami fight card SAT 1/22 World Class Boxing is coming back to Miami with Top Rank’s Showdown on the Bay at American Airlines Arena (601 Biscayne Blvd.). The evening’s junior welterweight feature pits undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. (31-0, 21 KOs) against Puerto Rican Henry Bruseles (21-2-1, 24 KOs)…
Beware of loose dragons SAT 1/22 A hundred years ago — back when people read for entertainment — the art of magazine illustration was in what is now considered its golden age. Leading the way were artists like Maxfield Parrish, whose luminous skies and fantastic imagery graced the pages of…
in the blues pond TUE 1/25 Eric Bibb is an American music blue-blood. His father (Leon Bibb) led the New York Folk Revival of the ’60s; his uncle (John Lewis) was the founder of the Modern Jazz Quartet. As a child, he learned from master bluesmen like Taj Mahal and…
Paul Weitz, with brother Chris, co-wrote and co-directed 2002’s adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel About a Boy, in which a cocky grown man (Hugh Grant) learned how to actually act like a grown man by observing a gawky young boy (Nicholas Hoult) who was nearly abandoned by his suicidal mother…
Nobody messes with Samuel L. Jackson — at least, not at the movies. He’s Shaft reinvented, the coolest cop on the street. He’s Mace Windu, the only swashbuckler in the Star Wars galaxy who gets to swing a purple lightsaber. Best of all, he’s Jules Winnfield, the ultrahip hit man…
I must confess, I have never been a big fan of Broadway tunesmith Charles Strouse. Not that he needs my approval. The prolific composer has been banging out hits since his very first musical, Bye Bye Birdie, grabbed a Tony in 1960. After that, Strouse went on a tear with…
Some Enchanted Evening is missing something — not surprising, considering that the director quit halfway through rehearsals, leaving the cast to do its own direction and even build the set. The multitiered, blue-and-green, no-frills set would be practical with its many entrances and exits if the cast weren’t afraid of…
For those who like both Tiffany’s and telescopes, New York sculptor/painter John Torreano has got just the thing — a collection of hangable galaxies, studded with acrylic gemstones. Of course, that wasn’t really his plan. Yes, the exhibit, “Every Gem Is a Handheld Star,” which just opened at the Amory…
“Vulnerability, sassiness, and bodaciousness” — that’s what Jawole Willa Jo Zollar wanted to convey when she founded the Urban Bush Women dance troupe in 1984. Bodaciousness was in long supply among the black women in the Kansas City neighborhood where Zollar grew up, but New York — where Zollar moved…
THU 13 The Punk Rock Class of ’94 graduated many an aggressive young band into the ranks of indie label stardom (due in no small part to the windfall from Green Day’s major label success). Some were opportunists and quickly vanished once the money dried up. Others, like Southern California’s…
Working as a photographer ain’t as fabulous as it’s cracked up to be. Take it from someone who once had to process film in the darkroom at Fenway Park to get Red Sox photos on the Associated Press news wire. Oh sure, walking by all of the suckers who paid…
With one huge colon — no shit FRI 1/14 Everyone loves a fair — and why not? Funnel cakes! Cotton candy! Ride operators with about as many teeth as a jack-o-lantern, rocking bitchin’ mullets, and frayed tour T-shirts from their days lugging speakers as roadies for Winger! Games so impossibly…
Gulfstream season’s in full swing THU 1/13 Got the itch to place a few wagers on some eminent thoroughbred competition? Or are you not the betting type but love to get outside and partake of South Florida’s finer offerings, equine or otherwise? Either way, you’re in luck, as Gulfstream Park…
Be true to your art school THU 1/13 It’s been nearly 15 years since the Dreyfoos School of the Arts first opened its doors, which begs the question: Where are they now? The students, that is. The visual arts department has the answer, as it presents its First Annual Alumni…
Baboons defy classification but demand attention SAT 1/15 Reviewers have struggled to classify the music of the Baboons ever since the band premiered a decade ago. “Spicy rhythmic gumbo!” said one. “Afro-Cuban funk and roll!” declared another. “Urban-tribal funk,” one more dribbled. And so on. Would it help if we…
The story is simple enough: Sometime during the dying days of the Tang Dynasty in China, though it could really be any time and any place, two cops named Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) sit in a station house drinking tea. They decide one of them will go…
The grim little green-walled apartment where Walter finds himself after his release has the look of a jail cell — with one apparent easement. What seems to be the only window in the place faces a school playground across the street. When Walter looks outside, he often sees kids running…
The death of a parent, especially the mother, is usually a particularly painful passage and one for which most people, however well meaning, can offer few meaningful words of solace. But in Shelagh Stephenson’s funny, moving The Memory of Water, now being performed at the Mosaic Theatre in Plantation, such…
The Boys Next Door is a heartwarming look at the lives of four mentally challenged men who live together. The actors brilliantly depict four unique, charming, and quirky personalities. Arnold (Michael Collins), in a colorful mismatched wardrobe and large black glasses, constantly spells out the injustices of life, threatening to…
Think outside the box.” By the end of the 20th Century those four simple words had taken on the aura of a mantra — an irrefutable nudge toward creativity, innovation, and yes, artistry. It’s a good thing the great sculptor Louise Nevelson didn’t think in such terms. In fact, it…
