Sometimes a good idea for a play doesn’t spin out into good theater. One such conundrum is Bach at Leipzig, a well-produced but dramatically inert talkfest now on colorful display at Florida Stage. Itamar Moses’ new play, a Florida premiere, has to do with a historical event in 1722, when…
Pauly Shore is to actors as Ed Wood is to directors. Shore, of course, began life in the limelight as an MTV veejay. That, we can understand — MTV has a long proud history of hiring only the most annoying of pinheads to introduce its latest videos. From Shore to…
Everything about Catch Me If You Can, the loosely based-on-fact tale of a teenager who swindled millions while posing as, among other things, a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer, is breezy and easy to swallow. Its maker, Steven Spielberg, hasn’t had so much fun in two decades,…
Based on the true story of three young Aboriginal girls who walked 1,500 miles across the Australian Outback to be reunited with their mothers, Rabbit-Proof Fence might well be subtitled True Grit in recognition of the courage and single-minded determination that drove the trio to undertake such a perilous journey…
How can we know the dancer from the dance?” Irish writer William Butler Yeats wondered in a 1927 poem. And indeed, there’s a sense in which dance is the most intimate of artistic media, one that comes to life only when embodied by human beings. Writers, painters, sculptors, filmmakers –…
KC comes to town this Sunday to Play That Funky Music like the white boy he is. (OK, so Wild Cherry did that song, but if the platform shoe fits…) He brings with him the Sunshine Band and a slew of 1970s moves and grooves. And just so that this…
It has been a long, strange trip for Bonnie Bramlett. Ordinarily, one starts off a career as a nobody and then, after establishing oneself as a talented musician, gets to hook up with other able performers. This is how supergroups are started. But Bramlett skipped all that other stuff and…
If you’re looking to attend the biggest Christmas show of the season, you need look no further than the Office Depot Center this Saturday. But unless you like your holiday cheer served with heaps of Christmas carols and a side of show tunes, this may not be your night. Having…
Fantasy is at its best when it ennobles our reality, and at the movies this year no fantastic adventure towers above The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The second installment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s delightful yarn is here adapted just as handily as last year’s The Fellowship of the…
Adaptation is the most overrated movie of the year (of all time?) by people who should know better. Film critics have either been suckered in by its gimmick (Being John Malkovich screenwriter Charlie Kaufman can’t adapt a book for the big screen and winds up writing himself into his screenplay,…
This season has seen its share of family dramas that playwrights keep reinventing to good theatrical effect. One recent incarnation is Charles Randolph-Wright’s moody, engaging comedy/ drama Blue, a semi-autobiographical account of one wealthy black family’s domestic disturbances, a tale that spans several decades. The story is narrated by Reuben…
For those new to the Palm Beach County music scene, Family Function may provide the who’s who you’re looking for. And for all those jokers who go to Respectable Street Cafe every weekend anyway, your entrance to the Street this Sunday may be greeted with the same sort of shouts…
If you think that a kimono is a Japanese bathrobe and that obi is the first name of Luke Skywalker’s Jedi mentor, do yourself a favor and head over to the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens this Saturday. The museum hosts “The Fabulous Kimono Show: A Century of Traditions and…
Of all the movies you could be spending your December with — and there are many good choices, from Oscar-bait to better-than-expected sequels like The Santa Clause 2 — why would you want to end up at Drumline? It’s either an extremely canny bit of counter-programming or a tremendously heinous…
Two years ago, Fort Lauderdale’s Museum of Art (MoA) shocked South Florida’s art community when it unceremoniously dumped the 41-year-old Hortt Competition from its lineup. The popular competition had a long history with the increasingly irrelevant MoA — namesake M. Allen Hortt, an art collector and former Fort Lauderdale mayor,…
Theater has always had a rabble-rousing role at the margins of society. Plato mistrusted poets and art in general. Aeschylus got himself exiled when his plays criticized the Athenian politicos. The Puritans tried to ban the Elizabethan theaters, and Hitler burned down a number of them. Henry Fielding, the great…
Notes from a network executive’s forthcoming biography, pilfered from the desk of an editor at a major publishing house. This was hard to read, as it was scribbled in crayon on the back of a copy of Highlights taken from a pediatrician’s office. From page 412: “Last week, I met…
Maid in Manhattan, in which Jennifer Lopez goes from pauper to princess, comes not from a screenplay but from a handful of self-help books, fairy tales, and fashion magazines cut and pasted together in a glossy montage committed to celluloid. It has all the spunk of a math problem, all…
If you need a little nudge to bring out your inner child, get on your riding gear and head down to “Carousel Memories: A History of the American Carousel,” an exhibit that opened two weeks ago and celebrates the evolution of these carnival rides. The event takes place at the…
This weekend’s Festival of India should prove enlightening to South Floridians. “We want to showcase the Indian culture and traditions to Americans,” explains Lakshmi Subrahmanian, president of the South Florida chapter of the Association of Indians in America, producer of the biennial festival. “While we have maintained our traditions, we…
Robert De Niro has always loved an acting challenge, but lately those challenges have been less along the lines of “Can I convincingly play a boxer?” and more like “Can I alone be good enough to make this formulaic mess worth watching?” Yes, it was impressive that he played a…
Transcribed verbatim from the DVD commentary track of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, here’s an informative sci-fi concept from director George Lucas: “[A]s we go through the movie, there’s all these little funny moments like Jango bumping his head because in Star Wars one of the Stormtroopers…
