The pitch for this one must have seemed sensational: “It’s called Spy Game, right, and it’s about this old spy who recounts, via flashbacks, how he mentored this young spy, only now the young spy is captured and about to be killed, so the old spy spends his last day…
The works of four very different female artists are on display in four concurrent exhibitions now at the Coral Springs Museum of Art; in one case, the shows overlap in a surprisingly successful collaboration between two of the women. The least satisfying of the four is “Ximena Pérez-Ayala: Magic Encounter,”…
Is the glass half empty or half full? Thoughtful theatergoers may rue what may be missing on the South Florida stage scene — classical productions, experimental theatricality, multimedia — but none can deny the area’s strengths, chief among them plenty of entertaining, vigorously produced musical offerings. Any number of musicals…
Though Behind Enemy Lines, set in Bosnia, was originally due for release next year, already it feels antiquated; that conflict is already a distant memory, a ghost lost in the shadow of the war on terrorism. The film tested so well that 20th Century Fox pushed up its release date,…
Two schools of thought thrive in the wild and woolly world of Southern rock. First, you can pull the Lynyrd Skynyrd approach and get a little more country than rock ‘n’ roll but still keep the boogie that country lacks. A whole slew of bands have pulled this off with…
As the vibrating sound of the rubbed metal bowl reaches a high pitch, the people sitting cross-legged on the floor get quieter. They’re meditating, using the sweet harmonious sound of the bowl to calm their minds and help them concentrate. Something new? Hardly — the Tibetan singing bowl is more…
The new Martin Lawrence comedy, Black Knight, is yet another twist, albeit an uncredited one, on Mark Twain’s protean A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, one of the original fish-out-of-water comedy-fantasies. Was there an outcry for yet another redo? After all, Twain’s 1889 novel, about a New England mechanic…
It takes a nimble mind to mix light and dark, to wed humor with treachery, and in Novocaine, newcomer David Atkins is not always up to the task. Neither is Steve Martin, who wants to be taken seriously while reserving the right to produce the occasional sick yuk. If you…
Dear Ol’ DadAs kids you and your siblings were ballbusters. You nearly drove your parents completely mad. When your mom said she was washing her hands of you troublemakers, dad didn’t agree with her plans to ship you off to boarding school in Newark, New Jersey. Instead, he sent her…
If high drama is your cup of tea, you should find what you’re looking for at theater companies all over South Florida. Just don’t look on the playbill. The off-stage news from several local theaters is as full of dire foreboding, narrow escapes, and last-minute miracles as The Perils of…
Only a couple of months ago, it looked as though Donald Miller had a publishing home run on his hands–a thoughtful, exhilarating, inclusive book about World War II scheduled to hit stores just as Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ Band of Brothers was finishing its critically lauded run on HBO…
Oftentimes, the people who attempt to turn photos into art fail miserably; witness most attempts at photographic surrealism or abstraction. Instead, it is often the documentarian who, through the perfect vision of hindsight, is revealed as the one who was artsy all along, simply by telling a story. Take the…
Robert Schimmel tries to take everything lightly. It is, after all, his job. Luckily, almost everything can be humorous, even cancer. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, to be more precise — the particular strain from which Schimmel is currently recovering. “The last time I went [to the doctor] I had to do a…
Lovely magic, this. An enchanting family classic. If you believe in magic, you’ll love Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. And if you don’t, you will, and you will. True, the hype has been a bit much. And, yes, a mad, desperate world choked with reproduction and reprobation could hardly…
Joel and Ethan Coen’s periodic genuflections to classic Hollywood are inevitably accompanied by a knowing wink from one brother and a wry smile from the other. These devoted movie buffs’ versions of vintage gangster pictures (Miller’s Crossing) or the populist comedies of Frank Capra and Preston Sturges (The Hudsucker Proxy)…
Think of modern Broadway comedies and Neil Simon immediately springs to mind. The prolific and popular playwright spans four decades of American theater with no fewer than 28 plays and musicals produced on Broadway. And at age 74, he shows no signs of letting up; his Forty-five Seconds from Broadway…
The title of one of the exhibitions currently at the Museum of Art (MoA) in Fort Lauderdale, “Surrounding Interiors: Views Inside the Car,” holds out hope that the show might be as refreshingly quirky as MoA’s “American Lawn: Surface of Everyday Life” two years ago. “American Lawn” was a sweeping…
The weather has been turning a bit cooler, the clocks have been turned back a bit earlier, and were there anything but evergreen trees in South Florida, the leaves would be turning as well. Yes, autumn is now truly upon us, which means another kind of season has arrived. Perhaps…
For years now, unsubstantiated reports indicate that cultural life exists in Boca Raton. Despite strong evidence to the contrary, in the form of a wide variety of tacky Florida kitsch, rumors of robust contributions to the arts continue to surface. And legend has it that, once a year, the truth…
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival has a consistent track record when it comes to three genres: documentaries, gay-themed pictures, and movies with strong female performances. This year, in the festival’s 16th season, my rules of thumb mostly hold up. I…
Natalie Merchant finished recording her third solo album, Motherland, on September 9, so by no means should anyone listen to the disc’s first song, “This House Is On Fire,” and think it has anything to do with hijacked airplanes, collapsed skyscrapers and the thousands buried beneath the rubble. The song…
In the theater world as in society, a happy few are much more fortunate than the rest. Consider the prosperous and respected Florida Stage. Now entering its 15th season, the Stage is blessed with a lovely facility (a 250-seat thrust theater with excellent sightlines), critical acclaim (22 Carbonell nominations for…
