About halfway through the megabudget mountain climbing adventure Vertical Limit, even the most rugged, thrill-hungry fans of disaster movies may find themselves going numb. Not from the howling weather on the icy face of K2, in the Himalayas, where the action supposedly takes place. Not from oxygen deprivation. Not even…
Day 1: It was just part of the job, just another movie on another afternoon. This one promised to be no more special than any other, save the casting of Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe. Proof of Life was the movie during which they fell in love, or whatever it…
Works that penetrate the façade of normalcy in marriage are nothing new to American theater audiences. In the 1938 classic Our Town, Thornton Wilder pioneered what we now call “relationship drama” when he placed a young couple at the altar and allowed the audience to listen in on their innermost…
During the 1950s Hollywood executives scrambled to find ways to lure Americans away from the latest gadget in their living rooms — the TV — and back into theaters. So what did they do to top the little magic box? They made films in 3-D. And we’re talking every type…
Back in November 1980, internationally recognized fine-art and news photographer Allan Tannenbaum heard that John Lennon and Yoko Ono had reemerged after five years in seclusion. And no, it wasn’t another one of those goofy “bed-in” things. The pair had actually completed a new album, Double Fantasy, and were embarking…
George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, one of the country’s most traditional ballets and a holiday mainstay in any American company’s repertoire, just got funkier. Through an innovative synthesis of dance, costumes, and music, audiences witness one little girl’s exploration of her American and African roots in Ashanti Cultural Arts’ presentation of…
In 102 Dalmatians, a new brood of puppies is born, one of which, Oddball, doesn’t develop spots. The resulting feelings of inadequacy are such that the poor thing runs away from home and hides in a cave, gets bitten by a bat, and turns into a slavering mad dog. Cruella…
The current release of French director Nicole Garcia’s Place Vendôme — which was nominated for 11 César Awards when it debuted in France two years ago — is yet another sign that the drop-off in French imports that has plagued U.S. screens in recent years is reversing: This is roughly…
Some would say it’s a guy thing — crushed cans of Schlitz strewn across the floor of a Motel 6 room, belching as an alternative to conversation, and the inevitable discussion about the undeniably rhetorical question, “How could you be my best friend and screw the love of my life?”…
The juxtapositions are sometimes jarring: Two Andy Warhols are propped on the floor a few feet from a vintage Norman Rockwell. A quartet of pieces by actor turned painter Anthony Quinn give way to a Red Skelton self-portrait, followed by a pair of Ertés. A cluster of Picassos shares space…
The gourmet-coffee craze may conjure images of dot-com execs sipping overpriced espresso, but our nation’s java jones has had an ironic side effect: The agrarian way of life that brought coffee to the world in the first place is slowly disappearing. Painstaking handpicking of beans may one day give way…
Bringing freshly cut greenery into the house at the onset of winter has symbolized the promise of the coming spring in many cultures since ancient times. This holiday season, some 35 to 40 million evergreen trees will be purchased and decorated in the United States alone. Adding a little tinsel,…
Unbreakable is such a quiet film that, whenever a character speaks above a whisper, it sounds like the shattering of glass in a monastery. It’s also a terribly sad movie; almost no one cracks a smile or a joke, and everyone wears the look of someone who’s just spent the…
So many elements make up a boyhood, from joyful laughter and games, to purloined porno mags and pointless aggression, to the scary realization that something vital is slipping away, something that may never be reclaimed. Naturally nostalgic reflections on this magical time form the basis of countless films, with two…
Adapted for the stage by TG Cooper, the late founder of the M Ensemble Company, Jackie “Moms” Mabley, Live! is a tribute to the black comedienne who broke the color line and paved the way for other artists. Born Loretta Mary Aiken in the 1890s, Mabley is often called the…
World AIDS Day is held every year on December 1, and it’s observed in many cities as “A Day Without Art”: Major museums drape sheets over paintings and sculptures to represent the amount of talent lost to the plague. While that works in cities like Paris and New York, where…
She writes like Jacqueline Susann with a talent implant. She looks like Marla Maples with a few breakfasts at Tiffany’s under her Dolce & Gabbana belt. And she sounds strikingly similar to the characters she creates — smart-mouthed and just a little bit whiny. Meet Candace Bushnell, literary sensation in…
Refreshingly, the biggest wonder about the new Arnold Schwarzenegger ride is not that human cloning has become a reality, nor that the America of the future (“sooner than you think,” as an opening caption ominously suggests) very closely resembles present-day Vancouver, Canada. It’s not even that technological advances appear to…
The soon-to-be-talked-about sensations in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem For a Dream include three or four flashing, near-subliminal montages that combine an eye’s iris and dilating pupil, an extreme closeup of heroin cooking in a teaspoon, and a sucking hypodermic needle; a surpassingly frightening sequence in which Ellen Burstyn, in the midst…
Nilo Cruz’s A Park in Our House is a record of the human spirit when the human body exists in a totalitarian state and survives on a continuum not of belief but of disbelief. The romantic, the idealist, the realist, the repressed, the rebel, and the messiah — these are…
The show’s title sounds slightly reckless, as if the artists had knocked back a few or taken a couple of hits to jump-start the creative juices. And sure enough, some of the best work in “Under the Influence: An Exhibition by 2 + 3,” now at the Museum of Art…
No one likes to be seen as the roadblock to a revolution. The unfortunate soul–or the dumb bastard–who chooses to impede progress is likely to be mowed down by those charging toward tomorrow. He will become a thing to be wiped off the shoes of those who march, march, march…
