The only contact South Floridians likely have had with Alejandro Escovedo (yes, he counts Sheila E. and her dad, Pete, as relatives) was when his seminal nuevo-Western outfit, Rank and File, toured the country opening for Los Lobos. Now he’s matured into one of the finest Latino singer-songwriters in the…
Road Trip makes American Pie look like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Fast Times like Animal House; and Animal House like Citizen Kane. It ranks (indeed it is rank) among the most soul-deadening movies ever made; it has no pulse and seeks to steal yours with a cynical vengeance. Oh,…
Woody Allen is back on screen in Small Time Crooks, a bittersweet comedy that in many ways could have been lifted straight from the ’30s. For the most part, it’s Woody Allen Lite, which is not at all a bad thing. While one doesn’t want to penalize Allen for his…
Before Women Who Love Too Much and Codependent No More, there was Georgia O’Keeffe and her watercolors. Characteristically dressed in a long black sweater, O’Keeffe peers out at the audience from the dimly lit stage of the Hollywood Boulevard Theatre. “Watercolors are tricky,” she observes in Lucinda McDermott’s O’Keeffe. “When…
Surrealism has wormed its way so deeply into the fabric of contemporary culture, especially pop culture, that it’s easy to forget how dramatically it shook up the art world when it emerged in the mid-1920s. That’s part of what gives the works in “Sweet Dreams and Nightmares: Dada and Surrealism…
The lanky yet muscular lions lounge in the shade of their wooden shelter in the open grasslands, and then, suddenly, one of them gets to its feet and begins pacing. Back and forth. Back and forth. What does this king of the jungle have to pace about? After all, everything…
Jim Bailey didn’t start cross-dressing because of any suppressed fantasy. As the singer and actor explains, he had to do it. His penchant for perfection demanded it. “I was at a party,” he recalls. “Phyllis [Diller] is a friend of mine, so I knew her mannerisms, and at a party…
One way or another, you have to feel sorry for Rick Rockwell. You know, the sacrificial bachelor on the stunt Fox TV special Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? Either you feel bad that Rockwell’s gold-digging bride, Darva Conger, annulled the cherished relationship after just 36 hours of wedded bliss,…
When asked to name the most erotic sequence they have ever seen in a film, people tend to pick moments like the love scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in Don’t Look Now or that indelible image of Kathleen Turner in Body Heat, standing just inside her house, silently…
Poor Kim Basinger! In her first role since bagging the 1998 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (for L.A. Confidential, the film that should have won Best Picture and Best Director as well), the actress positively trembles with what seems to be fear. Notoriously insecure about appearing on camera, Basinger…
This was to be a column extolling the daring and inventiveness of a very groovy Sci Fi Network television show called good vs. evil, in which two dead men, a fro-sporting, cool-spouting brutha and his pale-faced partner, try to save the souls of those who have made Faustian deals with…
Only in Miami does the theater of daily life compete with professional theater for the spotlight — and win. On the way to see the Coconut Grove Playhouse’s production of Praying With the Enemy, I witness what could be a motorcade, if something were leading it. Flags are everywhere: American…
Peter Becker is the most important man in the movie business, even though you have no idea who he is. Becker himself would not cop to such a description; he, like few else in the business called show, does not put himself before the work. To describe what he does…
I don’t know if I stopped breathing, but I was unconscious. What I saw was the most hideous, horrible thing! This was no nightmare! If you saw the movie Ghost, it was like where those horrible black things came out and were grabbing you. There were people screaming. It was…
Last February New York pianist Lara Downes and painter Kim Ray Krupnick of Fort Lauderdale brought a slice of avant-garde art to South Florida, with Downes playing pieces by Debussy, Gershwin, and Stephen Paulus while surrounded by projected slides of Krupnick’s landscape paintings. “That was successful enough that we decided…
There is a killing late in Gladiator, Ridley Scott’s new heroic epic, and it is one of those wonderfully cathartic extinguishings that make a wide-eyed audience rise and cheer. After several brutal battles, after much bloodshed, after considerable suffering both needless and entertaining, a blade finds its mark, and a…
Unless you’re iron-willed Margaret Thatcher or some other sort of imperialist nostalgiaphile, it’s hard to get choked up these days about the demise of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. For one thing it’s now 80 years after the fact; for another, joint government in Ireland remains a dicey proposition, and the Troubles…
Immigration is a physical act. A body of water is crossed; a mountain range grows smaller and smaller until it appears to be the knuckles of a hand resting on the earth. A dissonant jumble of consonants and vowels seeps into our thoughts until our dreams are flooded. We fall…
The voice-mail message begins with the caller identifying himself in a clear, sharp tone: “Hey, this is Chris Thompson, executive producer of Action and Ladies Man, and I hear you’re trying to get a hold of me…” Long pause. “For some ungodly reason.” Then, in a split second, the voice…
Other than claiming, “Hey, I’m a cannibal!” you can’t do much more to repulse others than to profess your dietary preference for insects. That’s right. Bug munching. Maybe some fricasseed fly or basted butterfly. With nearly 1500 recorded species of edible insects, the possibilities are endless. That factoid immediately raises…
Handsome, clean-cut, in shape but not a muscle head, Michael Page could easily attract women or men. Or both. Not bad if you’re bisexual, which the Fort Lauderdale airline pilot decidedly is. The only problem is that historically there has been no place for bisexuals to socialize — even in…
Go get a few grains of salt to accompany these observations of tenable consistency and enduring potential: The movie industry is run by big kids; nifty sci-fi trickery may distract an audience from emotional shoals; cops and criminals are divided by a fine line; nostalgia and evil are cheaper by…
