Renovation and reinvention are at the heart of Victoria Park history. At the beginning of this century, the land now occupied by the Fort Lauderdale neighborhood was slated by Henry Flagler as a right of way for his fledgling Florida railroad. Dade County pioneers William and Mary Brickell, who owned…
“A Joel Schumacher film.” Are there any four words more guaranteed to send shudders of revulsion down the spine of any Gen X film geek? Ever since he allegedly ruined the Batman film franchise, Schumacher’s name has become almost the equivalent of a swear word on many Internet film sites,…
There have been so many recent movies about modern gay teenage life that one would think a filmmaker would be hard-pressed to find a new wrinkle on what has become an increasingly familiar tale. But Head On isn’t a pro forma drama of self-discovery and self-acceptance. As directed by Ana…
I dare anyone who thinks movies and television come near to providing the thrill of top-drawer live theater to go see Closer, and not just because actress Jen Ryan spends part of Act Two wearing little more than a see-through mesh top. You can observe Jen’s breasts, sure, but you…
Men with cigars clenched between their teeth sit around tables with racing programs spread before them and puff pungent smoke into the air as they watch drivers in brightly colored silk shirts crack long whips against the flanks of horses. The equines pull carts called sulkies around the track, and…
It really isn’t fair. You’ve worked another ten-hour day, slogged through traffic, suffered with errands, returned the irritating phone calls, fed the pets. Now its 7 p.m., and there’s nothing in the fridge except for a prehistoric casserole and a jar of Grey Poupon. Wouldn’t it be nice to sit…
OK, here’s a quick gay-porn primer: Two of the biggest-name actors in the industry are Jeff Stryker and Ryan Idol, and the guys who achieve such star status are the ones who appear on top during the action. Joey Stefano was the first, ahem, “bottom guy” to get top billing…
How do you make a sequel to a nearly perfect film? Toy Story, the 1995 hit from Disney and Pixar, was not only the first fully computer-animated feature, it was also as brilliantly written and directed a film as any of the classic Disney releases. Pixar did nearly everything right…
Nobody is innocent in America, but there is one segment of the population that seems doggedly determined to deny its own ignorance, ugliness, and violence. So hands up now, who really likes rednecks? The sludge on the bottom of the melting pot, this embarrassing offshoot of European ancestry continues, to…
Tim Bennett’s set — a sitting room in an English manor house, dappled with gorgeous pink light and a dozen vases of cut flowers, opening out onto a rose-strewn garden — is so inviting that I wanted to walk up on stage and move in. That’s the only positive thing…
When art is in trouble, realism comes to the rescue. — Stendhal Realism rushed to the rescue like the cavalry in an old western when, in the late 1960s and early ’70s, a new development in American painting that came to be called photorealism offered alternatives to such extreme styles…
“The spectre is known at all the country firesides by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow,” writes Washington Irving in his original fantasy. Thanks in large part to the silly, watered-down fun of the animated Disney version, the Horseman and his victim, the gangling and gallant Ichabod…
As the 20th Century grinds remorselessly to a close, Princess Diana, Monica Lewinsky, and Jon-Benet Ramsey continue to be held up by the media as signal figures of our time. Yet something tells me that, when future historians look back on this period, the bulimic socialite, the kneepad-ready intern, and…
Karen Stephens is such an appealing performer that I wish her one-person show were as compelling as she is. Called Out of the Box, the show is billed as a multimedia event that looks at “societal and racial parameters through the life experiences of a black American female and her…
As if bosses don’t have enough to worry about in regard to employees wasting time online (think Internet smut and virtual shopping), the Website theestrogenfiles.net wants to get its hooks into women who have Internet access at work. Calling it “the very first Cyber-Sit-Com,” the site launched The Estrogen Files:…
Ridicule a participant at some prissy poetry reading, and you’ll end up looking like a boorish ass. At a poetry slam, however, the crowd is expected to pass judgment on the poets — as obnoxiously and vocally as possible. “It’s anybody in the audience saying whatever they want to say…
So you’ve arrived in some exotic locale, say Nepal or Sri Lanka, on one of those ecotourism vacations, and you want to become one with your surroundings. What could be more ecologically sound than to enjoy some local flora? But where do you find a batch of magic mushrooms? You…
Like most sons, Rich Cohen loved to hear his father tell stories, but his pop’s yarns happened to be true stories about Jewish gangsters in Brooklyn instead of make-believe fairy tales. Cohen, age 31, grew up in suburban Chicago, where his dad recounted being an adolescent in Brooklyn during the…
Luc Besson, director of La Femme Nikita, The Professional, and The Fifth Element is not the first name that would leap to mind to helm a biopic of Joan of Arc. Sure, he’s French, and sure, most of his films have a woman or girl as protagonist or savior; but…
“Yesterday I wasn’t even sure God existed,” laments Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), the reluctant yet divinely touched heroine of Kevin Smith’s ambitious new film, Dogma. “Now I’m up to my ass in Christian mythology.” As it turns out, so are we. Strutting to a spiritually snappy groove not observed in mainstream…
In these post-Sondheim, pro-revival days, it’s sometimes difficult to find the why and wherefore of the Broadway musical. On the one hand, Times Square overflows with new productions of Grease and Saturday Night Fever and the self-perpetuating Cats, as though the industry were one gigantic broken record. On the other…
I was ambivalent about going to an exhibition with the prosaic title “The American Lawn: Surface of Everyday Life,” only to discover a delightfully whimsical, imaginatively assembled show. The exhibition, now midway through its four-month run at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, is essentially one sprawling installation of…
