Here’s a little quiz for Hollywood locals: How many times have the words gentrification, renewal, and Harrison Street appeared in print in the same sentence during the last two years? Answer: A number at least equal to Harrison Street’s ever-increasing populace of faux gas lamps and dramatically lit palms. Despite…
Thursday June 10 What was the name of Han Solo’s ship in the movie Star Wars? Too easy a question, you say? Of course it is, since most of us have seen the original George Lucas space flick dozens of times and know the Millennium Falcon as well as our…
In John Sayles’ Limbo, which is set amid the rough-and-tumble of southeast Alaska, an ex-salmon fisherman with guilty memories (David Strathairn), an itinerant lounge singer with a lousy voice (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), and the singer’s melancholy teenage daughter (newcomer Vanessa Martinez) become stranded, Robinson Crusoe-style, on a remote island. This…
A fine line divides inspired silliness from out-and-out witlessness; it’s a short leap from grin to groan. In 1997’s Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Mike Myers took a thin premise — spoof the ’60s by transplanting a horny Matt Helm-like secret agent into the ’90s — and danced an…
The two-year-old Actors’ Project Theatre Company is the first to admit that with Love’s Fire, it’s shamelessly cashing in on the current cachet of William Shakespeare. “He’s hip and young, but older crowds recognize him, too” says Irene Adjan, the company’s cofounder. But since the Bard-inspired theater piece — which…
It’s best to approach the “48th Annual All Florida Juried Competition & Exhibition,” now at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, from the show’s end. Resist the natural impulse to enter the main gallery to one’s left and instead make your way through the long, narrow central gallery, past the…
The genesis of Pride FilmFest, which opens tonight (June 3) with a glitz-and-glam gala at the Broward County Main Library Auditorium, has the same breezy inevitability as one of those “let’s-put-on-a-show” movies starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. “Two years ago I went up to the Gay and Lesbian Film…
Azar Aryanpour had heard about the dirty conditions and brutal treatment of inmates in the prisons of her country, Iran. As the wife of a famous orthopedic surgeon, though, she never imagined she’d actually see the inside of an Iranian prison. But there she was, standing in a grimy waiting…
Thursday June 3 The average age of patrons at the Chili Pepper should jump by a decade or so tonight when the Radiators roll in from New Orleans. Inspired by Crescent City R&B forefathers like Professor Longhair and Dr. John, the twin-guitar attack of the Radiators informs bouncy, Mardi Gras…
In an early scene in Instinct, released by Touchstone, a division of Disney’s Buena Vista Pictures, we’re told that a brilliant primatologist named Ethan Powell (played by Anthony Hopkins) is being brought back to the United States from Rwanda, where for several years he has been engaged in a close…
Joy isn’t a word that often comes to mind when thinking about the films of director Wim Wenders. But infectious, intoxicating joy is the emotion conveyed by every frame of this ravishing, exuberant documentary. Buena Vista Social Club is not only the German filmmaker’s most engaging, soulful film since Wings…
If memory serves, Archie Bunker never ranted about brilliant country and western stars who experienced rapid career trajectories and died tragic deaths — possibly because none ever crossed his path. So it’s difficult to imagine what he’d think of daughter Gloria losing her head over Patsy Cline. Of course, more…
On an overcast Saturday afternoon in Davie, about 50 kids and parents emerge from Buehler Planetarium, where they’ve just watched a show called The Little Star That Could. In the animated program, a star searches the galaxy for a family of planets and along the way teaches kids the basics…
A sand sculptor has to be able to take a joke. After hours in the sun building 3-D art from a flat stretch of sand, there are occasionally wisecrackers with whom to contend. “What time do we jump on it?” asks a jovial guy at a trade association party at…
Thursday May 27 Before taste was abandoned in popular music, insinuation went a long way. The Cigar Store Indians, a country/swing/rockabilly outfit that walks the line between Elvis and the Stray Cats, get a little naughty on “Fast Lane.” “I want to ride in your fast lane, ’cause drivin’ fast…
Maybe it’s the damned blinking thing, because it’s not simply the foppish hair and boyish face — or for that matter, even the vaguely befuddled reticence and wry, self-abasing demeanor we Americans prefer to see in our Brits. It’s got to be the blinking. That’s what he does, almost all…
If your poodle is decked out in the complete Captain Kirk uniform, you’ve taken Klingon language classes, or you once mailed DeForest Kelly a joint taped to a piece of cardboard just “to return the favor,” the 88-minute documentary Trekkies is a must-see movie — love it or loathe it…
Suicide, abortion, death by torture, and plagiarism of an obscure British novelist are an awful lot to cram into a single play. In fact just one of these topics would be a challenge for the best of playwrights. Shakespeare’s potboiler Titus Andronicus, for example, contains rape, mutilation, and family squabbling,…
No development in the history of art changed the nature and function of portraiture as dramatically as the invention of photography. Before photography, portraits were more or less about documenting reality, preserving a person’s distinctive look and bearing for both the present and posterity. Photography changed all that. No painter…
The Love Letter has the dubious distinction of being the other studio film to open this week. In a week when all the other majors have run for cover, Dreamworks has taken a gamble with a classic bit of counterprogramming — in nearly every way, this sweet romance/ romantic comedy…
In the GableStage production of Full Gallop, actress Judith Delgado reaches out and grabs the audience by the lapels. It’s a production that would simply thrill Diana Vreeland, whose obsession with clothing infuses this one-woman show just as her hyperbole-driven fashion sensibility filled the pages of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue…
In the radio station’s control booth used for That Sci-Fi Show, Joey Reynolds, a George Costanza-like character, intently cues up The X-Files’ theme and adjusts sound levels. On the other side of a glass window, a leather-vested, red-bearded Evan Edwards makes bugs’ eyes of foam microphone covers while other crew…
