Fans call it “that Star Wars feeling,” the raw emotional high achieved by watching or even just thinking about the films of George Lucas. It’s a sort of gut-swirling, swooning sensation, the effect of tripping on a fantasy world, a wonderland, a place unlike Earth or even the movies. And…
Wandering into a neighborhood art gallery can be a demoralizing experience. What begins as a quest for a rising star or an unsung talent usually turns up wall after wall of the same dreary art readily available all over South Florida. Interior designers may like art that’s nondescript enough to…
At the turn of the century, one of the most popular swimming events was “the plunge.” It’s not anymore, and for good reason. Here’s how it worked: A contestant would dive into the water from a standing position, then remain motionless for 60 seconds; then he’d swim underwater as far…
Thursday May 13 Miami artist and anthropologist Sarah Keene Meltzoff, age 50, has spent her life traveling to remote villages, mostly in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. After studying different peoples and their folk art, she now creates what she calls “cargo art.” The cargo cults of the Pacific…
Two thousand feet below, the tile roofs of the tony golf course community in Boca Raton appear to be sitting atop Lego houses. Passengers in airplanes probably see this kind of thing all the time, but when you’re standing in an oversize picnic basket that’s dangling from a two-story hot-air…
A Midsummer Night’s Dream came early in Shakespeare’s career. He had written it by at least 1598, in roughly the same period as another lyric-romantic masterpiece, Romeo and Juliet. Despite Samuel Pepys’ famous dismissal of Dream as “the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life,” it…
David Mamet, famous for his in-your-face characters, brutal and frequently raunchy dialogue, and deliberate, staccato prose, would seem an unlikely choice to write and direct a screen adaptation of British playwright Terence Rattigan’s genteel drama about injustice. But the Pulitzer Prize-winning author (for Glengarry Glen Ross), whose body of work…
Early in Tom Stoppard’s comedy Rough Crossing, a character refers to the Irish policeman named Murphy who makes an entrance at the beginning of The Merchant of Venice. Don’t remember Murphy? You’re not alone. Never heard of Rough Crossing? You’re also in good company. The 1984 play by the coauthor…
Thursday May 6 As if the TV show, magazine, mail-order catalog, and books weren’t enough for her fans, the Martha Stewart Good Things Group meets once every three months at Barnes & Noble in Plantation (591 S. University Dr.) to discuss the homemaking maven’s latest revelations. The group is named…
As lighthearted as Will Rogers was, Doug Watson takes his role as the great cowboy philosopher seriously. In his program Conversations With Will Rogers, he plays the humorist to the hilt. Dressed in a double-breasted suit and Stetson, he delivers wisecracks about the politics and culture of the ’20s and…
Talking on the phone while trying not to burn herself with a glue gun she’s using to attach lace to a serving tray, Jennifer Lorenzi is rushing to prepare for two Florida Grand Opera shows at once. “He’s not specific,” she says, referring to opera director Bernard Uzan. “He’ll tell…
The latest release from Paramount Pictures’ bouncing baby, MTV Films, is set in a high school and has been inoculated with the usual doses of teenage angst, teenage wit, and teenage lust. Here’s the surprise: It declines to get down on hands and knees to woo Generation Y to the…
Based on Julian Barnes’ debut novel, Metroland is essentially a dramatization of the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime”: “You may find yourself/In a beautiful house/With a beautiful wife/You may ask yourself/Well, how did I get here?” The hero of Metroland spends the movie asking himself that question; what…
When I asked the four-year-old next to me to explain the appeal of Snow White, she replied, “Seven beds. Seven bowls. Seven everything.” That theatergoer has probably never heard of Bruno Bettelheim, who deconstructed the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm some 20 years ago. She was entirely oblivious to…
Thursday April 29 The band hasn’t signed to a major label yet, but tonight might be your last chance to see the pop-punk outfit River Fenix — at least with that name. The quartet, which in fact has been courted by the majors since the kickoff in early April of…
When you spill something on a couch or a chair made by Sas and Colin Christian, there’s no need to worry about spot remover. Just break out the tire cleaner and wipe down the piece of furniture, and it shines like new. “Actually, we’ve found that Son of a Gun…
After a massive stroke paralyzed Sandy Simon’s left side in 1993, his doctors told him that if he lived — which they doubted — he would be a mental and physical invalid. Today, at age 61, a slight hitch in his walk is the only hint of Simon’s ordeal. The…
We seem to be in the middle of one of those thematic blitzes that happen every now and then in the film world. Last year we had Dark City and The Truman Show; this year, so far, we have had EdTV, The Matrix, and David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ. Coming up in…
Sean Connery has always been a terse, minimalist actor, spitting out his lines in tight bursts of Scottish brogue. But in Entrapment, the kingly Scot goes beyond minimalism to the point where he’s practically semaphoring with his eyebrows. As the legendary art thief Robert “Mac” MacDougal, Connery isn’t just reserved,…
If Sid Caesar had ever performed a sketch about Henry VIII, it might have resembled the hilarious second act of The King’s Mare, Oscar E. Moore’s bio-comedy about the Tudor monarch and his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. The entire play is now enjoying a high-spirited world premiere at Boca…
You might think that an artist who spent most of his life around blackboards would be weary of them. Not John O’Connor. The Idaho-born painter has been a professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville for the past 30 years. Before joining the faculty there, he studied and taught…
“Want something for him?” Deborah Kirkpatrick asks the crowd at this all-female shopping party. “Noooooo!” comes the giddy response. But when Kirkpatrick mentions oral sex, the ladies are definitely interested. “Tired of giving BJs?” she asks. “Say hi to Lori. She’ll do it for you.” Amid the laughter, Kirkpatrick holds…
