Back when flower children were earning the nickname “granolas” for their healthy eating habits, nutritionist Nikki Goldbeck was handling public relations for a food company. “In doing that, I realized how skewed the public’s perception of nutrition was,” she recalls. “What we were learning [about nutrition] was what the food…
Thursday February 4 Blue humor is the easy way out for comedians of dubious talent. On the flip side is Chris Rock. As much political animal as comic, he uses racy language and imagery to drive home points on race relations and politics in his sharply honed bits. The Saturday…
Jimmy Cagney brought the same electric physicality to gangsters that he did to song-and-dance men. He gave a bright-eyed mug like his character in The Public Enemy extraordinary powers of attraction and repulsion. In The General, Brendan Gleeson enacts a real-life criminal chieftain — Dublin’s notorious Martin Cahill — with…
In the 1993 hit Groundhog Day, Bill Murray played a smart-ass Today show wannabe weatherman who grew into a human being. Murray added a core of warmth and romance to his comic arsenal without losing his zinging wit and crack-up irony, and he’s kept that progress going, even in piddling…
A woman in Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile makes this comment about the famous painter: “He says that occasionally there is a ‘Picasso’ and he is him.” You can substitute the word genius for Picasso and get the sense of what this phrase means. The comedy appears to…
Looking at the paintings of Purvis Young, I kept getting the sense, sometimes unsettling, that I’d seen some of the imagery before. A few dramatic strokes of blue and green paint on paper, for instance, summoned Salvador Dali’s take on Don Quixote. Another spare piece on glossy, wrinkled, black paper,…
Thursday January 28 Natalie Cole, as we all know, is the daughter of legendary singer Nat “King” Cole, and while her dad’s genes may have helped her singing voice, she didn’t depend solely on his name to become a star in her own right. The 49-year-old singer performed in her…
Motorcycle mechanic Sergio Morales’ garage in Havana is an apt representation of today’s Cuba. Black-and-white photographs of the repair shop reveal cracked cement and a tangle of spliced wires leading to an air compressor. The paint on the walls is peeling, and the grease-stained hands of one of the mechanics…
After the Dolphins’ pathetic wildcard playoff loss to the Denver Broncos, Super Bowl Sunday in South Florida should be a day of mourning. But the biggest bowl of ’em all will take place in South Florida, at Pro Player Stadium in Miami-Dade. So, like it or not, it’s party time…
Between the current nostalgia for platform shoes and the epidemic of midlife crisis that has so many baby boomers in its grip, director Brian Gibson’s Still Crazy just might be able to find an audience among the disturbed, the deafened, and the disenchanted. It is, after all, the comic tale…
Genius can be a terrible, destructive gift. Jacqueline du Pre, the brilliant British cellist who enraptured audiences in the ’60s and ’70s with her musical passion and intensity, lived a life of great renown and acclamation but also one of harrowing loneliness and emotional turmoil. Her story is movingly told…
Imagine you’re watching an early play by an obscure playwright — say, a farce with a plot that’s difficult to take seriously. Perhaps it contains a case of mistaken identity, at least one sharp-tongued female character, and some confusion about the proper nature of marriage. Say the conflicts are resolved…
Rumor has it that the South Florida lesbian magazine Fountain will soon cease publication. The magazine, which has been in circulation for about five years, will supposedly be replaced by a new magazine called She. But there’s also talk that, sometime in the future, Fountain may make a comeback. So…
A hundred years ago, gambling on land in Palm Beach County was just as illegal as it is today. But that didn’t stop Col. Edward R. Bradley from opening a casino for the elite on Singer Island, near the Lake Worth Inlet, in 1898. Bradley must have wielded some influence,…
Thursday January 21 For a quarter of a century, Joyce Tarnow has been part of the abortion debate, and she’ll speak at tonight’s Voice For Choice celebration of the 26th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion. “Celebration,” however, may be too strong a…
The cold-hearted among us have watched Camille die tragically on the late show and have seen Brian Piccolo run his last yard through the cancer ward often enough to understand the several hazards of Hollywood “disease movies” — false sentiment, synthetic emotion, and tears for tears’ sake. It is with…
“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,” Kris Kristofferson sings in his most beguiling song, “Me and Bobby McGee.” Stephen Frears’ The Hi-Lo Country tries in vain to be just as lyrical about love and liberty. In this 20th-century Western, a cattle rancher named Pete (Billy Crudup) narrates…
Add the late Tallulah Bankhead to the list of middle-aged women throwing themselves into the national political fray this year. Though the celebrated actress — as currently portrayed in the American premiere of Tallulah by movie star Kathleen Turner — has even less bona fide political experience than either Liddy…
With a work as dauntingly large and otherworldly as the title piece in “Madeline Denaro: New Forms,” an exhibit on view at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, it’s revealing to watch people approach and appraise the piece. Some stand a few feet away, as if worried that the…
When he was a teenager, Tim Adde was in the marching band at East Jefferson High School in New Orleans. The Big Easy native, now in his forties, long ago removed a pin from his old uniform, and now the silver lyre and wreath — attached to his black beret…
Spalding Gray likes to talk about himself. Sitting alone on stage behind a wooden desk, with a microphone, a notebook, and a glass of water as his only props, the actor-writer has made a career out of yakking about his life. Of the 18 humorous, autobiographical monologues he’s written and…
Thursday January 14 No one is calling him the next Martin Luther King, Jr., nor is he claiming the title. But in his own way, Tavis Smiley is continuing the good doctor’s work. He’s host of the Black Entertainment Television talk show BET Tonight With Tavis Smiley, on which he…
