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…
Because it revealed the coke-snorting, ego-fueled corruption of Hollywood in the early ’80s with such acid wit, David Rabe’s play Hurlyburly became a huge audience hit when it burst onto Broadway in 1984. Here was the inside stuff from the Left Coast, gotten up in a frenetic new language combining…
Writer-director Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, the filmmaker’s adaptation of James Jones’ 1962 bestseller about the World War II battle for Guadalcanal, arrives in theaters with an almost unbearable weight of expectation. After graduating in the first class at the American Film Institute’s Advanced Film Studies program and working…
“First of all, when you’ve got a gun,” Stephen Sondheim points out in his musical Assassins, “everybody pays attention.” That’s for sure, as audience members experiencing the third-act explosion in a classic drama such as Chekhov’s Three Sisters can attest. But what happens when you have two guns? What if…
Thursday January 7 The highlight of Vanilla Ice’s career so far is comic actor Jim Carrey’s send-up of the hit “Ice Ice Baby” on the Fox comedy-sketch show In Living Color. Carrey, dressed in leather, lampooned the white rapper by dancing spastically across the stage and changing the song title…
Lounging on plush couches and overstuffed armchairs, and sitting at bistro tables appliqued with collage art, the thirty- and fortysomething patrons at the candle-lit Now Art Cafe in Hollywood were expecting, as usual, to hear the languid strains of a New-Age guitarist. But, on a recent Monday night, they were…
MTV isn’t your typical religious conduit, but ever since Madonna’s personal rabbi appeared on the music channel to tell the world about the Material Girl’s adoption of ancient Jewish mysticism, hordes of folks have turned to the Kabbalah. Its advocates claim that the Kabbalah is an ancient Judaic body of…
The relentless charm of Kirk Jones’ Waking Ned Devine lies in its embrace of two lovable Irish geezers who manage to work beautiful mischief on the world, in the raw beauty of their sun-splashed coastal village, and in the general notion that Ireland is the land of poetic conversations, enduring…
The great attorneys of our time — Tom Cruise, Susan Sarandon, Tom Hanks — must now make room in the firm for a new partner. John Travolta, who in past lives has been a disco king, a hip hit man, and a deep-fried presidential candidate, reinvents himself in A Civil…
She’s the Medea of all stage mothers, the most frightening diva of the American musical theater. That would be Mama Rose, of course, the stardom-fixated monster at the center of Gypsy. Since 1959 audiences have clung to her poisonous apron strings, happily singing along. Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, and Tyne…
What first appears to be a huge pile of debris sits just outside the entrance to the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood. If you’re approaching the museum from its main parking lot, you might not even notice this mass of vines and tree limbs. But if you’re coming east…
When Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park in the late ’80s, he created dinosaurs that had traits scientists were just starting to discover existed. Instead of being the pea-brained, cold-blooded lizards we’d come to expect, the dinos in his book were warm-blooded, quick, and agile — all the better to terrorize…
Since it opened last October, Picture Perfect Cakes in Davie has produced “photo cakes” topped with wedding pictures in color or black-and-white; baby pictures; a shot of a curly-haired, ’70s-looking guy grooving with an electric guitar; and a photo of a kid with a baseball bat. Cakes have been made…
Silver lining or slender thread? That question nags at me as I go over my best-of-the-year list. There were some terrific movies in 1998 — eight, according to my count. But the average film keeps on getting worse. If movies remain as synthetic and incompetent as they are for the…
The past year has been filled with good films… interesting films… worthwhile films. In fact there were many that I think of as being wonderful or droll or whatever. But 1998 failed to produce a single film to which the term “great” might be applied. Most years have at least…
When damsels with golden ring curls find themselves tied to railroad trestles by mustachioed villains — or, in the case of Little Mary Sunshine, strapped to a tree by a vicious Indian — most audience members know that the lady in peril will be rescued momentarily, either by the entire…
Thursday December 31 Since its founding in 1974, the members of Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo have proven two things: 1) Men can indeed perform in pointe shoes — as female ballerinas do — without falling flat on their faces; and 2) excessive amounts of body hair spilling out…
Bright red, orange, and yellow geometric patterns emblazon the shirt worn by Martin Two Feathers. Its Native American design shows off his heritage, and its lack of sleeves displays his meaty arms, which at the moment are straining to hold shut the jaws of a 300-pound American alligator named Joe…
In this era of megaplexes, the Gateway Cinema 4 theater retains a quaint, neighborhood-theater feel. Built in 1951 near the eastern edge of the Victoria Park neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale, it has just one box-office window out front and only four screens inside. “I’m stopped in the lobby all of…
Thursday December 24 What do Jews do on Christmas Eve, when all their Gentile friends are at church or with their families and businesses are closed? Well, if they’re young, single, Jewish professionals, they head to the Matzo Ball. The creation of a Jewish guy who got bored watching It’s…
Geniuses often come across unimpressively in the movies. Amadeus presented Mozart as a giggling fop. Both Kirk Douglas and Tim Roth gave us van Gogh as a pathetic head case. I.Q.’s Albert Einstein was a cupid-playing old duffer. Ken Russell’s freaky depictions of Liszt and Mahler speak for themselves. When…
