In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey threatens to end it all by jumping into an icy river. But after an angel-guided glimpse of a world without him, Jimmy Stewart’s character realizes how much he has to live for. The moral here is that there’s nothing like a…
One of the few seemingly spontaneous bursts of energy at the recent Academy Awards ceremony was provided by motor mouth Dutch director Mike van Diem, who seemed genuinely surprised that his debut feature Character had won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. If the commercial popularity and Oscar sweep for…
Icebergs figure prominently in Titanic, Christopher Durang’s absurdly wild 1974 deconstruction of family life, but then so do hedgehogs, marmalade, and tortured slices of Wonder Bread. There’s no Leonardo DiCaprio, but there is a Captain. He’s the one sporting the black dildo on the white tennis headband — a getup…
Realism is alive and reasonably well at Call of Africa’s Native Visions Gallery in Fort Lauderdale, which specializes not in the tribal art of Africa as you might expect, but in wildlife paintings, prints, and sculptures. One owner is from South Africa, the other from Zimbabwe, which is also the…
Thursday April 16 When it comes to astronomy, “there’s a lot that can be done without a telescope,” according to J.C. Moritz, education coordinator at Buehler Planetarium (3501 SW Davie Rd., Davie). During tonight’s 7:30 p.m. presentation, Binocular Astronomy, she’ll talk about the types of things you can see from…
Shu-shu Sanders has a sure way to get her son’s cooperation. She’s learned that the spirited kindergartner obeys more readily when she switches from English to the thick, guttural language spoken by fictitious warriors with ridged foreheads. She says, “Ba,” he sits. She says, “Ghos,” he stops dawdling and comes…
Sure, a film festival offers cutting-edge movies, but only for a week or two, and then the filmmakers — with their films in tow — pull out of town. Not so with two South Florida festivals opening this week. In each case organizers hope to leave a lasting impression. When…
From its very first frame, Neil Jordan’s The Butcher Boy whooshes us inside the rollicking, deranged world of twelve-year-old Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens). Francie is a redheaded rascal who lives with his alcoholic “Da” (Stephen Rea) and screw-loose mother (Aisling O’Sullivan) in a small town in a part of northern…
Crack open a playwright whose career has just gotten under way, and you’ll more than likely find a dreamer wrestling with the ghost of Anton Chekhov. American theater festivals are littered with reinventions of The Three Sisters, the Chekhov classic in which characters saddled with longing speak of the day…
The aromas of frankincense and myrrh hang heavy in the air as fifteen “goddesses” enter the candle-lit sanctuary. They smile and hug each other, then take off their shoes and settle into soft chairs that are quickly pulled into a circle. So situated, the Goddesses of the Divine are ready…
Since the release of the movie Titanic, teenage girls in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have turned the grave of one J. Dawson into a shrine. If you haven’t seen the film, Jack Dawson is the name of the character played by heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio. No wonder the girls are draping the…
Thursday April 9 Just watching one of his films doesn’t do justice to the life and career of the late, great black actor and Renaissance man. So as part of the Paul Robeson Centennial Celebration, the biographical film The Tallest Tree in Our Forest will be shown. Born April 9,…
If nothing else, The Big One, the current edition of Michael Moore’s continuing self-love fest, has a great subject: the desperation hidden inside a “thriving” U.S. economy. While politicians and financial wizards point to unemployment on the wane and profits on the rise, Moore notes that the largest employer in…
Moments after the legendary showboat Cotton Blossom pulls up to its Natchez, Mississippi, berth, skipper-cum-thespian Cap’n Andy declares, “You’ve never seen a show like this before.” But chances are you’ve seen many shows like this before. Indeed, you may have even performed in a show like this. Show Boat –…
Performance art or happening? Light-and-space art or installation? The mixed-media art at Lumonics, also known as the Tanner Studio, resolutely resists categorizing. It’s all of the above and then some. The gallery is full of sculptures, some of which double as fountains. But then there’s also a small auditorium that…
Thursday April 2 Yacht racing is pretty inaccessible as a spectator sport. Ships slice through the ocean with no land in sight, sometimes for weeks, especially during events like the Whitbread Round the World Race, an eight-month, around-the-world jaunt. But when the the nine ships from six countries and their…
When Tara Hamilton’s dad strapped a pair of water skis to his two-year-old daughter’s feet and pulled her around the family pool, the sport of wakeboarding didn’t even exist. Now that it does, Hamilton is making full use of the water-skiing and gymnastics skills she learned just a few years…
Buck Anderson and his father, Whitey, are brewing their first batch of beer. But they’re not at home. The light Canadian Pilsner they’ve created is bubbling away in one of six shiny copper kettles lining the front window of Brewmasters South in Pembroke Pines. “We wanted something lighter for the…
When you think about how some of the smartest, most surprising films about women have been made by men — and vice versa — you start to realize that directors should dare to speak for the other gender more often. Few filmmakers know the ritual bonds and betrayals of men…
Lovers of American movies used to joke that foreign films wouldn’t seem so good if you saw them without subtitles. John Sayles’ new movie Men With Guns plays better than his previous films because it does have subtitles. Bald dialogue always sounds better in Spanish or in Indian dialects. Set…
Anyone who scribbles a note on a napkin with an ink marker ends up watching helplessly as the ink soaks into the paper and the words bloat into an illegible mess. While the technique used in Oriental brush painting is similar, the results are far less messy. Those hazy-edged lines…
Thursday March 26 Jennifer Howard obtained a restraining order against her abusive husband, and three days later the 28-year-old was found lying in a pool of blood with a bullet in her head. One of 1500 women murdered by their husbands or boyfriends each year, she’s represented by one of…
