Things have gotten so bad in Eastern Europe that countries such as Moldavia and Albania don’t even have feature-length films anymore. It’s true. The bread lines may be long, but the films are all short. Nah, actually, thanks to the euro and booming real estate markets, the former Soviet Bloc…
It’s not easy to glamorize Amtrak. Riding those dirty, seamy trains and buses can feel a bit like being squeezed down an intestinal tract. But one artist, Arnold Levin, has managed to make travel on our neglected public transport system look adventurous, even classy. “Arrivals and Departures” is an exhibit…
In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy sailed into Tokyo Harbor, pointed his cannons at the city, and warned that if he wasn’t allowed ashore, and if the Japanese didn’t sign up for global trade, he’d open fire indiscriminately. It was classic American pirate diplomacy. The Japanese caved,…
In 2000, Mark Hogancamp, an upstate New York resident, was beaten outside a bar by four men so badly that he incurred a brain injury and woke up to a life he barely remembered. Seriously disabled mentally, he has existed since by mopping floors and making diner meatballs in his…
No Strings Attached is extremely narrow in focus: It’s “just” about two people in lust struggling to put away their respective baggage in order to have a real relationship with each other. Adam (Ashton Kutcher) drunkenly texts every girl in his phone and wakes up the next morning at the…
If you wander off the street into “Frances Trombly: Paintings,” one of two heady new shows on view at Girls’ Club in downtown Fort Lauderdale, you may well think you’ve stumbled into an exhibition that is still being assembled. Several canvases lean against the walls as if waiting to be…
Caldwell Theatre’s adaptation of Clybourne Park is refreshing in its biting and direct exposition of the dumbed-down dialogue, latent racism, and recycled talking points that dominate discussions about race in America today. It rightfully points out the culpability in everyone, especially moneyed PC liberals, who, in all their obsession with…
Generously bankrolled, then shelved, by an imperiled Weinstein Co. and peopled with Oscar nominees, All Good Things might be called an upscale version of straight-to-cable true crime crap — only that would make it sound more entertaining than it is. The fiction feature debut of Andrew Jarecki, director of 2003’s…
Only inertia will bring people to Michel Gondry’s 3-D spectacle, The Green Hornet. Opening amid persistent negative buzz in the mid-January dead zone, this long-germinating prospective franchise, based on a character that first saturated the nation’s radio waves in 1939, seems pretty much DOA — although in the absence of…
Derek Cianfrance’s divorce drama Blue Valentine is the story of how a couple (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams) travels from too-cute introduction to irreconcilable differences in just over half a decade. Starting with the present-day married-with-kid Dean and Cindy, Cianfrance weaves long flashbacks of Dean and Cindy’s early days through…
John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole plops us down in the lives of Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart), 40-ish upper-class marrieds rattling around an East Coast dream house. Becca and Howie’s young son was killed in an accident, and months later, the couple is trying to cope. Howie thinks…
The fifth collaboration of director Margarethe Von Trotta and actress Barbara Sukowa, Vision continues the proto-feminist canonization of Blessed Hildegard von Bingen (Sukowa), 12th-century Benedictine magistra, scientist, visionary composer, and literal receptor of visions. Cloistered at age 8, Von Bingen grows into hardball politicking in the Holy Roman Empire as…
A fascinating look at the complex intersections of art and charity, reality and perception, Waste Land follows celebrated New York artist Vik Muniz back to his native Brazil, where he’ll work with outer Rio garbage-pickers on an ambitious art project. Ostensibly called to “give back” to the impoverished region from…
It’s Tuesday, and you and your man friends are looking for a place to watch Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, and King James strut around the court and pound down the Atlanta Hawks. But your friends are pissing and moaning about the bar you offer up. They just can’t seem to…
Come beat the post-holiday blues Saturday at Undergrounds Coffeehaus with its first art show of 2011. Philadelphia-born artist Bruce Glider will be in the “haus” displaying his unique artwork — a variety of paintings, photographs, and digital renderings inspired by Marvel comics and horror films of the past. Now a…
Plein air, plenty of fun, and a chance to make art a communal experience: That’s this Sunday’s Quick Draw art event sponsored by the Broward Art Guild in the heart of Wilton Manors. And you needn’t be a professional artist to participate. In fact, the event has two adult categories…
Now that we’ve doused the sorrow and shame of the past year in alcohol, it’s time to look toward the future. We’re not talking about the new year here; that’s for amateurs. We’re talking about the future, you know, the future that makes you shudder when it’s brought up by…
You can feel experimental activity inside the walls of the Bubble — on every occasion, creative types are encouraging music, art, dance; they’re thinking creatively inside its warehouse walls as well as outside in the back, on the gravel, grass, and dirt. At one gathering, Trav of Travalonia serenaded his…
Because Jeff Daniels seems to be a fundamentally decent human being, it feels gauche to mention that he’s most famous for depicting a loose-boweled, snot-streaked imbecile who trades cane blows with Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber. (Beware, kiddies: You never know what of your work will enthrall people and…
People might give Wilton Manors all the credit as the center of gay cheer and merrymaking in South Florida, but years ago, Lake Worth was voted the most gay-friendly city of its size. And before Lake Worth’s Propaganda became a hotbed of indie rock and hipsterlicious schmoozing, it was one…
It can be hard sometimes to find authenticity in modern-day, fast-paced, ever-expanding South Florida. It seems like every new business is a chain – prepackaged and shiny with a big corporate logo. Locals search out the mom & pops’ and the locally owned which can be hard to find. One…
“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” Actress Gloria Swanson delivered this line in the 1950s film Sunset Boulevard, which marked a special point in film history also known as the “Golden Age”: a time of bright lights and big stars. Thursday at the Norton Museum of Art’s…
