Touted as a comedy-thriller, Corpse! is more accurately a thriller-comedy in which the suspenseful plotting of Act I gives way to farce in Act II. Picture a film adaptation of an Agatha Christie mystery starring Benny Hill, and you’ll have some idea of the myriad plot twists and loony slapstick…
The problem with “Sandro Chia: New Work” is not the art itself, some of which is quite impressive, but its presentation. The show, which runs through March 15 at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, feels haphazard, thrown together, as if someone had hastily put up some pictures in the…
Thursday January 29 “Peace and love.” That was the message during the ’60s, and pop artist Peter Max was one of the messengers. His Love poster was just that: a psychedelic, bubble-lettered version of the word. And the subject of Dove, his other breakout work, became a ’60s icon. Over…
Bent at the waist, with one ear near the rim of a large hand drum, Jim Seidel listens as first-timer Gary Ling beats out a rhythm at the Roots of Rhythm drum session at Wild Oats Community Market in Fort Lauderdale. A professional percussionist who helped get the weekly gathering…
Careening around a racetrack at 200 miles per hour with Michael Andretti is no Sunday drive. In fact, as he downshifts to take a curve, you may find yourself hitting a brake pedal that isn’t there, thanks to the IMAX film Super Speedway. Featuring surround-sound audio and Doppler radar-like visuals,…
You will give yourself a migraine if you attempt to divine a theme running through the 26 films that make up the fifteenth Miami Film Festival. Don’t bother trying. A readily apparent theme does not exist — not that one needs to. International in everything but name, this year’s renewal…
The Othello Project, which is now on stage at the Florida Shakespeare Theatre in Coral Gables, takes its Deep South setting and part of its title from “The Mississippi Project,” in which more than 800 college students from the North traveled down South to promote black voter registration in the…
Rarely when watching a late-night airing of Smokey and the Bandit does one’s mind wander to Shakespeare. Okay, it probably never happens, but fans of classic theater have Burt Reynolds to thank for bringing the Bard to Palm Beach County — at least in part. Reynolds was getting his Jupiter…
Thursday January 22 Without snow, what’s the use of skis? The modern dance troupe Momix has a provocative answer. In “Skiva,” two dancer-illusionists — one male, the other female — hover, bend, and sway sensually, using the leverage of the skis they’re wearing (plus their taut abs) to make seemingly…
The tourism industry may not be too fond of the way novelist Elmore Leonard depicts South Florida, but that’s what makes some of his books such great reads. “The contrast is what I liked there, with the old people lined up in front of their hotels with their nose shields…
One of the conceits to which every critic must be genetically predisposed is the idea that, at the end of the day, his or her opinion actually matters. That some unknown phantasm at a nonspecific coffee shop sits immersed in said critic’s latest ill-advised screed, imbibing every word as if…
After Santa’s overstuffed sack of Oscar qualifiers is disgorged in December, Hollywood follows by dumping its lost-cause features during the first few weeks of the new year. In recent years these have included the airplane “thriller” Turbulence (1997), Bio-Dome and Two If by Sea (1996), and Cabin Boy (1994). This…
Critics and audiences outside France have been going on for so long about the decline of French cinema that it’s fun to see a French film — Irma Vep — that says much the same thing. The rap is, of course, somewhat unfair — most raps are — but there’s…
James Joyce’s work is an acquired taste. Whereas the late Irishman’s short-story collection Dubliners (1914) is an easy read, the experiments in style in his later novels have always banned them from my beach bag. Not willing to thread my way through the stream-of-consciousness narrative of A Portrait of the…
Gertrude Stein, no stranger to the art world, once famously dismissed sculpture by complaining that “one always has the bother of being able to walk around it.” Harsh words, perhaps, but whenever I see some of the massive heaps of metal and stone foisted on us as public art, I’m…
Swedish director Jan Troell’s Hamsun, starring Max von Sydow, is easily the greatest film I’ve seen in years. It takes you as far out as you can go — to the limits of feeling. As a movie about a great and grievous artist made by an artist of equal rank,…
The suitcases were small, about the size of today’s carry-on luggage, and made of thick, brown cardboard with leather-reinforced corners. They were probably from the Fifties or Sixties, but what was inside was even older. “It’s something we came across while accessioning the collections and cataloging everything,” explains Broward County…
Ken Benjamin likes to bang on things. And he loves to dance. With that in mind, the Deerfield Beach dancer auditioned two years ago for the touring company of Stomp, the off-Broadway hit in which performers use everything from trash-can lids to basketballs to pound out rhythms. “I like to…
Thursday January 15 Professional golfers swing into Pompano Beach today for the South Florida Classic golf tournament, a Nike tour event that will benefit the Adam Walsh Children’s Fund, the education, endowment, and special-events division of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The four-day tournament will air live…
Martin Scorsese’s Kundun is a deeply ceremonial experience — like watching a serene pageant of colors, rituals, and costumes. It tracks the life of the Dalai Lama — recognized as the fourteenth reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion and the spiritual and political leader of Tibet — from his childhood…
The recent referendum creating Miami-Dade County is just the latest sign the area is suffering from an identity crisis worse than Sally Field’s in Sybil. While the county government proffers the Miami moniker as an all-purpose consumer label, many residents would be hard-pressed to describe themselves as typical Miamians. It’s…
He calls them his “cop pictures.” Viewers might call them something else. California artist Chris Hero is referring to a series of paintings — graphic, large-scale oils — that illustrate his vision of how police and other institutions of power affect the world in ways that vary drastically from their…
