Finger-Lickin’ Fun

Despite the weather elsewhere, it is still barbecue season in South Florida. If you are over the same old backyard BBQ party, it’s time to take your efforts to the water. Join Riverwalk Fort Lauderdale as it transforms downtown Esplanade Park along the New River into the ultimate backyard barbecue…

Stand Up and Work It

You could file this one under “For Fans of Toastmasters, Full-Blown Anxiety, Uncomfortable Childhood Stories, and Long Awkward Pauses,” but as truly terrifying as it may initially sound, it’s no surprise it takes boatloads of courage and general badassery to enroll in a comedy workshop. If you’ve always wanted to…

A Whole New World

Fort Lauderdale is already home to one of the best and most intimate film festivals around, the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival. Right next door is Wilton Manors, which was ranked in the 2010 U.S. Census as the gayest city in America. So perhaps it is no surprise that for the…

A Local Fright Can Be Twice As Nice

Why make the schlep up to Universal Studios Orlando when you can experience just as much terror for half the price and less of a drive at the South Florida Fairgrounds’ annual Fright Nights. The expansive fairgrounds offers more than 21,000 square feet of spine-tingling fright, with tons of new…

Left Behind is Sinfully Boring

Every child who’s thrown a tantrum, packed a bag and plotted to run away has shivered with the same vengeful thought: I wish I could see how sad they’ll be when I’m gone. The Left Behind franchise implies that evangelicals haven’t grown up. This new film version, the latest in…

Gone Girl Is Smartly Crafted, Well Acted, and a Bit Too Slick

Everything about Gone Girl, David Fincher’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s enormously popular 2012 thriller about a deteriorating marriage and a wife gone missing, is precise and thoughtful — it’s as well planned as the perfect murder, with its share of vicious, shivery delights. But at the end of the perfect…

Hector‘s Simon Pegg Gets the Mitty Treatment

Simon Pegg has always been more like a cartoon than a real boy. He’s one part Charlie Brown to two parts Tintin, a round-faced runt who can channel both childlike depression and old-fashioned cowlicked pluck. In Pegg’s new film, Hector and the Search for Happiness, director Peter Chelsom simply allows…

Demonic Doll Movie Annabelle Is Surprisingly Unnerving

Annabelle, an effective prequel to horror pastiche The Conjuring, surpasses its predecessor simply by virtue of occasionally being scary. Both films are over-reliant on deafening sound effects and side-eye glimpses of underwhelming ghosts. But Annabelle’s scare scenes are better paced and more thoughtfully lensed. Its hokey, funhouse-worthy spooks — a…

Give Back, Get Swag

The plight of sufferers of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, grabbed national headlines last month when the Ice Bucket Challenge started popping up on everyone’s Facebook news feeds, and rightfully so, but there are many more incurable diseases that deserve as much attention. One of them is spinal muscular atrophy…

A Classic Flick

Where can you see classic films that are nothing short of excellence? The Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale will feature a one-time screening of the movie based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Alice Walker, The Color Purple. Directed by Steven Spielberg, this R-rated movie follows the trials and…

Bacon, Bacon, Bacon

Bacon, music, beer, and — well, did we mention bacon? On Friday, Riverwalk Fort Lauderdale and Covenant House Florida will host the inaugural Bacon Bash 2014 at Esplanade Park. Entrance to the event is free, but be sure to have cash on had to sample bacon-based and bacon-infused dishes. Bacon…

A Stitch in Time

For seven years and running, South Florida’s much-loved indie craft fair Stitch Rock has continued to help boost the numbers of folks leaving behind corporate consumerism for the DIY community. Each year as the bazaar approaches, the line of devotees ropes around the exterior of Delray Beach Center for the…

Get Up, Standup

South Florida’s premier comedy company, Sick Puppies Comedy, can effortlessly combine the elements of sketch, standup, and improv into one show. Drawing inspiration from its audience, these Sick Puppies travel throughout South Florida to create comedy shows unlike any other. Feeding off the crowd’s energy, there is no such thing…

A Play Date Night

Although it sounds like a soccer mom meetup with their toddlers in a sandbox somewhere in suburbia, Play Date, held at Infujion Lounge this Thursday, couldn’t be more on the opposite end of the spectrum. This version of Play Date takes the form of a chic date night — sophisticated,…

Laugh Out Loud

On Sunday, join The Pride Pups Comedy as its troupe of improv sketch artists, Pride Pups, presents a hilarious “gayprov” comedy show at Andrews Living Arts Studio in Fort Lauderdale. The Pride Pups troupe, which performs short- and long-form improv for live audiences all over South Florida, offers a show…

Let There Be Offerings

Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, as it is known here, is a festive and fun time for families to reconnect with their roots and ancestors. You might not be Mexican or of Mexican descent, but if you’ve ever enjoyed an Irish funeral without being from the…

Arts Garage Launches Women’s Theater Project

Since the beginning of live theater, women have gotten a raw deal. For an embarrassingly long time, from the ancient Greek to the English Renaissance period, women couldn’t even take the stage to play women. Cross-dressing men took those roles — a tradition that continues today in Japanese Kabuki theater…

Nice-Guy Denzel Kills in the Cartoonish Equalizer

Before its regular-Joe hero gets bitten by a radioactive equation and becomes the Equalizer, who’s sort of the Rain Man of puncturing Russian mobsters’ windpipes with corkscrews, Antoine Fuqua’s eye-gouging, brain-drilling, crowd-pleasing latest gives you a reel or two to remember what movies felt like back when they were about…