Sweet Georgia, They Suck

If you can find a South Florida bookie taking bets on this Sunday’s b-ball squabble between the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals, let it ride on the underdog. After conceding something like 10,000 consecutive games to Harlem, the Generals are due for a win. And with the odds near…

Kiddie Gross-Outs

To be blunt, your kids know little about their bodies. Upon their birth, you became obligated to inform them on such things as sex, mucus, and pimples. So, we won’t be able to get you out of the sex talk, but we can send you to a place to help…

It’s Happy Hooker Night!

The most famous madame of “the world’s oldest profession” will be Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival’s special guest Monday night. This author, Penthouse columnist, performer, and raconteur is Xaviera Hollander. Her new documentary, Xaviera Hollander, the Happy Hooker: Portrait of a Sexual Revolutionary, will air at 8:15, followed by a…

Kaleidoscope Limbs

For most, yoga sessions are a chakra-aligning release from tension demons. But in the peculiar world of Tripsichore, those same postures are used to further the evolution of modern dance. These intricately choreographed vignettes harness the talents of lifelong yogis, like Tripsichore Yoga Theatre founder Edward Clark. He and his…

From Riches to Lesser Riches

Dwyane Wade is an unstoppable badass. He won his first career NBA All Star award two weeks ago, leading the East to a 141-139 victory in front of 108,713 fans at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. And to top that off, he led the East with 28 points, 11 assists,…

Finishing School

Those sparkly party platforms you bought over Christmas have been watching you, strappy, lifeless, and unused. You never had the guts or the preparation to wear them. A broken ankle, after all, didn’t sound like much of a party or the kind of holiday injury that results in no regrets…

Adventures in Wonderland

It’s Tea Party night at Underground Coffeehaus (2743 E. Oakland Park Blvd., Fort Lauderdale). The Underground tea partier knows this party isn’t for the fight of taxes — that no buckets of tea will be spilled in the Atlantic this evening. But that this party is for no other than…

Old Macdonald

Back in the days when Saturday Night Live wasn’t 90 minutes of digital suck, Norm Macdonald hosted “Weekend Update.” His onscreen gems include, after the announcement of a Kenny G./Michael Bolton Christmas album, saying: “Happy birthday, Jesus. Hope you like crap.” And after the O.J. Simpson acquittal saying: “Well, it’s…

Steichen’s Shots

“Edward Steichen: In High Fashion the Condé Nast Years, 1923-1937,” is a current photographic exhibition that will bring folks back to the glorious days before Photoshop could make any bulldog look like a beauty queen. Steichen shot glamorous celebrity and fashion portraiture for Vogue and Vanity Fair, capturing icons such…

Searching for the 4th Nail Provides Limited Insight into Gypsy Life

It’s hard to believe that Americans of Romani heritage (better known as Gypsies) still suffer social alienation. And Searching for the 4th Nail, a documentary that tries to explain the history of Gypsies while providing insight into their struggle for survival and respect, doesn’t really convince you that the alienation…

Happy Tears an Emotional Fraud

Continuing both his bad filmmaking and obsession with lethal orifices, Mitchell Lichtenstein follows up Teeth, his clumsy debut about a dismembering vagina, with a voluminous explosion of poop. The brown-out is produced by Joe (Rip Torn), a dementia-addled horndog whose two daughters, environmentalist Laura (Demi Moore) and married-into-money Jayne (Parker…

Laffing Matterz Serves Up Smart, Nutritious Comedy

Things begin well at Laffing Matterz when your leggy waitress brings the special appetizer of the evening: risotto balls in a mushroom and goat cheese sauce. The mere mention of the dish is sufficiently food-pornish to make even those who don’t dig dinner theater begin to feel a cautious optimism…

The Last Station a Workmanlike Adaptation of Tolstoy’s Last Days

Opening with balalaikas, scurrying agrarians in collarless shirts, and helpful intertitles announcing that Tolstoy was “the most celebrated writer in the world,” The Last Station threatens at first to be Tolstoy for Dummies as interpreted by Monty Python. Soon, though, this workmanlike adaptation of Jay Parini’s novel about Tolstoy’s last…

Paris 36‘s Imitation Is Highest Form of Flatulence

Assault by relentless accordion-playing, Paris 36 proves that sometimes, imitation is the highest form of flatulence. Christophe Barratier follows up his equally pandering The Chorus (2004) with an aggressively nostalgic, tinny homage to French musicals of the ’30s and ’40s. To distract viewers from the film’s shallowness and the fact…

Shutter Island by Martin Scorsese Is the Good Kind of Insane

Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, a florid art shocker that Paramount welcomed into the world with the strained enthusiasm of a mutant baby’s parents, begins with U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) seasick, head in the toilet. The film is his prolonged purging, with Daniels coughing up chunks of his backstory…

“Thou Shalt Steal.”

“Watch your children, and watch your chickens” when it comes to Gypsies — so warns a man on the trailer for the film Searching for the 4th Nail. When it comes down to it, people’s knowledge about Gypsies doesn’t stray much beyond fictional characters. American Gypsy filmmaker George Eli hopes…

Got Soul?

Are you one of the many Americans suffering from soul deprivation? If so, you would be well-advised to pay a visit on Sunday to Christopher’s (2857 E. Oakland Park Blvd., Fort Lauderdale). Grammy-winning soul singer Maya Azucena will deliver her unique musical medicine as part of the “Smooth Sounds of…

The Old Man and the Stage

It’ll be exciting to see how Caldwell Theatre adapts The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway’s 1952 novella, to the stage. After all, most of the action takes place on a skiff in the Gulf Stream, where a Cuban fisherman is trying to reel in a monster-sized marlin that…

Surf Busters

For the past several years, the surf-rock gods known as The Intoxicators! have traveled south for the annual Hukilau festival (June 10-13) to help blow sharks out of the water with their Dick Dale-inspired sounds. Hailing from our glorious phallic-shaped state’s capital, the foursome has created energetic new surf instrumentals…