“Et Tu Little Death, Brute?”

Once again, mainstream pop culture is wrong — so you can go ahead and eradicate whatever thoughts Pink’s new pop song stirs up with its lyrics “This used to be a Funhouse/But now it’s full of evil clowns” — like that’s a bad thing! If Pink knew what we knew…

Happy New Year, Love Your Outfit

One imagines — in those deadline-driven moments when one is paid to imagine — that our American-style New Year’s Eve must seem somewhat staid, even rote, to a gay porn star. This is the date, after all, when civilians pack together in too-warm apartments, messily uncorking champagne bottles, watching a…

“I’ll Be Broke for Christmas”

What happens when a bunch of embittered Capitol Hill staffers turn into singers and songwriters? The Maltz Jupiter Theatre (1001 E. Indiantown Road, Jupiter) gets serenaded with bipartisan political satire, that’s what. It’s a must-see show for anyone who wants to laugh at the withering away of democratic politics that…

A Queen-Sized Show

It’s 11:59 on New Year’s Eve and you have that sinking feeling that the next 60 seconds will foreshadow how the entire year of 2010 pans out. If you want your year to be filled with moments of girlish glamour, bawdy humor, and second acts and spent in the company…

Broken Embraces Shows Pedro Almodóvar Still Believes in Pedro Almodóvar

“Everything’s already happened to me,” laments Harry Caine, the blind, middle-aged filmmaker in Broken Embraces. “All that’s left is to enjoy life.” ¡Sí! His own sights set low these days in his latest movie, reformed bad boy Pedro Almodóvar has at least hit on a vivid metaphor for his diminished…

Fantasy Meets Harsh Reality as Rob Marshall Takes on a Fellini Classic in Nine

There’s no city-clogging traffic jam in Nine, the musicalized version of Federico Fellini’s movie-about-moviemaking urtext 8 1/2, but the result feels like the celluloid equivalent of a 12-car pileup. An assault on the senses from every conceivable direction — smash zooms, the ear-splitting eruption of something like music, the spectacle…

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeaquel Offers Capable Mediocrity

Closing out a pretty great year for children’s movies — Up, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Coraline among them — Betty Thomas’ dutiful animated and live-action sequel to 2007’s Alvin and the Chipmunks brings up the rear with capable mediocrity. It’s not entirely Thomas’ fault: What are you going…

Robert Downey Jr. Plays a Hipster Sherlock Holmes

As overemphatic as one might expect from the ham-fisted Guy Ritchie, this resurrection of the world’s most famous detective is a dank, noisy affair that unfolds in a gloomy London that seems a bootleg copy of A Christmas Carol’s CGI set. Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective was, in essence, a master…

The Young Victoria

Man, British heritage cinema can be dull and boring when assembly-lined for the export market. Laboring under lampshade millinery, hair that looks like cake, and more sumptuous banqueting than we should ever have to sit through, Emily Blunt is cute, sassy, and wildly improbable as the titular majesty-in-waiting, who, in…

A Single Man

A triumph of art direction over actual direction, fashion designer Tom Ford’s debut feature is nothing if not a master class in sartorial excellence, freshly exfoliated skin, and modern Southern California architecture. Based on Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, A Single Man encompasses one day in the life of George Falconer…

Ghosts in the Cloud Chamber

According to classical physics, the universe could be imagined as a giant billiards table. An indeterminate number of years ago, some great force broke the ball rack with a giant pool cue. Since then, the billiard balls — the particles that make up the stars and you and me and…

Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin Can’t Save It’s Complicated

Once more into the breach goes writer/director Nancy Meyers to show us what women really want, this time with Meryl Streep as a Santa Barbara restaurateur “of a certain age” faced with a smattering of life-altering crises. In Meyers’ most thinly veiled work of self-portraiture to date, Streep’s Jane Adler…

Case of the Mondays in the Corner Pocket

Mondays are oppressive. Your job has reestablished its control of your week, there’s no good television, and the Netflix you ordered on Sunday won’t ship in time to save you. It’s imperative you regain jurisdiction of your soul — and we all know there’s only one way to do that:…

Hit ’Em in the Lone Star

The Houston Texans have been a major pain in the Miami Dolphins’ ass the past three seasons. In 2006, Houston got a two-point victory thanks to a pair of David Carr (David F*%$ing Carr!) touchdowns. In 2007, Texans DT Travis Johnson nearly decapitated Fins QB Trent Green when Green tried…

The Other O’Neal

Remember when Jermaine O’Neal was a Miami Heat killer? There was nothing worse than showing up at American Airlines Arena (601 Biscayne Blvd., Miami) and seeing that number-seven Indiana Pacers jersey, because you knew that night the Heat were taking a loss. From the 2000-01 season, the year the Pacers…

Student-Teacher Shenanigans

According to Time, student-teacher sex, especially involving female teachers, is a “Florida epidemic.” Indeed, Google the phrase “student teacher Florida” and you’ll be met with enough reports on student-teacher sex to freeze a computer’s hard drive. Given all that, it seems questionable to stage the world debut of a play…

Post-Christmas Power-Pop Party

The day after Christmas is always a bit of a letdown — because if you don’t celebrate St. Nick’s Day, the holidays mean nothing, but if you do celebrate it, you’re stuck eating day-old mashed sweet potatoes with guests who haven’t split yet. Ditch the family and head to Propaganda…

The Case for the Caveman

The battle between the sexes has been waged for millennia, and it’s been fought with everything from violence and religion to the dreaded silent treatment. Now, a long-running, one-man comedy show coming to Broward Center for the Performing Arts’ Amaturo Theater (201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale) will explore the…

Queen B

Sex, power, and money are key for juicy storytelling. And the story of Queen Victoria has those three things in droves. Victoria became queen at 18, stayed in power for 63 years, oversaw an era of tremendous progress as well as one of the greatest expansions of the British Empire,…

For the Ungrateful Child in Your Family

You just spent Christmas Day opening presents, and instead of that sweet MacBook you wanted, your parents got you a Dell, a poor person’s P.C. Why do they hate you so much? Don’t they understand the status symbol of a Mac evokes greatness as you pretend to write the next…

Punk for the Holidays

Are holiday musical favorites getting you down? Do you hate the holidays? Celebrate a punk rock Christmas with Margate’s the Shakers, a band that formed in 1994 and whose blend of punk and hardcore would have been an appropriate addition during the Warped Tour’s early years. The band’s latest effort,…