She signed her first record contract with Sony at age 16, and her career has only climbed steadily into the empyrean of classical music stardom since then. But it is a mark of the unpretentious, hardworking, homemade character of the professional life Hilary Hahn has built that while she could easily pull back and let the machinery of big fame bring gift-wrapped opportunity to … [Read more...]
Archives for October 2011
Dramaworks prepares for ‘wow’ at its new Clematis Street space
On Nov. 11, when Palm Beach Dramaworks cuts the ribbon on the Don & Ann Brown Theatre -- the former Cuillo Centre for the Arts, the 12-year-old stage company’s new home -- it will be the culmination of three years of purchase negotiations and a $2 million renovation project. All for a performance space that producing artistic director Bill Hayes actively disliked in its former … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Oct.28-30
Film: Director-screenwriter Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories) has made an involving yet disturbing new film about one man’s gradual drift into mental illness, Take Shelter. Michael Shannon (Bug, Reservation Road) again plays a guy who may not be playing with a full deck, a construction worker whose life becomes unraveled when he begins having nightmares about a coming apocalyptic … [Read more...]
‘Rum Diary’ only a fingerful when it comes to depth
Why do filmmakers continue to adapt Hunter S. Thompson’s unfilmable pseudojournalism into movies? Critics and audiences alike lambasted the Thompson adaptations Where the Buffalo Roam and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but that hasn’t prevented the green-lighting of The Rum Diary, a screen version of Thompson’s first published novel, about a freelance journalist’s … [Read more...]
Gripping ‘Margin Call’ has feel, relevance of Greek tragedy
Like most criminal activity, everything in Margin Call happens in the dead of night – one specific night, in this case. The movie’s well-dressed investment bankers, important fat cats in their self-contained worlds, are like single-celled mitochondria in the grand scheme of the financial collapse that will follow in their wake, as we watch them trudge, bleary-eyed, toward the … [Read more...]
PB film and Boca arts fests OK partnership under one board
Two of the largest South Florida arts events – the Palm Beach International Film Festival (PBIFF) and the Festival of the Arts Boca – are forming a partnership to create one large comprehensive festival of the cultural arts incorporating film, music, dance, books and authors. The boards of the Schmidt Family Centre for the Arts and the Festival of the Arts Boca have signed a … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire opens Boca series with heartfelt Victoria, Monteverdi
A vivid reading of a madrigal sequence by Monteverdi and a heartfelt performance of a Victoria hymn stood out Thursday night as the Seraphic Fire chamber choir opened its new series of regular performances in Palm Beach County. In its 10th season, Patrick Dupré Quigley’s professional chorus has arrived at an enviable place in South Florida musical life, having grown steadily … [Read more...]
Sampling the Fort Lauderdale Film Fest: Capsule reviews
Here are capsule reviews of some movies scheduled for the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival, which opens today: ABOUT FIFTY (10/21, 7:30 p.m., Sunrise Civic Theatre; 10/24, 6:15 p.m., Sunrise Civic Theatre; 10/29, 7 p.m., Muvico Pompano) -- Most rites-of-passage films have been about the mysteries of puberty, but as filmmakers age they begin confronting the latter passage of … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Oct. 21-23
Theater: West Boca’s Slow Burn Theatre Company, which is dedicated to edgy, offbeat musical theater, also knows how to have fun. And the 3-year-old troupe credits much of its popularity to last October’s tongue-in-cheek production of The Rocky Horror Show, the send-up of B-grade horror movies. So to open its season and help us ease into a Halloween mood, it is bringing Rocky, … [Read more...]
Lauderdale Film Fest enters 26th year feeling expansive
The oldest consecutively running such event in Florida, the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival (FLIFF), returns this week for its 26th incarnation, with an ambitious lineup and a far-reaching program. Opening Friday and running through Nov. 11, FLIFF features six world premieres, 15 U.S. premieres, 61 Florida premieres and more than 150 films from more than two dozen countries, … [Read more...]