In Red Lights, Cillian Murphy comes this close to making out with Cillian Murphy. It happens in a rote nightmare sequence at the height of his character’s supernatural crisis. Cillian Murphy’s soul clings to the roof of his apartment, while Cillian Murphy’s body lies in bed, unblissfully asleep. The soul descends ever so slowly toward its host body, until it looks like the … [Read more...]
Archives for July 2012
Jazz’s Arriale shows mastery, growth at Arts Garage
A cynic might discern that the recent rush of solo jazz piano releases is more cost-cutting than musical, since only one artist needs to get paid while the CD costs the same afterward as one recorded by a full band. Some of the top jazz pianists from around the world, from Frenchman Jean-Michel Pilc to Japanese sensation Hiromi to American Lynne Arriale, have capitalized on … [Read more...]
Art and life blur in memorable Bedia retrospective at MAM
The idea to open José Bedia’s major career retrospective, now showing at the Miami Art Museum, with a painting of Coballende is a brilliant one. In the Afro-Cuban religion of Palo Monte, this god is the patron of the sick, the disabled and the homeless and wandering; his equivalent in Catholicism is St. Lazarus, and in Bedia’s sprawling acrylic on canvas, Coballende, like … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 27-30
Theater: Musicals rarely attract the major money they need for full production these days without developmental workshops and staged readings. This Monday evening or Tuesday afternoon at The Plaza Theatre in Manalapan, a new show called Borscht Belt Bistro (music and lyrics by Ken Mazur) gets a tryout, prior to what playwright Carrol Mendelson hopes will be a production here, … [Read more...]
Personable ‘Contrasts’ stands out in festival’s 3rd week
When Béla Bartók went into the Austro-Hungarian countryside starting in 1906, the folksongs he brought back underlay his compositions in different ways: Some were harmonizations, tart and otherwise, of Christmas carols and the like, while in other works he drew stronger stuff from the melodies he distilled. In a work such as Contrasts, written in 1938 for Benny Goodman, Joszef … [Read more...]
Journalist Wright tells Miami hit man’s story on Byliner site
Even though he uncovered the story, journalist Evan Wright never expected to write a full account of the drug cartel hit man from Miami who ― allegedly, as they say ― became a top CIA officer and a leading figure in the clandestine war against terror. On the contrary, Wright thought this story, which resembles The Departed, but on a bigger, more important stage, would be … [Read more...]
Edward Gorey, the gentle curmudgeon: At the Norton
The average museum visitor spends about 20 seconds looking at a work of art, but if you follow that guideline when you visit Elegant Enigmas: the Art of Edward Gorey, you’re going to miss a lot. The exhibit, which runs at the Norton Museum of Art until Sept. 2, contains more than 150 of the artist’s befuddling illustrations, sketchbooks, illustrated envelopes, book cover ideas … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: Lovely ‘Fantasticks’; uneven ‘Twelfth Night’
Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s The Fantasticks, the longest-running stage show in modern history at 17,162 consecutive performances, seems an easy show to produce, but it is hardly foolproof. I once saw a production that made the fatal mistake of enlarging its simple, elegant, piano and harp accompaniment to a full-size orchestra, adding a chorus of seven and lots of … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 21-22
Theater: GableStage and its artistic director Joe Adler have an affinity for the plays of David Mamet, so it was probably inevitable that he would bring to the area the wily wordsmith’s latest Broadway script, Race, which looks at three attorneys, two black and one white, offered a chance to defend a white man charged with a crime against a black woman. As the characters … [Read more...]
Williams’ performance lifts ‘Waltz’ into poignancy
Girl is married to boy. Girl meets new boy. Girl’s marriage is threatened. The plot of Sarah Polley’s new film, Take this Waltz, is as boilerplate as a romance paperback, but it’s filled with quiet revelations, anchored by yet another masterful performance from Michelle Williams. We all know that women can be just as hedonistically self-destructive as men – just as prone to … [Read more...]