Film: It doesn’t happen often, but a movie like Looper demonstrates that a science fiction/action picture can also be smart. Set in 2044, with a believable visual concept of the near future just before time travel is invented. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises) plays a looper, a paid assassin who knocks off convicts and other bad guys sent back from 30 … [Read more...]
Archives for September 2012
Palm Beach Opera’s Aprea leaves company; Fleisher gives Lynn master class
WEST PALM BEACH – The artistic director of the Palm Beach Opera has left the company, officials said Tuesday. Bruno Aprea, who has led musical aspects of the company’s productions and orchestral concerts since 2005, rejected the contract he was offered for the new season, said the company’s general director, Daniel Biaggi. The company has been restructuring to a more … [Read more...]
In new edition of ‘Farewell,’ a look at Hemingway’s creative process
Ernest Hemingway’s reputation as a master of 20th century American literature is based in part on A Farewell to Arms, his searing story of war and love, first published in 1929. This new edition of the esteemed novel adds 40 pages of jottings and drafts, including dozens of alternative endings, which show how much Hemingway struggled to get it right. Although the book is … [Read more...]
GableStage’s ‘Ruined’ is brutal but first-rate viewing
Pulitzer Prizes for drama are usually awarded for plays that reflect American life, yet Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, a remarkable and hard-edged tale of civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its collateral damage inside a bar/brothel caught in the crossfire, won the 2009 Pulitzer for its view of the human — and inhuman — condition that knows no national boundaries. … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 22-23
Theater: This weekend, Plantation’s Mosaic Theatre offers the area premiere of Nikolai Gogol’s The Diary of a Madman, in the new adaptation by, among others, Oscar and Tony Award winner Geoffrey Rush, who scored a personal performance triumph with the play in New York last season. Here, Ken Clement plays the lowly civil servant in tsarist St. Petersburg, teetering on the brink … [Read more...]
Flutist Anderson to perform iconic ‘Thick as a Brick’ at Kravis
Add to the list of Woodstock-era rockers who are still performing live in concert at Social Security age the name of Ian Anderson, who brought the flute to rock music through his high-concept former band, Jethro Tull. Forty years ago, he had an international hit with the progressive rock album Thick as a Brick, which he wrote with lyrics credited to a fictional 10-year-old … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 15-16
The durable Oklahoma oil hand-turned country singer Toby Keith is in town tonight at the Cruzan Amphitheatre, with the rising Brantley Gilbert as his opener. Keith’s Live in Overdrive tour should be extra-charged this week because of the ongoing attacks on the various U.S. embassies in Middle East hotspots after the Sept. 11 anniversary, one of which claimed the life of the … [Read more...]
Out of Lake Worth, an authentic African groove
The gods must be crazy, indeed. When the husband-and-wife founders of Lake Worth-based band Positively Africa (www.positivelyafrica.com), Julius and Julia Sanna, formed their group in 2007, it was to promote their native continent's rich culture and music. In their minds, the band’s name countered the cliched images of war and famine they’d seen on evening news broadcasts since … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 8-9
Film: Now that journeyman actress Melissa Leo has won an Oscar (for The Fighter), she should gain the clout to get her films general distribution, but t hasn’t happened yet. That is why her first-rate performance as a drug-addicted mom struggling with submitting herself to a rehab clinic in Why Stop Now is opening locally at the Mos’Art Theatre in Lake Park, even in this … [Read more...]
FGO names Sarasota Opera’s Danis as its new CEO
MIAMI ― A new general director and chief executive officer will lead the Florida Grand Opera in the 2012-13 season. Susan T. Danis joins the Florida Grand Opera on Oct. 9. Danis is the fourth general director and CEO in the opera’s 72-year-history. Robert Heuer, the company’s CEO for 32 years, retired in May. A self-proclaimed “opera geek,” Danis spent almost 14 years … [Read more...]