Mary Anne Schwalbe and her son Will shared a longtime passion for books. She had been a dean at Harvard and Radcliffe and he was editor-in-chief of a major New York book publisher. When Mary Anne was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2007, the two decided to read books together in what he later dubbed “The End of Your Life Book Club.” Will Schwalbe describes his growing … [Read more...]
Archives for October 2012
Weekend arts picks: Oct. 27-30
The story could easily be a crude Fox sitcom or a schmaltzy reality series: An Israeli newborn and a Palestinian newborn are switched during a bomb scare in Haifa, Israel, a fact that neither discovers until their 18th birthdays. Instead, in The Other Son, this programmatic, easily exploitable story is played with tender care, cultural awareness and fabled resonance by … [Read more...]
The triumph – and failure – of ‘Cloud Atlas’
There is at least one masterpiece in the bulky, multistoried, socio-political-philosophical edifice known as Cloud Atlas. It’s a narrative set in “neo-Seoul” in the year 2044. In a visionary futurescape somewhere between Blade Runner and The Fifth Element, the world is divided between humans and synthetic, cloned “fabricants,” though the relationship is just another variation … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2012-13: A season of change for local opera
After years of retrenchment and cutbacks, the area’s opera companies are moving ahead in positive directions in the coming season. Although both South Florida companies haven’t added back the productions they once cut, there are signs of a return to artistic daring, and the Sarasota company is offering a world premiere of an American opera. And the popular high-definition … [Read more...]
For Kingston, in the beginning was the word
Maxine Hong Kingston first became aware of the importance of language when she went to kindergarten in Stockton, Calif., where she grew up the child of Chinese immigrants. “I spoke Chinese only until I started school,” Kingston says by phone from her home in Oakland, Calif. “I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. I couldn’t communicate.” That first experience of … [Read more...]
Raitt mesmerizes big audience at Mizner show
Sunday, Oct. 21, was particularly long for Bonnie Raitt. The day before she and her band had headlined Magnoliafest in Live Oak, and she was hoping for a nice rest in Boca Raton before her show at the Mizner Park Amphitheater. Unfortunately for Raitt, the presidential debate had claimed every room in the neighborhood, so as she noted, they found a hotel “farther up the beach.” … [Read more...]
The View From Home 42: Recent releases on Blu-ray and DVD
The View From Home may have seemingly taken a couple of months off, but our intrepid cineaste never stopped watching movies. Here are some highlights (and a couple of lowlights) to hit Blu-ray and DVD shelves in September and October. For almost 10 years, 1977’s The Devil, Probably (Olive, $22.46) has been on my personal short-list of Holy Grail films never released on DVD, … [Read more...]
Broadway standout McDonald to headline 7th Boca arts fest
BOCA RATON – Broadway star Audra McDonald and an appearance by Miami Beach’s New World Symphony are among the concerts scheduled for the seventh incarnation of the Festival of the Arts Boca, officials said today. The festival, which marries the worlds of literature and music each year at venues in and around Mizner Park, is set for March 7-16. A partial schedule of writers was … [Read more...]
Rudin show offers glimpses of five rising photo stars
Sometimes not having made it pays off. Just ask the five photographers currently showing their work at the Norton Museum of Art and competing for a $20,000 award. They are the finalists of a new international photography competition the museum is hoping to turn into a new tradition called the Rudin Prize for Emerging Photographers, for which one of the requirements is to … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Oct. 20-21
The documentary Side by Side, which opened Friday and runs through this week at the Lake Worth Playhouse, is as inside-baseball as movies get. An unlikely passion project for narrator Keanu Reeves, this studious doc features Reeves interviewing countless directors, cinematographers, producers, editors and actors about the inexorable transition from 35mm celluloid to hi-def … [Read more...]