This year, the Academy Awards turn 90, and the race for the best picture of 2017 is pretty wide open. This is certainly no runaway Titanic or Lord of the Rings year, and by the same token, as long as Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are kept far away from the envelopes, it seems unlikely that there will be audible gasps in the wee hours of the morning after Sunday. … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2018
‘The Party’: Where the drinks have nothing but bitters
The Party, renegade Briton Sally Potter’s first film in six years, is shot in a flat and unpretty black-and-white — no luminous chiaroscuro here. Rather, it’s a harsh and dressed-down cheapie, populated by actors whose drooping faces and worry lines betray minimal makeup. It reflects of a time in movie history when directors eschewed color for economy, not artistry. Shot … [Read more...]
Paper dresses at Four Arts, but not like you’ve seen before
By Georgio Valentino The Esther B. O’Keeffe Gallery of Palm Beach’s Society of the Four Arts is currently showing some of history’s most sumptuous costumes, from the gilded luxury of the Medici court to the embroidered splendor of the Silk Road to the whimsy of the Belle Epoque ballet stage. Except these aren’t dusty old originals. Fashioning Art from Paper is a … [Read more...]
Violinist Koh shows mastery in Boca Museum recital
By Dennis D. Rooney Jennifer Koh, a Chicago native and alumna of Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute where she studied with Jaime Laredo and Felix Galimir, was heard in recital on two succeeding days in Palm Beach County. Her first appearance was in Boca Raton, the second at The Breakers in Palm Beach. Both events were presented under the auspices of the Chamber Music Society of … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire’s ‘St. Matthew Passion’ simply glorious
By Robert Croan You don’t have to be a believer to be moved – overcome with emotion, even – by J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Although Bach composed this work for a Lutheran Good Friday service in 1727, repeating it with revisions in subsequent years, it has survived as a concert work. Patrick Dupré Quigley, director of Seraphic Fire’s splendid South Florida … [Read more...]
Huang shows new maturity in Barber with ACO
By Dennis D. Rooney This is a partial review. I was caught in a bad traffic jam on Interstate 95 northbound through Lake Worth that delayed my arrival in Palm Beach Gardens for a concert Feb. 14 by the Atlantic Classical Orchestra concert until the finale of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, which opened the program. I was in my seat by the time Sirena Huang appeared … [Read more...]
FAU’s student troupe tosses off a breezy ‘Rivals’
By Dale King Those sometimes antic, but always creative student actors at Florida Atlantic University have come up with some truly entertaining shows the past couple of years. Many, including the current production, take audiences back to the days of late 18th-century England, when manners really mattered and gentlemen wooed ladies with charm, grace and occasional … [Read more...]
‘Game Night’ has a monopoly on other people’s ideas
While enjoying, to a point, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s Game Night, I spent much of the picture wishing it had gone in a completely different, and subtler, direction. It’s easy to imagine some other project titled Game Night gestating and then languishing in the primordial muck of preproduction: a lo-fi, low-budget, semi-improvised mumblecore ensemble about a … [Read more...]
Contra-Tiempo’s ‘Agua Furiosa’ ambitious but uneven
When I am sitting in the audience, I have a certain expectation: I want to be rewarded. By the end of the performance, I want to take away a vision, a purpose or even just a feeling that makes me believe that the whole experience was worth my while. In a full-length work, this expectation is even more pronounced as there isn’t the option (as there is in a repertory program) … [Read more...]
Chicago Symphony, soloists give master class in elegance
You might not have realized it with the modest size of the Kravis Center audience Thursday afternoon, but a major American symphonic ensemble was there in West Palm Beach, making beautiful and fascinating music for an appreciative house. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which hasn’t toured her for more than a decade, offered two very different programs in its stay, on … [Read more...]