The road from Walter Cronkite and his generation of stoic newsreaders to the wild-eyed, pro-wrestling-style rantings of Alex Jones is paved through Mike Wallace. That’s one of the takeaways, not all of them positive and certainly not all hagiographic, that viewers can glean from Mike Wallace Is Here, a complex portrait of the influential TV reporter famous for his … [Read more...]
Archives for August 2019
Polo Club residents try their luck with ‘Boca Bound,’ new musical at The Wick
Bonnie Logan and Richard Peshkin readily concede that they are novices when it comes to writing musicals, but that is what has occupied much of their time for the past two years. If all goes well at their four-night premiere run beginning Sept. 19 at the Wick Theatre, their show – Boca Bound: A New Musical – may be bound for productions at regional theaters all across the … [Read more...]
Artist Prusa maps the infinite through painstaking silverpoint
What if Stephen Hawking had been an artist? What would his theories look like as physical representations of the universe and the cosmos? Carol Prusa, a Boca Raton artist and professor of painting and drawing at FAU, just might have that answer. In her new exhibit for the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Carol Prusa: Dark Light, curated by Kathleen Goncharov, the senior curator … [Read more...]
Gripping ‘Nickel Boys’ tracks racism’s reach in the Panhandle
Colson Whitehead won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his novel The Underground Railroad, a compelling story of slaves escaping from Southern plantations on a fictional below-ground train. Now he follows that masterpiece with the story of a brutal boys’ reform school in the Florida Panhandle. The central character is a black … [Read more...]
In St. Petersburg: AI tech brings Dalí’s boast, and himself, to life
Salvador Dalí once said, “I’m going to live forever. Geniuses don’t die.” Now we know he was right. The eccentric surrealist master personally greets us with his trademark mustache at the entrance of his museum in St. Petersburg. He is in high spirits and great shape – considering it’s been 30 years since his death. The START button on a human-size screen is all it takes … [Read more...]
In sold-out Boca show, Aristocrats prove to be lords of jazz fusion
A longtime bastion for touring blues artists, and more recently for ones playing funk, the Funky Biscuit in Boca Raton recently instituted a welcomed series of notable jazz/fusion acts. Those include bands led by drummer Billy Cobham (on Sept. 22), guitarist Oz Noy (Nov. 5), and drummer Simon Phillips (March 26, 2020). Jump-starting the procession on Thursday was a … [Read more...]
Moore, Williams lift ‘After the Wedding’ out of its rote-ness
Like the proverbial after-school special, the Lifetime Original Movie is an institution that is summarily dismissed by us snoots in the film-critic intelligentsia. Never mind that most of us have never actually sat through one: to tarnish a major motion picture with a comparison to the network proffering weepies and you-go-girl triumphalism is to deem it unserious and … [Read more...]
Bassist Beller brings funk-fusion trio to Boca’s Funky Biscuit
Music has a history of artists deserving of wider recognition — especially instrumentalists — and especially now, in the modern era of TV shows that only hype singers and dancers toward their 15 minutes of fame. Los Angeles-based bassist Bryan Beller is on the current short list of those most deserving musicians. The 48-year-old native of Charlottesville, Va., has gained … [Read more...]
‘The Art of Racing in the Rain’: A dog’s breakfast of clichés
The kindest words I can summon about The Art of Racing in the Rain, Disney’s long-awaited adaptation of Garth Stein’s best-selling 2008 airport novel, is that it’s essentially harmless. It’s not a painful experience, and millions will love it unconditionally, as one loves a dog. To pile on about its turgid writing, its artless direction and its hokey, retrograde messaging … [Read more...]
Beethoven Septet wraps fine PBCMF season smartly
By Dennis D. Rooney The final program of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s 28th season, which I heard July 28 at the Crest Theatre in Delray Beach, opened with a Trio in E (WQ 162) by Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach (1714-1788), the second son of Johann Sebastian. While acknowledging the musical foundation received from his father, C.P.E. Bach was a central figure in … [Read more...]