Film: Playwright August Wilson began his chronicle of the African-American experience throughout the 20th century, one decade at a time, with 1984’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a fictional look at the so-called “Mother of the Blues” in a tension-filled recording session at a Chicago race label in 1927. Now director George C. Wolfe has brought the tale to the screen, with a pair … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 12-13, 2020
Film: Just in time with the opening of movie theaters in Palm Beach County comes the season’s most anticipated release, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. Anything from the writer-director who gave us the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Memento and others would be a must-see, but Tenet is his most ambitious and audacious film yet. Part science fiction, part spy-versus-spy action … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 3-5
Music: The very last concert Franz Joseph Haydn attended in his life was in March 1808, about a year before he died, when he was carried, seated on an armchair, into the University of Vienna to hear his oratorio The Creation, in a performance conducted by Antonio Salieri. Haydn was too ill to stay for the whole piece, but the reverence he was shown that day was due in part to … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks, April 21-22
Film: Veteran British filmmaker Mike Leigh is known for his low-key, low-budget contemporary tales of the politically downtrodden, but his latest, Peterloo, breaks from that mold with an epic history of a Manchester massacre in the summer of 1819. That is when armed forces on horseback charged into a crowd of 60,000 demonstrators out for electoral reform, killing 15 of them and … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Feb. 15-17, 2019
Film: Major League Baseball culminates each season with the World Series, but to find the true global champion, you have to view the World Baseball Classic, a tournament among 16 national teams, held every four years. Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel chronicles the 2017 Classic where Israel was a surprise contender because of loophole by that country which says that anyone … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Feb. 3
Music: New music is beginning to appear with more regularity on concert programs these days, and a case in point is this afternoon’s presentation by The Symphonia of Boca Raton. Composer Bruce Adolphe, best-known as the creator of the Piano Puzzler riddles on NPR’s Performance Today, wrote a violin concerto in 2014 inspired by the life of Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a German who spoke … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Jan. 18-20
Film: You would be understandably wary of the latest John C. Reilly movie if you made the mistake of seeing Holmes & Watson recently, but his latest buddy picture, Stan & Ollie, is really quite entertaining. No, really. Reilly plays Oliver Hardy to Steve Coogan’s Stan Laurel in a biography that focuses on the latter years of their performance partnership as they toured Great … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Jan. 4-6, 2019
Film: At 85, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is having a very good year at the movies. First came RBG, the documentary of her personal and professional life, which could tire out a person half her age. And now, opening this weekend at area theaters, is a feature film – On the Basis of Sex – which focuses on the Brooklyn-born glass ceiling buster as she challenges the … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 25-26
Art: The Palm Beach Photographic Centre in downtown West Palm Beach feels more like an office than an art gallery, but there’s almost always something worth seeing in its free shows. Opening today is the 22nd annual Members’ Show, which features the work of no less than 70 photographers, curated by Scott McKiernan, who heads the Zuma press agency. As with most photographic … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 3-5
Theater: Oklahoman Woodrow Wilson Guthrie is the subject of a stirring musical revue, Woody Guthrie’s American Song, which celebrates this poet of the people who began by celebrating the nation but grew increasingly political as the Great Depression widened the economic inequities in the country. At Palm Beach Dramaworks, director Bruce Linser pulls together a multi-talented … [Read more...]