When I walked out the front door of my oceanfront condo in Long Beach and found that Showtime’s Dexter was being filmed there on the beach, I felt like I’d arrived. I got hooked on the series about the serial killer with the heart of gold in 2007 while I was visiting Finland and hatching my first escape plan from Florida. Normally adventurous and independent, I’d tried … [Read more...]
Letter from Los Angeles: A South Florida writer remakes her identity
I moved to Los Angeles a year-and-a-half ago with great hope: for new perspective and new love. After 40 years in South Florida, the new perspective has been great. And the love is still mine, even if the man isn’t. And hope: it springs eternal, right? Back home, I was a hard-working and hard-partying South Florida writer, performer, event producer and educator. Since I’ve … [Read more...]
PB Cultural Council seeks artist input; Bolge to lead Museum of Florida Art
The Palm Beach Cultural Council is holding a series of Artist Conversations beginning tonight and running over the next two weeks. The gatherings, which are scheduled for four cities, are designed to gather input from the artist community in order to guide the council. Rena Blades, the council’s chief executive officer, will lead the discussions. Conversations are set for: … [Read more...]
Lauderdale Film Fest enters 26th year feeling expansive
The oldest consecutively running such event in Florida, the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival (FLIFF), returns this week for its 26th incarnation, with an ambitious lineup and a far-reaching program. Opening Friday and running through Nov. 11, FLIFF features six world premieres, 15 U.S. premieres, 61 Florida premieres and more than 150 films from more than two dozen countries, … [Read more...]
‘Six Years’ too shallow, soapy to make strong impact
In case you have bought the way World War II’s “greatest generation” has been idealized, playwright Sharr White now asks theatergoers to see those noble souls in a new, darker light. His melodramatic play Six Years considers the plight of that generation through the microcosm of shattered war veteran Phil Granger and his anguished wife, Meredith. We observe them in five … [Read more...]
Clever ‘Mr. Peanut’ part psychological study, part police procedural
Death by dieting isn’t necessarily a case of anorexia. In Adam Ross’s original yet perplexing debut novel, Mr. Peanut, a young wife is found murdered after she manages to lose more than 100 pounds. The murder weapon is a plate of peanuts, the number one suspect her heft-loving husband who swears he didn’t do it. Over the course of their 13-year marriage, Alice Pepin had tried … [Read more...]
Psychedelic Furs let strong catalog speak for itself
The best furs don’t come from dead animals: they come with guitars, they jump and down, and they sing songs with a distinctive raw voice. British rockers The Psychedelic Furs are very much alive and still on the run, and they proved it song after song Friday night at Fort Lauderdale’s Culture Room. A simple stage, with no other adornment but the music, accompanied the band … [Read more...]
Summer Shorts No. 16 is leaner, shorter, and funnier than ever
There was every reason to be worried about this year’s Summer Shorts, the 16th annual collection of stage vignettes that has become a much-anticipated seasonal fixture in South Florida. The number of 5-to-20-minute scenes had been reduced to only seven, in a single program instead of the usual two. The company of performers had shriveled to a mere five -- about half as many as … [Read more...]
Pianist Uryvayeva makes good showing in complete Chopin Etudes
Frederic Chopin created art amid exercise when he wrote his two collections of Etudes (Opp. 10 and 25, and not counting the three he wrote in 1839 for Fetis), and with the exception of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes, they far outdistance every other such pedagogical work of their time. Perhaps the monumentality of the challenge – like doing the complete 48 of Bach’s … [Read more...]
Asner as FDR: From one liberal icon to another
He has played a slave ship captain in Roots, Pope John XXIII, adventurer Carl Fredericksen in Pixar’s Up and, of course, Lou Grant, the role that earned him five of his seven Emmy Awards. But for Ed Asner, 81, the opportunity to become Franklin Delano Roosevelt for a couple of hours each night was too good to resist. Around the Kansas City household where young Ed grew up, … [Read more...]