Remember the good old days when it seemed like every comedy and action movie pandered to teenage boys with disposable incomes? Back in the first decade of the Aughts, when Stallone and van Damme were languishing in direct-to-video purgatory and Arnold Schwarzenegger was governing, we saw the rise of millennial cash cows like Jason Statham, Robert Pattinson and Channing Tatum. … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 15-16
The durable Oklahoma oil hand-turned country singer Toby Keith is in town tonight at the Cruzan Amphitheatre, with the rising Brantley Gilbert as his opener. Keith’s Live in Overdrive tour should be extra-charged this week because of the ongoing attacks on the various U.S. embassies in Middle East hotspots after the Sept. 11 anniversary, one of which claimed the life of the … [Read more...]
The View From Home 39: New releases and notable screenings, June 11 to July 8
Today’s boring, mass-produced, digitized, one-size-fits-all uniformity of cinematic projection would leave no room for an iconoclast like William Castle. The late director of more than 50 B-movies – bearing titles like Zotz! and Let’s Kill Uncle – was a veritable industry of site-specific theater innovation. At least 11 of his movies from 1958 to 1975 were accompanied by … [Read more...]
Saxophonist Mintzer finds new inspiration in organ, drums
Veteran jazz saxophonist Bob Mintzer didn't have to look far to find inspiration for the title of his latest CD, Canyon Cove. The disc is named for the street his house sits on in Hollywood, Calif., and which also happens to be the former residence of classical composer Arnold Schoenberg. “He's probably rolling over in his grave because a jazz musician is living in his house," … [Read more...]
‘God of Carnage’ exposes the beasts within
There is a lot more carnage then there are signs of God in Yasmina Reza’s 2009 Tony Award-winning best play, God of Carnage, which opens this evening at the Caldwell Theatre Company in Boca Raton. As she did with her earlier acclaimed comedy Art, Reza enjoys conjuring up adults moved by circumstances to act childishly. In that earlier play, it was three men, long-time friends … [Read more...]
Women’s film saluted in first-ever Palm Beach festival
Last year, when Kathryn Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker, that marked the first Oscar to go to a woman for Best Director. Women have made strides in the film industry, however slowly, but to see the range of movies -- from deadly serious to downright frivolous -- that female directors and screenwriters are generating, there is now the Palm Beach Women’s International Film … [Read more...]
Theater roundup 1: ‘Sound of Music’ without syrup; a rethought ‘Les Miz’
There must be some theatergoers who have never seen Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, but not many. Performed perpetually by high schools and community troupes, it would be hard to miss, and then there’s that syrupy, Oscar-winning move version that keeps showing up on cable TV. Director-choreographer Marc Robin gave himself quite a challenge when he approached the … [Read more...]
Cellist Gabetta a standout at Detroit SO concert
If Sol Gabetta had done nothing else besides come out and play her concerto, the young Argentine cellist might have attracted additional attention for the balletic, kinetic way she moved behind her cello, or the way she smiled and nodded her head along with the music during the moments she wasn’t playing. But Gabetta also came out and did a fascinating encore, and with that, … [Read more...]
Cellist deMaine to play all Beethoven’s cello works in two Boca concerts
The cultural-event marathon is one of the most absorbing pleasures in the world of the arts, a chance for fans of a genre or a specific body of work to immerse themselves and give themselves wholly over to the featured creations. Pianists have milestones such as the complete Well-Tempered Clavier of Bach or all 32 of the Beethoven sonatas, for instance, and cellists also have … [Read more...]
Playwright Seth Rozin explores faith, humor
Playwright Seth Rozin is the founder and producing artistic director of Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre Company. But when it came to premiering his latest script, Two Jews Walk Into a War . . ., he thought that Florida Stage was a better fit. So continuing in Manalapan through Nov. 29 is the seriocomic tale of a Middle Eastern Odd Couple, the last two Jews left alive in … [Read more...]