Film: The Academy Awards nominations were announced on Thursday and the following day, Mustang, France’s entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category opened locally. Actually, it is a co-production of France and Turkey, the story of five young, coltish girls from a seaside Turkish village whose stern grandmother is intent on keeping them virginal until she is able to marry … [Read more...]
Theater roundup”: ‘Big Fish,’ ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,’ and ‘Picnic’
Palm Beach County has lost one of its key producing troupes, as Slow Burn Theatre Company moves its operation to the Broward Center’s Amaturo Theater. But from the selection of Big Fish as its initial offering there, and from the skilled rendering of the problematic material, the five-year-old group demonstrates that it is more than ready to leave its high school auditorium … [Read more...]
The View From Home 73: Kieslowski, Lumet and Loach, with a Bujalski indie, a repressed maid, and a true-crime one-off
Blind Chance: Completed in 1981, promptly censored by Polish authorities for its alleged political radicalism, and subsequently shelved for six years, Kryzystof Kieslowski’s Blind Chance (Criterion, $26.19 Blu-ray, $22.99 DVD) is an astonishing work whose moral and ethical ideas, juggled like so many magicians’ balls, anticipate his ambitious breakthrough, The Decalogue. … [Read more...]
Ramsey Lewis: Ahead of his time, and with it, too
The term “crossover artist” wasn’t used much in jazz until after the fusion era (the jazz/rock explosion from the late ’60s to mid-’70s), and was coined when some jazz singers and musicians added pop and R&B elements to keep or increase their popularity. But 79-year-old pianist Ramsey Lewis has always proven ahead of his time. He even pre-dated fusion with his trio's … [Read more...]
Brilliant lead performance elevates sensitive, sincere ‘Theory’
OK, so there are a few cringe-worthy moments in The Theory of Everything, a muted and respectful biopic about an intellectually towering icon. The real Stephen Hawking, who is played in the film in a career-defining embodiment by Eddie Redmayne, would not stand for the sentimental score that attends the aftermath his on-screen diagnosis of ALS — the sweeping sadness that … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 15-16
Theater: Chita Rivera has been a Broadway star for the past 60 years, originating roles in such shows as West Side Story, Bye Bye Birdie and Chicago, as well as winning Tony Awards for The Rink and Kiss of the Spider Woman. Tonight, she will appear at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre in a one-woman retrospective of these musicals, singing numbers from them and kicking up her heels, … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 4: Theaters dark, but Legos illuminating
Mondays are even harder to find a show to see than Sunday nights. In fact, with most of the city’s museums closed, it was shaping up as a day without art. Until... After breakfast, I was walking the streets around Times Square when I spied a poster for the Discovery Museum and “the world's largest display of Lego art.” It seems there is a guy named Nathan Sawaya, a lapsed … [Read more...]
PB Symphony finale shows Tebar’s orchestra-building success
Ramón Tebar must be exhausted. Twinning conductorships of Palm Beach Symphony and Florida Grand Opera in Miami would sap the energy of another man. Not so the 35-year-old Tebar. He must have the strength of Hercules. Drawing on reserves of a champion soccer player last Sunday afternoon, April 6, he conducted a superb concert at the Kravis Center with the Palm Beach Symphony. … [Read more...]
‘King and I’ brilliantly reimagined at Maltz
Unlike most audience members, reviewers yearn to be surprised. If civilian theatergoers take comfort in the familiar, critics crave an encounter with the unexpected, particularly in a show they have viewed countless times before. Not that director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge makes novel staging choices for the sake of being different, but nor does she settle for the … [Read more...]
Talich Quartet ends Flagler music season in glorious fashion
The Flagler Museum Music Series ended its season Tuesday with the world famous Talich Quartet, and it was an evening of glorious music-making. Named for Vaclav Talich, conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra for many years, and founded by his nephew, Jan Talich in 1964. His son, also named Jan, now plays lead violin. As one can imagine, there has been considerable … [Read more...]