How do you make Mount Everest laugh? Make a plan, of course. Plenty of intrepid climbers have made plans to summit the world’s highest mountain, and most live to tell about it. There have been more than 5,000 successful ascents as of 2013, but about 240 people have died on the mountain. Many of their corpses are still frozen on some godforsaken peak, ominous additions to the … [Read more...]
The View From Home 44: New releases on DVD and Blu-ray
Criterion has waited until December to release what should go down as one of the most monumental home video releases of the year: Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi Trilogy, packaged together in glorious Blu-ray for the first time ($53.99, same price for DVD). Three earth-shattering experimental features set to the music of Philip Glass, the Qatsi films are wordless symphonies of cities, … [Read more...]
Letter From Los Angeles 3: How I learned to stop hurting myself and get the win-win
Among my friends is a woman who moved here from Boston. Twenty-five years later, she still makes a point of putting Long Beach in her prayers. Our route to lunch often takes us along Alamitos Bay, where snow-capped peaks of purple mountains are a backdrop for the recreational waterway and its iconic red swim buoys. Before anyone picks up a fish taco, my friend thanks God for … [Read more...]
Dramaworks opens new home in superb style with ‘All My Sons’
Arthur Miller’s 1947 drama All My Sons, his first commercial success on Broadway, has numerous thematic and narrative similarities to Death of a Salesman, the Pulitzer Prize winner that premiered two years later. But if the earlier play has been under the shadow of the playwright’s masterwork, you would never know it from the powerful new production at Palm Beach Dramaworks. … [Read more...]
A first look at Dramaworks’ new home; Maltz seeks student actors
With no summer show this year, Palm Beach Dramaworks has been out of the media eye lately, so it invited the local theater press -- and a few politicos -- for a tour of the renovations of the Cuillo Centre in West Palm Beach, to demonstrate that it was on schedule to open Dramaworks’ new permanent home on Nov. 11 of this year. Yes, 11-11-11, for you numerology fans. According … [Read more...]
Welcome to our new home
Today, the launch of this version of the Palm Beach ArtsPaper site becomes official with the redirecting of our initial site – www.pbartspaper.com – to this one, www.palmbeachartspaper.com. If you’ve bookmarked the old site, you should end up here. If you are still interested in seeing the site as it was since our launch in November 2008, we’ve moved all that material to … [Read more...]
Fine art fair draws a different crowd to Convention Center
It’s remarkable. In a few short weeks, International Fine Art Expositions (IFAE) has transformed the Palm Beach County Convention Center from an über-cool, contemporary art warehouse that housed their Art Palm Beach fair into a refined country-manor home for the current American International Fine Art Fair (AIFAF). At the entrance, a four-spout fountain sits, surrounded by … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Poetry Festival bigger than ever
Miles Coon did not build the Palm Beach Poetry Festival into one of Florida’s top literary events in five short years by being cautious. After last year’s economically troubled festival, when one workshop had to be canceled for lack of enrollment, he knew prudence dictated a smaller, less ambitious plan for 2010. Instead, Coon chose a bolder path, increasing the … [Read more...]
Mancini legacy has new home in South Florida
Location, location, location. It's the well-known rule of real estate, but it also applies to musical institutions of higher learning. Witness the case of the Henry Mancini Institute. Founded by composer/conductor Jack Elliot in 1997 to honor its namesake Grammy-and-Oscar-winning composer (who died in 1994 of pancreatic cancer at age 70), the institute provided fully … [Read more...]