“It’s the same story told over and over again,” says Sam Elliott’s character toward the end of Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born. He’s talking about the form of popular music, whose 12 bars inspire endless variations on a shared structure. He could also be talking about A Star is Born itself, Hollywood’s grim, self-critical appraisal of the vagaries of celebrity — first filmed … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2018-19: Fall film
The fall brings a better class of films with it, and particularly so this year with a handful of major directors, like Damien Chazelle, Barry Jenkins and Steve McQueen, checking in with their follow-up releases after such acclaimed efforts as La La Land, Moonlight and 12 Years a Slave. And any season that features a newly completed film by the late Orson Welles has to be … [Read more...]
Arts Preview 2017-18: The season in pop
The 2017-2018 season in South Florida pop music feels like a changing of the guard, since there aren’t the usual megastar visits from Adele, U2, Madonna or Beyoncé. Sure, there are the occasional predictable senior citizen stars in Ringo Starr, the Zombies, David Crosby, and The Time, all before the close of the year. But for the most part, perhaps as a signal that the … [Read more...]