Ross Katz’s adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ The Choice opens with a bold, un-back-up-able statement: “I’m about to tell you the secret of life,” delivered in voice-over by a mournful man who shows up at a hospital with flowers for his beloved. He shares some vaguely cryptic, archly ponderous dialogue with a doctor, words delivered solely for the audience’s benefit. The brief … [Read more...]
‘Watchman’ a letdown, not least for Scout
Go Set a Watchman recently became an overnight blockbuster, selling more than 1 million copies in the first week. Book critics understandably sought to compare the storyline in Watchman with the theme in Harper Lee’s first book, To Kill a Mockingbird, which was published in 1960 and won a Pulitzer Prize. Some expressed surprise that Atticus Finch, the lovable hero in … [Read more...]
A full actor’s life of work and love: A talk with Estelle Parsons
Estelle Parsons, 87, a former head of the Actors Studio, will be playing wily Mathilde Girard in Israel Horovitz’s My Old Lady at Palm Beach Dramaworks from Friday (Dec. 5) to Jan. 4. An Oscar winner for Bonnie and Clyde, a five-time Tony nominee including last season’s The Velocity of Autumn and a longtime regular on the television sitcom Roseanne, she spoke recently with Hap … [Read more...]
‘Life Itself’ a beautiful tribute to a great man of film
As with a lot of premature deaths, I took Roger Ebert’s continued existence for granted, and I didn’t appreciate him enough when he was alive. For many years, his critical voice was an easy one for a snobbish cinephile to dismiss, for a number of seemingly viable reasons: The former scribe of Beyond the Valley the Dolls didn’t have an appreciation for truly radical cinema. His … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 7-8
Art: South Florida has a large collection of work by the eminent American painter William Glackens, left by his son Ira to the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale in 1990. Some of that work is now on display at the Coral Springs Museum of Art in a show called Glackens as Illustrator. The painter began as an illustrator for Philadelphia-area newspapers before advances in … [Read more...]
Sundays: Past lives, luminous memories
By Myles Ludwig There are times in every writer’s life when he can only write about himself. Philosophy becomes personal. The strictures of fiction, the narrative structure, the plot all seem improbable, and one can no longer feel comfortable creating a landscape into which armies of characters are moved around like tin soldiers on the counterpane of youth. Disguise fails. … [Read more...]
‘Life of Pi’ a ravishing visual achievement
I could have watched the opening montage of Life of Pi for a full three hours and walked away satisfied. Not just satisfied but cleansed, reinvigorated and positively transported, to a paradisical time and place that probably never existed. Shot in 3-D, the movie opens with images of a tropical zoo, where verdant foliage flanks scores of exotic animals as they traipse across … [Read more...]
On Broadway: What to see, what not to see
From a whirlwind Broadway trip in which I saw 12 shows in eight days, here are my views on what to head to New York to see, what to look forward to catching on tour and what to avoid at all costs: THE PLAYS Other Desert Cities (A) ― The consistently intelligent Jon Robin Baitz (TV’s Brothers & Sisters) has often trod dysfunctional family territory, but rarely with as much … [Read more...]
Real-life mother-daughter team helps revive ‘Gamma Rays’ at Dramaworks
Arielle Hoffman always knew that she wanted to be an actress. After all, theater is the family business. The 17-year-old daughter of South Florida fixtures Laura Turnbull and Avi Hoffman grew up thinking the odd hours, feast-or-famine, histrionic life of stage performers was normal. “I didn’t know that this was unusual or weird,” she shrugs. “I just had no idea that people had … [Read more...]
Harrowing tale of life behind bars remarkably even-handed
Wilbert Rideau was 19 when he impulsively decided to rob a bank in Lake Charles, La., so he could flee to a new life on the West Coast. The botched 1961 robbery ended with Rideau taking three hostages. In the ensuing chaos he fatally shot and stabbed a female bank teller. Rideau was black and the victim was white, and a seething mob nearly lynched him. He was quickly convicted … [Read more...]