For a country said to struggle with numbers, math and science, nobody is getting U2 360 degrees wrong. At least in South Florida, everyone got what they came for. The electrifying Irish band’s 360° Tour, with its supernatural stage, landed at Miami’s Sun Life stadium Wednesday night. One hour after the English indie rock band Florence and the Machine ended its magical … [Read more...]
Writer’s memoir of husband’s stroke meticulous, moving
When a blood clot lodges in the brain, patients may lose their ability to speak or write, a devastating setback for anyone, but particularly so for an author. Husband-and-wife authors Diane Ackerman and Paul West had devoted their lives to words until that awful day in 2003 when West suffered a stroke that left him devoid of language, an outcome known as aphasia. One Hundred … [Read more...]
Summer Shorts No. 16 is leaner, shorter, and funnier than ever
There was every reason to be worried about this year’s Summer Shorts, the 16th annual collection of stage vignettes that has become a much-anticipated seasonal fixture in South Florida. The number of 5-to-20-minute scenes had been reduced to only seven, in a single program instead of the usual two. The company of performers had shriveled to a mere five -- about half as many as … [Read more...]
The View From Home 27: New releases and notable screenings, June 14-30
Is there anything quite like the early films of Todd Haynes? Before he graduated to star-studded Hollywood casts and respectable HBO miniseries (this year’s Mildred Pierce), Haynes was a provocative enfant terrible whose early experimental films upset narrative status quos and pushed censors’ buttons. His 1987, 43-minute docudrama – for lack of a better designation – was … [Read more...]
The Broadway season in review, and Hap’s Tony predictions
Recession? What recession? If the economy was in the doldrums this year, Broadway sure didn’t know about it. For the commercial theater season in New York that ended May 29, Broadway shows drew $1.08 billion in ticket sales, up 5.9 percent from last season to post record-breaking grosses. Of course ticket prices also set record highs, reaching a top of $140 for -- you … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 10-15
Film: Writer-director John Gray (credited with creating TV’s Ghost Whisperer) grew up in Brooklyn and his latest feature film, White Irish Drinkers, feels like it has autobiographical elements in its coming-of-age tale of a young, sensitive artist trying hard not to sucked into the world of crime of his older, desperate brother. Nick Thurston impresses as Brian, who chooses … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 27-June 1
Theater: Ed Asner as Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It is one liberal icon playing another liberal icon in the one-man show FDR, opening a brief five-day run at the Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton beginning Wednesday evening. The play, written by Roosevelt scholar Dore Schary (Sunrise at Campobello), looks at the public man who presided over the country during the Great Depression … [Read more...]
The View From Home 26: New releases and notable screenings, May 24-June 10
Andrei Tarkovsky, the Russian New Wave’s most glorified director of rarefied museum pieces, represents, more than any director of his generation, the division between true cinephiles and casual “movie buffs.” The latter enjoys Fellini, some Godard and even an Antonioni picture or two, but Tarkovsky’s art-house pedigree is so pure – so dismissive of the standard that films be … [Read more...]
Strong debut by young thespian makes ‘Secret Garden’ worth cultivating
More interested in spiritual rebirth than the usual romance that fuels musicals, with a score more attuned to British folk melodies than Tin Pan Alley hits, you can understand why 1991’s underrated The Secret Garden is rarely revived these days. And then there is the casting challenge of its main character, 12-year-old Mary Lennox, the suddenly orphaned tot saddled with … [Read more...]
The View From Home 25: New releases on DVD
Araya (Milestone) Release date: May 10 Standard list price: $29.95 Milestone Films releases many different kinds of movies, but if the distributor has a signature style, it’s the merger of documentary and fiction – depictions of real life colored, in one way or another, with the aesthetic control of fiction. I am Cuba, The Exiles, On the Bowery and In This World all fulfill … [Read more...]