African-Americans have federally sanctioned civil rights and the nation voted a black man into the White House. So we must have made substantial advances towards racial equality and co-existence since Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 stage drama, A Raisin in the Sun, haven’t we? Not necessarily, suggests playwright-provocateur Bruce Norris in his cynical satire Clybourne Park, which … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Jan. 21-23
Theater: Although it is a little lighter than the usual fare at Coral Gables’ GableStage, the cutting edge company has a crowd-pleasing winner in Jane Prowse’s A Round-Heeled Woman, based on the true story of Jane Juska. In her mid-60s, she places an ad soliciting men to have sex with her, adding “If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.” Of course, she attracts a … [Read more...]
The View From Home 19: New releases on DVD
Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss (Criterion) Release date: Jan. 18 Standard list price: $21.99 each In all the documentaries and video interviews made about the work of the great director Samuel Fuller, the movie referenced more than any other is not even made by Fuller. It’s a scene from Pierrot le fou, Jean-Luc Godard’s manic farrago from 1965. Fuller, in at the time in … [Read more...]
The View From Home 18: New releases on DVD
America Lost and Found: The BBS Story (Criterion) Release date: Dec. 14 Standard list price: $88.99 Released just 11 days before Christmas, Criterion’s America Lost and Found: The BBS Story box set is the holiday season’s ultimate gift to cinephiles. The six films contained in this collection encompass one of American cinema’s most rambunctious, mavericky collectives, … [Read more...]
Less isn’t more as Norton asks ‘Now WHAT?’
Two strangers in a museum find themselves sharing the same opinion about that thing facing them. They call it “thing” because they don't know what it is. And the brave one's loud comment (“What the heck is this?”) is the shy one's relief. Such a flow of communication might be common at the Now WHAT? show, which opened recently at the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach in an … [Read more...]
Aussie bassist Parrott masters the art of American jazz
For every Jaco Pastorius or Charles Mingus, there are countless jazz bass players who never become household names, so most take up the workmanlike instrument for deeper reasons than attaining celebrity. In the case of Nicki Parrott, it was family. At age 15 in her native Australia, she started her performing career when her older sister, saxophonist Lisa Parrott, needed a … [Read more...]
The View From Home 17: New releases on DVD
Kobayashi Four (Facets) Standard list price: $71.99 Release date: Nov. 23 Facets celebrates its new release of Masahiro Kobayashi’s 2001 film Man Walking on Snow by repackaging three of the director’s previously available releases into a box set titled Kobayashi Four. Watching these four titles from the criminally neglected Japanese auteur reveals a bracing talent with a … [Read more...]
Storrs’ work embraces the chill of the modern
To ask an audience to explore unseen works by a popular or a controversial artist is piece of cake. Asking them to come see rare works by a less shocking artist, unknown by most, takes guts. But that’s precisely what the Norton Museum is doing with John Storrs: Machine-Age Modernist, a show consisting mainly of metal and stone sculptures by the Chicago native who happened to … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Dec. 3-5
Pop music: Fresh off her third Grammy nomination, announced Wednesday in Los Angeles, Sara Bareilles plays Boca Raton’s Mizner Park on Saturday night on a bill with Michael Franti and Spearhead, the always barefoot social-justice singer’s dub-ska outfit. The two acts are playing as part of WRMF-97.9 FM’s annual No Sno Ball at Mizner’s Count de Hoernle Amphitheatre. Bareilles is … [Read more...]
The View From Home 16: New releases on DVD
Everyone Else (Cinema Guild) Release date: Oct. 26 SLP: $20.49 If “mainstream cinema” is shorthand for grounded, explicable, coherent story arcs told with logic and closure, then art cinema – the yin to Hollywood’s yang – is the terrain of the unknown, the inexplicable, the frustratingly open-ended. Its filmmakers are fully aware that, as in life, they don’t have all the … [Read more...]