We are willing to look ahead at future film releases, but only as far as the end of the calendar year. Even then, the crystal ball gets fuzzy, as these release dates are highly likely to change as Hollywood strategizes and counter-programs. Nevertheless, there are bound to be Oscar nominees within these subjective picks of what will hit screens in the next three months … [Read more...]
ArtsPreview 2010-11: The season in pop music
There are more reasons than just abundant area classic rock radio for the popularity of veteran touring acts in South Florida. Baby boomers and their disposable incomes certainly factor into the retro stars' price-gouging ticket costs, but Sunshine State geography also literally has its place in the equation. Unlike most of the Lower 48, Florida is a cylindrical state. There's … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 24-26
Art: This weekend, the historic African-American neighborhood on Fort Lauderdale’s Sistrunk Boulevard is the site of the Midtown Urban Arts Show, part of a nonprofit effort to support revitalization of the Sistrunk corridor, named for the pioneering black physician who tended to its residents in the early 20th century. Restoration projects have been ongoing for many years in … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 17-20
Film: When Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, he never imagined it would become the inspiration for a high school comedy such as Easy A, but screenwriter Bert V. Royal plants his tongue firmly in cheek and comes up with a wise, wise-assed morality tale set at Ojai (Calif.) High, about a misfit named Olive who lies about losing her virginity and gets swept up in a … [Read more...]
The View From Home 13: New releases on DVD
Cinevardaphoto (Cinema Guild) Standard list price: $29.95 Release date: Aug. 31 For a filmmaker of Agnes Varda’s renown, it’s important to note how few features she has made over her 40-plus-year career. She boasts 47 directorial credits on the Internet Movie Database, yet most cineastes who haven’t spelunked into the deepest depths of the French New Wave know her mainly for … [Read more...]
Affleck’s ‘The Town’ not enough out of the ordinary
If you’re not wary of the clichés of the heist movie by now – the well-laid plans gone violently awry, the criminal with a heart of gold who wants out of the racket after this “one last job,” the cop always on his tail with superhuman relentlessness – then you’ve managed to remain blissfully sheltered from one of Hollywood’s most exhausted formulas. Every now and then, a movie … [Read more...]
‘The Infidel’ takes on religion with some solid laughs
A debate is raging in this country over what it means to be Muslim. The ethnic comedy The Infidel will hardly resolve things, but it least it tosses some leavening humor at the question. Following its debut in the spring at the Tribeca Film Festival and its subsequent limited runs in New York and California, director Josh Appignanesi’s send-up of religious stereotypes opts … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 4-7
Art: One of the most revelatory, absorbing art shows I’ve ever seen was The Studio of the South, an exhibit exploring the relationship between Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin and the work they created while briefly living together in the French town of Arles in late 1888. I caught it at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2001, and it was remarkable to see the influence the two … [Read more...]
Alert the Squid Squad! The kraken is (lamely) on the loose!
Why is it that genre writers, just when they are about to step onto a wider stage of literature, tend to lose heart – or nerve? I first noticed this in 1998 when Stephen King, after almost a decade of increasing critical acceptance, retreated to the comforts of Bag of Bones, an overlong, overstuffed supernatural thriller of the kind that made him famous earlier in his career. … [Read more...]
The View From Home 12: New releases on DVD
Appointment With Danger, Dark City and Union Station (Olive Films) Standard list price: $19.99 Release date: July 27 Apparently, DVD labels distributed the memo well: 2010 is the year for classic film noir. Last month Columbia released its Film Noir Classics Vol. 2 collection (SLP $44.99), an essential five-disc set that included Fritz Lang’s Human Desire, Phil Karlson’s The … [Read more...]