Shelly Isaacs is a veteran advertising man who wrote the first TV commercial for Duracell batteries in the 1970s. But he’s much better-known these days as one of South Florida’s most accessible experts on foreign-language film. The founder of Café Cinematheque International, Isaacs is a Bronx native who earned his undergraduate degree in psychology and marketing from the City … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 30-Aug. 5
Dance: Julie Kent, long a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre, takes the title role tonight and through the weekend in Giselle, with the Boca Ballet Theatre at Florida Atlantic University’s University Theatre. Kent, one of the best-known ballerinas of her generation, partners with another ABT standout, Marcelo Gomes, for these three performances of the beloved … [Read more...]
The View From Home 11: New releases on DVD
Greenberg (Universal) Release date: July 13 Standard list price: $18.49 If I were Roger Greenberg – the literate, perpetually disgruntled protagonist in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg – I would definitely be hand-writing a letter to Universal right about now that would go something like this: Dear Universal Home Entertainment, Eager to discover more about the motion picture … [Read more...]
Musical piety, vocal purity make for absorbing concert of French Baroque
In the days when Louis XIV was an actual presence and not merely the name of a favorite rococo interior design fashion, the faithful gathered in churches for communion with the Almighty but also for music, for the sound of a pure, unclouded voice ascending into the severe angles of a sacred space. That very same experience, without the king, was that of an audience Saturday … [Read more...]
Stage Door’s ‘Chaperone’ delivers the daffy goods
Broward Stage Door Theatre has a tendency to overreach with its musicals, biting off a beloved, not-quite elaborate show and not quite delivering on the pleasures we once enjoyed with it. Now, however, it is presenting a modest little show, the intermission-less The Drowsy Chaperone, a multiple Tony Award winner from 2006 that is bound to be new to most of its audience, and … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 16-20
Art: Work in ceramics by a group of artists who all have connections to the University of Florida opens today at West Palm Beach’s Armory Art Center and runs through Aug. 28. The 13 artists, assembled under the rubric Motley Moxie, shared the same working environment or instructors at UF, but have widely varied approaches to clay. The artists, in alphabetical order, are Pavel … [Read more...]
The View From Home 10: New releases on DVD
Terribly Happy (Oscilloscope Laboratories) Release date: July 13 Standard list price: $26.99 Following in the footsteps of Roger Vadim (…And God Created Woman), George Sluizier (The Vanishing) and Michael Haneke (Funny Games), Danish filmmaker Henrik Ruben Genz becomes the latest foreign-language director to remake his own movie in English with his latest picture, Terribly … [Read more...]
The View From Home 9: New releases on DVD
Close-Up (Criterion) Release date: June 22 Standard list price: $36.49 This two-disc Criterion reissue of one of the greatest – if not the greatest – films of the 1990s replaces the out-of-print edition from Facets, and hopefully a new crop of young cinephiles will discover it. Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami wrote and directed the film after reading a short magazine article … [Read more...]
Violist shines in Telemann at Stringendo concert
A violist for the Cleveland Orchestra made a persuasive case for the power and versatility of his instrument Tuesday night during a performance of a Telemann concerto at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Stanley Konopka, who has been assistant principal viola of the Cleveland since 1993, was one of two members of that orchestra featured in Tuesday’s concert, the second program … [Read more...]
The View From Home 8: New releases on DVD
For My Father (Film Movement) Release date: June 1 Standard list price: $22.49 I normally reserve the space for the largest review in this column to wonderful films that are worthy of your time, but occasionally a film so indefensible – so patently contemptible – will arrive on my doorstep that it prompts the need to vent for more than 150 words. For My Father, the latest … [Read more...]