Welcome to New York: Even while changing the names of everyone involved and preceding his narrative with a lengthy disclaimer, Abel Ferrara’s Welcome to New York (IFC, $18.78 DVD, $14.59 Blu-ray) borders provocatively on slander, and that’s partly what makes it so exciting. Gérard Depardieu plays Devereaux, a French politician transparently modeled after Dominique … [Read more...]
Three-nation youth orchestra to perform in Delray
A youth orchestra concert with roots in a rural Mexican library comes to Delray Beach’s Crest Theatre on Sept. 19. The concert, called “Harmony Without Borders,” will feature children from the Imagina Symphonic Orchestra in León, Mexico; 24 children from the Siman Orchestral Foundation in Miami; and 10 children from the Pequeñas Huellas cultural project in Turin, Italy. They … [Read more...]
Editor unearths ‘new’ F. Scott Fitzgerald story
In 1999, a 21-year-old upstart never suspected that resurrecting a classic mystery magazine would turn him into a sleuth. No, Andrew Gulli does not solve murders, like some young, male Jessica Fletcher. Instead, his work as the founding editor of the revived Strand magazine has led him to become adept at locating and publishing lost stories by famous writers. His latest … [Read more...]
Miami’s Naked Stage relocating to West Palm’s Clematis Street
It has been a rough year for theater companies in Palm Beach County, with the demise of Boca Raton Theatre Guild, Women’s Theatre Project, Delray Square Performing Arts and the Plaza Theatre, as well as the move away by Slow Burn Theatre from Boca to the Broward Center. Suddenly, though, there is some positive news with the announcement that Miami’s Naked Stage Theatre Co. is … [Read more...]
‘The End of the Tour’: The writer’s life, absorbingly examined
No spoiler here: In the very first scene of The End of the Tour, set in 2008, writer David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) receives a phone call, informing him that, “according to an unconfirmed report, David Wallace is dead.” I’m ashamed to reveal that the suicide of David Foster Wallace meant nothing to me at the time, if I even knew who he was. Even at the time of this writing, … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 7-9
Art: Every year, the Norton Museum of Art summer interns get a chance to curate their own show, and this year’s is focused on another hot summer, that of 1968, when the nation’s political and social structures took a series of body blows. That was the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, plus the tumultuous Democratic National Convention in … [Read more...]
Fun staging, excellent singing mark Miami Summer Music Festival’s closing ‘Don Giovanni’
The Miami Summer Music Festival closed its second season on Sunday afternoon with a remarkable performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, epic and uncut, and featuring several standout singers in the festival’s Opera Institute program. Smartly and snarkily staged by Jeffrey Marc Buchman, who updated the opera to contemporary times in a gambling resort, this Don Giovanni lost only … [Read more...]
‘The Gift’ uncovers suburban heart of darkness
In its first half, The Gift is a fine movie for our panicked, over-surveilled, mentally unstable age, and the second half is even more powerful. Like Rosemary’s Baby, it opens on an average, happy, industrious couple visiting its new home, in this case a palatial California spread overlooking miles of lush greenery. But things get creepy real quick. In the next scene, Simon … [Read more...]
News briefs: WLRN launches classical channel; Harid gets $250K grant; Kravis to install organ
MIAMI — Radio station WLRN will launch a 24-hour classical music station on its HD-2 radio channel Aug. 10, officials said Friday. The “Classical 24” station will replace the current “Alternative News and Talk” station at WLRN’s HD-2 channel, and is being started to fill the gap left by the departure last month of Classical South Florida from the airwaves. “We understand the … [Read more...]
PBCMF No. 4: Exquisite Debussy is a festival high point
After the ailing Claude Debussy finished his Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp in 1915, he wrote to a friend that the music reminded him of an “antique” Debussy, writing as he had done 20 years before in the Nocturnes. Not antique, perhaps, so much as distilled to its purest essence, as a performance of this work showed last weekend in the final concerts of the Palm Beach … [Read more...]