Film: There have been plenty of fact-based boxing movies and most get trapped on the ropes with sports clichés. But David O. Russell’s The Fighter is as much about “Irish” Micky Ward’s wildly dysfunctional family as it is about the fight game. Mark Wahlberg plays Ward well enough and it certainly isn’t his fault that he is outclassed by the brilliant Christian Bale as his … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: Riveting ‘Angry Men,’ half-accomplished ‘Cane’
The “golden age of television” of the 1950s produced many classic dramas that went on to further acclaim in other media. Think of Requiem for a Heavyweight, or Marty, or The Miracle Worker. Certainly earning a spot on that list is Reginald Rose’s dramatized civics lesson, Twelve Angry Men, which the Maltz Jupiter Theatre has dusted off and given a vigorous mounting that makes … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 5-7
Film: Among the many atrocities attributable to the Nazis is the masterful way they churned out propaganda films during World War II. A new inside look at their disinformation machine is found in A Film Unfinished, a documentary by Yael Hersonski that sifts through existing footage of the Third Reich’s depiction of the Jewish ghetto, contrasting the well-off and the … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: A fine ‘Candida,’ an incomplete ‘Desire’
Candida Palm Beach Dramaworks, which recently announced plans to move into the vacant Cuillo Centre space a block away from its Banyan Blvd. playhouse, continues to take the high road of offering up the towering writers for the stage that other South Florida troupe shy away from. Think O’Neill, Ibsen and now George Bernard Shaw, whose early work Candida is the young socialist … [Read more...]
ArtsPreview 2010-11: The season in theater
After a successful summer debut at the Kravis Center, Florida Stage unveils its first subscription season in the Rinker Playhouse, including several world premieres. Meanwhile, there is a new Miami company with its own troupe of actors, the Caldwell continues to dig out of its money woes with a second look at a Carbonell-winning show it is developing, the Maltz Jupiter cracks … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 2-5
Film: There is an alternative to the vampires and werewolves of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and the sci-fi fantasy of The Last Airbender. It’s I Am Love, a sensuous film from debuting Italian director Luca Guadagnino with a starring performance by Oscar winner Tilda Swinton that is her best work yet on celluloid. She plays the Russian-born wife of a Milanese businessman who has … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 25-27
Theater: Gable Stage’s Joseph Adler is often eager to showcase new talent, as he does with Stephen Karam’s Speech & Debate, which features three recent graduates of Miami’s New World School of the Arts -- Jackie Rivera, Ryan Didato and David Dearstyne -- in a quirky, contemporary comedy about geeky high schoolers growing up and fitting in. Karam may still need some seasoning … [Read more...]
Theater briefs: ‘The Quarrel’ and ‘Raised in Captivity’
Some theater reaches for spectacle, but what the theater does best is traffic in dialogue and ideas. Words and the emotions behind them are in the spotlight in a brief, intermissionless play at GableStage, The Quarrel, by David Brandes and Joseph Telushkin, which chronicles a chance reunion of two men who were childhood friends. In 1948, in Montreal’s Mount Royal Park, … [Read more...]
‘Fela!,’ ‘La Cage’ lead Tony nominees in lackluster season
This season’s Tony Award nominations were announced this morning. So let the gripes and snipes begin, as well as the closing notices for the snubbed shows. No one -- except the consistently upbeat Tonys, a marketing cheerleader for New York’s commercial theater -- is going to try and claim that this was a strong season on Broadway. But at least there were enough shows so that … [Read more...]
Bulletin from Broadway No. 8: ‘Race’
I had a 6:30 p.m. flight home Saturday, so I wasn’t going to see a matinee, the first time a play would be on that I was not in a theater seat. But a press agent recommended I see David Mamet’s latest play, Race. It’s only 100 minutes long including intermission and I’d heard good things about it, so why not, I figured. Well, one reason is Mamet’s most recent output, a couple … [Read more...]