Film: Last year’s Oscar-winning director, Alejandro Iñárritu (Birdman) is back with another tour de force saga, this time far from the urban canyons of New York City. It is called The Revenant, which means “one who returns from the dead.” Indeed, fur trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is mauled by a bear in the bitter cold Old West wilderness and is left for dead by his … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 20-22
Film: Its expansion delayed for a couple of weeks to maximize its impact and exposure for Oscar consideration is a small, but powerful film, Spotlight, certainly one of the year’s 10 best and a sure competitor for Best Picture honors. Spotlight is the name of the Boston Globe’s small, elite investigative team, which launches a major project to look into the city’s … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 6-8
Dance: Stephen Mills didn’t think he was the right person to tell a Holocaust survivor’s story in dance, but the Ballet Austin artistic director relented, and the result was a remarkable 45-minute depiction of the memories of survivor Naomi Warren called Light: The Holocaust and Humanity Project. The work also includes larger themes, including the Genesis myth, used here as a … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 12-13
Film: Within every great comic is a dramatic actor yearning to break through. Or that’s how the show business cliché goes. But it is true about Lily Tomlin, who gives a remarkable, tough, smart-mouthed performance in a brief – only 78 minutes – low-budget film called simply Grandma. She is Elle, a lesbian poet whose granddaughter, Sage (Julia Garner), arrives on her Van Nuys … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Sept. 4-7
Theater: Fort Lauderdale’s Thinking Cap Theatre has produced the area premiere of Dave Hanson’s clever Waiting for Waiting for Godot, a takeoff on Samuel Beckett’s highly influential existential comedy. Set backstage at a playhouse where Waiting for Godot is being performed, this wry tale stuffed with inside show business jokes focuses on two understudies who while away the … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Aug. 14-16
Theater: Every generation has an image of Peter Pan, either Mary Martin, who originated the role in the 1954 Broadway musical, or such subsequent high fliers as Sandy Duncan or Cathy Rigby. We can now add Shanon Mari Mills to that list, for her energetic, athletic and full-voiced performance at The Wick Theatre in Boca Raton. She heads a lavish production directed by Michael … [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...]
Weekend arts picks: July 31-Aug. 2
Film: Whether you played with Lego building blocks as a kid or were first introduced to them by the delightful animated Lego Movie last year, you are likely to enjoy A LEGO Brickumentary, the even more unlikely non-fiction film about the Danish-born creation that has grown into the second largest toy company in the world. Yes, it’s everything you always wanted to know about … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 25-26
Theater: J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is one of the best known, most enduring stories ever written. So much so that there are numerous adaptations — like Peter and the Starcatcher, Finding Neverland and the soon-to-be-released movie Pan — that draw on our collective awareness of the boy who never grew up. Tonight, the Maltz Jupiter Theatre presents Peter Pan Jr., a live stage … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: July 17-19
Film: You’ve got to wonder whose idea it was to release Bill Condon’s first-rate, literate and cerebral Sherlock Holmes tale, called simply Mr. Holmes, in the middle of the summer when it is bound to be crowded out by superhero blockbusters and dazzling animation. Had it been released in the fall, it would surely be vying for Oscars and other awards, particularly for Ian … [Read more...]