In an early scene in Instinct, released by Touchstone, a division of Disney's Buena Vista Pictures, we're told that a brilliant primatologist named Ethan Powell (played by Anthony Hopkins) is being brought back to the United States from Rwanda, where for several years he has been engaged in a close...
In some respects this year's gala fundraising dinner-auction benefiting the Manatee Survival Foundation (MSF) was a disappointment. And not just because Broward County Commissioner Lori Parrish, in a break with past practice, left her manatee costume at home. The turnout for the event was lower than ever -- "probably less...
When you write a book about fanatics, you might expect to offend a few of them, even if the book is, essentially, about flowers. In the six months since its publication, The Orchid Thief, the best-selling South Florida-based tale of plant crimes and orchid obsession by The New Yorker magazine...
Joy isn't a word that often comes to mind when thinking about the films of director Wim Wenders. But infectious, intoxicating joy is the emotion conveyed by every frame of this ravishing, exuberant documentary. Buena Vista Social Club is not only the German filmmaker's most engaging, soulful film since Wings...
Blur 13 (Virgin) In the well-worn realm of "theme" music, there is precious little new to be said about a handful of mossy topics -- love, loss, drugs, and death spring immediately to mind. On its sixth album, 13, Blur disregards this truism and attempts to say something memorable about...
The latest release from Paramount Pictures' bouncing baby, MTV Films, is set in a high school and has been inoculated with the usual doses of teenage angst, teenage wit, and teenage lust. Here's the surprise: It declines to get down on hands and knees to woo Generation Y to the...
Thursday June 10 What was the name of Han Solo's ship in the movie Star Wars? Too easy a question, you say? Of course it is, since most of us have seen the original George Lucas space flick dozens of times and know the Millennium Falcon as well as our...
The two-year-old Actors' Project Theatre Company is the first to admit that with Love's Fire, it's shamelessly cashing in on the current cachet of William Shakespeare. "He's hip and young, but older crowds recognize him, too" says Irene Adjan, the company's cofounder. But since the Bard-inspired theater piece -- which...
Joan of Arc Live in Chicago, 1999 (Jade Tree) Joan of Arc's third disc is not a live album, as the title would have you believe. Rather it's the materialization of the members' collective artistic expressions while living in Chicago circa 1999. Tim Kinsella, frontman and mastermind of the threesome,...
If memory serves, Archie Bunker never ranted about brilliant country and western stars who experienced rapid career trajectories and died tragic deaths -- possibly because none ever crossed his path. So it's difficult to imagine what he'd think of daughter Gloria losing her head over Patsy Cline. Of course, more...
We'll Let the So-Called Editor Pick the Smug 1. A Paper Named After Michael Koretzky's Passion: Free Press 2. Department of Self-Promotions, Koretzky Speaking 3. Loser of Palm Beach Speaks, World Yawns 4. Don't Read This Boring Letter 5. You Still Can't Get a Job With This Paper 1.)Thanks for...
Greetings to our friends and fans, the Passion Seeds would like to invite you to our last show in South Florida. Next month we will be relocating to Boston, Massachusetts.... To all of our friends in the South Florida bands, press, radio, clubs and local scene -- thank you from...
Even by the raucous standards of the Hollywood City Commission, real-estate attorney David Mankuta's bellicosity at the May 19 meeting was astonishing. Mankuta later apologized, but he may end up even sorrier yet. His behavior revived charges that, as a member of a powerful city real-estate board, he had a...
Errej Eugaet, keyboardist and Web guru for the Houston-based electronica act Center, isn't surprised his band doesn't have a huge following in his hometown. But that doesn't seem to bother him, because the world seems to like it. "Our flavor of music is not a Houston sound," writes Eugaet via...
On most maps of South Florida, civilization simply ends somewhere out west. In Broward County the demarcation line is I75 in the south and the Sawgrass Expressway in the north. In southern Palm Beach County, State Road7 is pretty much the end, though some development straggles west of the line...
The fluorescent green lizard wearing a Miami Fusion uniform has picked a bad time to visit section 113. It is about midway through the second period on a steamy Saturday afternoon in late May, and the Fusion is losing -- again. D.C. United has just scored its second unanswered goal...
It's only 8:16 a.m., and the question put to the leader of the Genitorturers is this: "So, how did you get into S&M?" Three minutes later, she's asked, "And, uh, how many piercings do you have?" Ah, rock 'n' roll, a truly American art form that encapsulates the highs and...
Against my better judgment, I'm a fan of Ricky Martin. I used to watch the World Cup soccer games because I enjoyed the sport, but in 1998 I watched for the sole pleasure of hearing Martin's limb-stirring, pop-Latin tune "La Copa de la Vida," which the World Cup Federation selected...
No development in the history of art changed the nature and function of portraiture as dramatically as the invention of photography. Before photography, portraits were more or less about documenting reality, preserving a person's distinctive look and bearing for both the present and posterity. Photography changed all that. No painter...
Just as David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986) came off as an organic reaction to a terrible new wasting disease, his new movie crystallizes the confusions of an epoch that can't decide whether it's the Entertainment Era, the Information Age, or the Digital Millennium. Named for a fictional "game system," eXistenZ...
Thursday May 20 Adult-contemporary rock laced with saccharine lyrics usually isn't our thing, but Bruce Hornsby's piano-playing is so beautiful we can almost forgive him. Remember the lilting piano runs of "The Way It Is," the title track from the 1986 debut album by Bruce Hornsby and the Range? The...
Imagine, if you will, one of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby's classic road movies that never leaves the terminal, and you have pretty much described Life, the strikingly uneventful new comedy starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. It's their Road to Nowhere. Life, which was directed by Ted Demme from...
