The summer concert season is hurtling toward us, and what better way to kick it off than with another reunion show by The Police?
''You may find Narnia a more savage place than you remember,'' the four Pevensie siblings are warned early on in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the second film adaptation of the C.S Lewis fantasy series that began with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Son of Rambow opens and closes at a movie theater, and its story centers on two young boys making a sequel to First Blood. The film is filled with scenes about scrappy, cut-and-paste filmmaking, and the movie-within-a-movie that drives the plot also ends up as the centerpiece of the hugely affecting final scenes.
Before she tried on a pair of magical pants or transformed herself as the award-winning star of Ugly Betty, America Ferrera appeared in the indie charmer How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer.
This review previously was published in March. Paranoid Park, Gus Van Sant's mesmerizing new movie, melds the dreamy languor of his last few films (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days) with a page-turner of a plot. The camera still floats lazily behind the protagonists as they take long, rambling walks. But these walks actually lead somewhere.
COMPAS FESTIVAL
The 10th Annual Haitian Compas Festival will promote not just the country's flag and konpa music, but also relief for starving Haitians. Organizers of the 10th annual Haitian Compas Festival are collecting canned goods to send to their Caribbean homeland, which was rocked by food riots last month.
BACK STAGE PASS
Now here's a show the retro-flavored Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater seems designed for: the reunion tour of '70s contemporary jazz act Return to Forever, featuring keyboardist Chick Corea, bassist Stanley Clarke, guitarist Al Di Meola and drummer Lenny White. The band performs July 30. Tickets are $93.50, $78.50, $58.50 and $48.50 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday.
ALBUM REVIEWS
POP DUFFY Rockferry Mercury/Rough Trade ½ Welsh singer-songwriter Duffy, 23, will earn plenty of comparisons to Amy Winehouse for her debut CD, Rockferry, but here's hoping that doesn't brand this former waitress a knockoff.
AFTER DARK
On a recent flight back to Fort Lauderdale, I begrudgingly offered a piece of gum to the woman sitting next to me in the window seat. I had plenty to spare but I knew the gesture would open up the chit-chat floodgates and I simply wanted to plug into my MP3 player and close my eyes. But she gazed longingly at the pack of gum I produced from my carry-on bag so I felt obligated to spread the wealth.
VELVET UNDERGROUND
Once in a blue moon someone comes up with a really cool venue for a party that gets people excited about going -- Michael Capponi's birthday party at Jimbo's a few years back, Jeff Soffer's birthday party at the Opa-locka Executive Airport, this writer's Sweet 16 at a Marilyn Monroe-themed disco on Long Island. Well, OK, the latter was a good idea in the '80s, anyway. Add to that list, Tigertail Productions' Moon Over Miami fund-raising event Saturday at the Ichimura Japanese Garden, on Watson Island...
DVD SCANS
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens Thursday to get a jump on the Memorial Day weekend and likely will set a box office record. How could it miss? Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are revisiting their beloved action figure, and Harrison Ford is still fit to play the lead, after a 19-year gap between The Last Crusade and Skull.
THE DATING GAME
It's always great to hear from guys who have jumped back into the dating game after a breakup or a divorce. Whether it's bouncing back from a girlfriend who left him like a yo-yo for a year or two, or starting over after dating someone for a double-digit length of time, the success stories keep coming.
CLASSICAL MUSIC ON DVD
The 2008 Miami International Piano Festival closed on Sunday but, increasingly, the festival's performances are circulating far and wide. Video Artists International has issued a dozen DVDs of festival performances, and two recent VAI releases show the festival at its finest with a pair of extraordinary performances from 2007.
Most Seraphic Fire performances showcase the choir as a collective, but this weekend's season-closing program, Music for Kings, will present Seraphic Fire members in the solo spotlight in opera and oratorio arias by Handel and Mozart. Patrick Dupré Quigley will lead the singers and a chamber orchestra in arias and choruses from Israel in Egypt, The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and other works. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Friday at Coral Gables Congregational Church...
There's heart-felt artistic innocence in the works of people who struggle with mental illness. They create to express unresolved feelings of alienation and longings without regards to artistic conventions, movements or market trends. As a result, their works often deliver moving, raw testimony of the human condition.
Madonna's Hard Candy dethrones Mariah Carey's E=MC2 by selling 280,000 copies. Only Barbra Streisand, with eight, has more No. 1 albums among female artists, and Madonna's single 4 Minutes is her 37th Top 10 hit -- the most of any artist in the rock era.
The Summer Youth Program at the Miami Art Museum kicks off with a free family event this weekend. Children and their families can take part in hands-on art activities. Guided tours, live music and refreshments will also be available. The event theme relates to MAM's exhibition, Shadows, Disappearances and Illusions, opening June 6, so the activities will include scratch art, photograms and visual tricks.
French Kicks, Swimming (Vagrant Records). New York mod-pop in the vein of The Strokes. Julianne Hough, Julianne Hough (Mercury Nashville).
Hollywood has been trying to make a live-action movie out of Speed Racer since the early 1990s: At one point, Johnny Depp was set to play the hero. But it was The Matrix creators Larry and Andy Wachowski who figured out how to transplant the 1960s Japanese anime TV show into the world of flesh-and-blood while still retaining the colorful palette and outlandish physical action the show was famous for around the world.
Were Larry and Andy Wachowski just really, really lucky when they made The Matrix? Speed Racer, the brothers' live-action, special-effects intensive adaptation of the beloved TV cartoon, is such a dull, clunky, joyless mess, it's hard to believe the people who made it understand much about movies.
The latest uptight chick/slacker dude romantic comedy is so formulaic, you could win big if you placed bets on what's going to happen next.
The best directors can take on practically any genre, no matter how hoary or formulaic, and turn a film into something dynamic and interesting by approaching it from their particular vantage point. In Redbelt, David Mamet enters the realm of sports drama and Rocky-underdog clichés and discovers it's a surprisingly good fit.
Sensitively adapted from the achingly sad, luminous novel by Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces is a story of unspeakable loss and how it eats at the souls of survivors. Made with an unerring visual dazzle -- its dark corners are shadowy, deep and melancholy, its brilliant seascapes the sparkling embodiment of why we must all find a reason to carry on -- the film follows the life of Jakob Beer, a young Jewish boy plucked from his hiding place under a pile of leaves after a Nazi raid on his Polish village...
Is love just another four-letter word? That's the question that haunts Casper Andreas' well-crafted, deceptively light-'n'-fluffy romantic comedy.
The directing debut of Oscar-winning actress Helen Hunt, Then She Found Me, is less noteworthy for its erratic parts than for its atmospheric whole. Here's a film that whips loss, romantic yearning and the accelerating ticking of a woman's biological clock into a moody dramady that is by turns touching and exasperating.
ALBUM REVIEWS
POP CLAY AIKEN On My Way Here RCA/19 Clay Aiken has a message for his Claymates, that odd cult following that maintains an obsessional devotion for the singer. On The Real Me, written by Natalie Grant, the American Idol runner-up sings, ``I'm tired of the song and dance / Living a charade / Always on parade / What a mess I've made of my existence / But you love me even now.''
ONE NIGHT STAND
What happens when you mix one part contemporary art gallery with one part retro British Invasion, and sprinkle it with a bit of sexy? You get Thursday nights at Red Bar Gallery, a colorful fixture on the Brickell nightlife scene.
STAND-UP COMEDY
To say Bill Maher is politically incorrect is about as much of an understatement as is possible. In fact, the wry comedian was so politically incorrect regarding 9/11 that ABC canceled his show, Politically Incorrect. Seems Maher disagreed with the popular sentiment that the suicide bombings were an act of cowardice, and the ensuing uproar sealed his fate.
BACKSTAGE PASS
Indie-rock faves Modest Mouse made a brief splash into the mainstream when the band's minor hit Gravity Rides Everything was featured in a Nissan commercial. Hardcore fans, however, know there's a lot more to love about this band, which formed in Issaquah, Wash., 15 years ago.
AFTER DARK
``Hey there, you're not going to believe this. I finally met a great guy on Match.com.'' She waited for a response, but I said nothing.
VELVET UNDERGROUND
The hot mess known as summer is upon us, but don't worry. Sweat is the new black and we'll all be sporting plenty of it in the coming months. Luckily there's the Gansevoort's rooftop Plunge Bar, where ocean breezes mix with the haughty airs of those who think their sweat doesn't stink to create a bizarre cooling effect. Tonight, 944 Magazine celebrates its first anniversary there with Macy Gray as the host, headliner and DJ. According to publisher Alan Roth, the anniversary party, from 8-11 p.m...
THE DATING GAME
When you're a single guy, there is usually one woman you can always count on (and, no, I'm not talking about Chastity at your friendly, neighborhood strip club).
DVD SCANS
BY HOWARD COHEN Teeth, a 2007 Sundance Film Festival jury award winner for lead actress Jess Weixler, toys with the idea of ``female empowerment.''
Lee Blessing's mysterious, award-winning play A Body of Water is a puzzle involving identity, relationships and shifting truth. Carbonell Award winners Kim Morgan Dean, Beth Dimon and Ken Clement star in the chamber piece opening Friday and running through June 1 at Mosaic Theatre in the American Heritage Center for the Arts, 12200 W. Broward Blvd., Plantation. Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 3 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $32 ($27 seniors, $15 students...
It's time for another Gallery Walk in the Wynwood Art District. Here are some highlights of what's new at Saturday's event: At the Dorsch Gallery, 151 NW 24th St., the group exhibit It'sOk to Cross Now features work by Karl Vohwinkle, Luis Garcia, Robin Griffiths, Chin-chin Hsu, Cristina Molina, Carrie Montano, Hugo Montoya, Jon Peck, Toot, Tony Kapel, Travis Pendlebury, Enrique Quintero, Brian Reedy, Guillermo Ruballo, John Sanchez, William Soto, Brandon Sparling, Kyle Trowbridge, Maitejosune Urrechaga...
Youth Without Youth: After a self-imposed 10-year exile from movies, Francis Ford Coppola has returned to filmmaking, vowing to make nothing but personal pictures. This is most certainly a personal work, so personal in fact that I can't imagine anyone but Coppola being able to sit through it. A relentlessly dull and uninvolving fable about a linguistics professor (Tim Roth) who gains strange powers after being struck by lightning, the movie waddles in metaphysical hokum while forgetting to do what...
Despite a 61 percent decline in sales, Mariah Carey's E=MC2 remains atop The Billboard 200 for a second straight week, moving 182,000 copies in the U.S. to top Leona Lewis' Spirit, which sold 96,000.
The Miami International Piano Festival continues through Sunday with three wide-ranging recitals and the traditional Concerto Night closer.
Just follow the balloons to Sunday Afternoons of Music for Children and the special Saturday edition honoring mothers. Led by conductor Robert Longfield, The Greater Miami Symphonic Band will present ''Strike Up The Band -- Sousa-Style'' at Gusman Concert Hall at the University of Miami. Come early and kids can ''play'' the musical string instrument petting zoo. Instructors from the Allegro Music Center of Coral Gables will be on hand to work with children. Peter-the-Mime will entertain until...
Regina Belle, Love Forever Shines (Pendulum Records). The Black Angels, Directions to See a Ghost (Light in the Attic).
Multiplatinum R&B singer Erykah Badu and the band Roots perform at 7 p.m. May 20 at the Centre for the Arts Amphitheater at Mizner Park, 590 Plaza Real, Boca Raton. For tickets, www.livenation.com or TicketMaster; $49-$86.
'Wonderful, authentic' Thai and Vietnamese cuisine brings Arturo Codina to Siam Bistro at least once a week. 'It's one of my favorite restaurants in Miami,' says Codina. The food is 'excellent with very nice appetizers and dessert. The presentation is very beautiful.' You'll also find 'attentive and friendly' service -- and don't miss the Thai or Vietnamese beer or coffee.
Comedy and mystery entwine in Thumbs, a play by Rupert Holmes (yes, that Rupert Holmes, the guy who wrote Escape, aka The Piña Colada Song). Barbara Sloan and Angie Radosh team up to catch a serial killer in the play that opens Friday and runs through May 25 at Actors' Playhouse, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables. Performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday (additional matinee May 14). Tickets for the gala opening are $100. Regular prices are...
Every Friday night, Alexis Newell leaves her South Miami home for Miami Beach, where she plops down on cushioned outdoor seats on Lincoln Road and orders a beer and a hookah, a long, ornate water pipe with roots in the Middle East. Usually joined by a few friends, her group lounges for hours, passing the fruity smoke-exuding pipe around, munching on falafel between puffs.
In Leatherheads, director George Clooney proves all the Cary Grant/Clark Gable comparisons right by casting himself in the kind of crowd-pleasing entertainment Grant and Gable made throughout their careers. Essentially a screwball comedy with a sports theme, the movie takes a comic look at the birth of America's pro football league in 1925, when players shared the field with grazing cows and a turnout of 20 people was considered by team owners to be a good day.
DVD SCANS
Southland Tales, director Richard Kelly's follow-up to his acclaimed debut Donnie Darko, premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, where it was widely derided, and then sneaked into theaters last November in a much shorter and reportedly easier-to-understand cut. It quickly vanished after a few weeks.
The images are notoriously familiar: leering U.S. military men and women standing over various torture victims, some of them on leashes, some naked, bloody and in humiliating poses. The soldiers pose as if on spring break, their faces carefree, their sense of right and wrong as absent as the sun at night.
Anniversaries are an occasion for reflection and self-analysis. And much like any 25-year-old, the Miami International Film Festival is still growing and trying out new things, hoping to cement its identity in the world.
An endearingly sweet fable about a hotly debated subject, La misma luna (Under the Same Moon) kicks off the 25th Miami International Film Festival on a high note. Director Patricia Riggen and screenwriter Ligiah Villalobos use a graceful touch and a tender approach to character in this story of a 9-year-old boy (Adrian Alonso) who crosses the Mexico-U.S. border on his own to reunite with his mother (Kate Del Castillo), an illegal immigrant working as a maid in Los Angeles.
Doris Eaton Travis is, as in the lyrics of Has Anybody Seen My Gal?, five-foot-two with eyes of blue. And those eyes, a lovely pale blue, have taken in more than a century of life.
CLASSICAL MUSIC
A new orchestra to be called The Florida Symphony will be unveiled this fall, a venture that could create an unusual cooperative partnership between two leading arts institutions, the Concert Association of Florida and Florida Grand Opera.
