ART BASEL has begun! If you’ve never gone before, get out there and get cultured! The exhibits, start with the largest, the Miami Beach Convention Center, are open from noon to 8 p.m. through Saturday, and from noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday. To learn more, you can get a guided tour with an art critic for $17 for one hour. Nothing compares to seeing the actual works of art up close. Tickets are also available through Ticketmaster. Art Basel’s web site has all the information. Events are listed here.
As a part of Art Basel, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden will be exhibiting a large collection of Roy Lichtenstein SCULPTURES December 8th through May 31st. He’s the ‘comic-booky’ artist you might recognize from this sample of his work. His sculptures are as vividly colored and dramatic.
Another vividly colored and dramatic event will be Ocean Drive’s “Paint the Town Green” benefitting the environmental charity, EMA (Environmental Media Association) at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, 8:30-midnight (by invitation of Ocean Drive and The Biltmore Hotel, access with VIP card).
“So you think you’re funny?” Find out if South Florida thinks so. Start practicing now because the first week in January begins another “So You Think You’re Funny Comedy Search” at the Miami Improv. Or just go and watch for free, cause even when you think you’re funny and you’re not, we’ll still laugh. Last year’s winner was local FIU favorite and a very funny and deserving winner, Malik S. This event is a part of . . .
The South Beach Comedy Festival, coming soon, January 16-19, to several locations. Get your tickets ASAP to see Kathy Griffin, Katt Williams, Dave Atell, and many more of Comedy’s funniest women, men, and pimps! “Pimp down!”
MOVIE LOVERS REJOICE! The hugely talented Coen Brothers “Big, big [talent], huge!” (to paraphrase “Pretty Woman”) have released a movie it would be a mistake to miss. (“Big, big mistake; huge!”) Like they did with ‘the life of the [creative] mind’ in their masterpiece “Barton Fink” [which swept the big 3 Best Awards [Picture, Director, Actor) at Cannes the year it was released], and passivity vs. agression (makes me giggle just to say that) in “The Big Lebowski, the Coen Brothers are taking another theme to thought-provoking and soul-searching depths in “No Country For Old Men”, which takes a hard look at where we are going and how inescapable it seems to be. A hard look. Not for the squeamish, this movie drives home its points with incredible strength (like an air compressor gunshot between the eyes) or heart-wrenching poignancy (like the innocence of a yesterday when a child on a bike with playing cards in the spokes would take the shirt off his back for a stranger). A movie that stays with you and makes you think (like “Crash”) about your life and how you live it and what it is truly ‘worth’.