Liam Neeson, aging brutishly, can’t save Unknown

To age brutishly is Liam Neeson’s apparent career goal — with Taken, Clash of the Titans, The A-Team, and now Unknown, the actor continues to follow the Nicolas Cage path from respected thespian to big-budget ass-kicker. In this tepid thriller from Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan), Neeson is Dr. Martin Harris, who,…

Now playing: Bhutto, Never Say Never, and Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune

Bhutto111 minutes. Not rated. 7 p.m. Friday, February 18 through February 20, at Bill Cosford Cinema, 1111 Memorial Dr., Coral Gables; 305-284-4861; cosfordcinema.com. Tickets cost $9 general admission, $7 for seniors, students, and UM alumni and employees, and are free for UM students.Duane Baughman’s nonfiction film pays reverential tribute to…

New Charlie’s Angels Set in Miami Holds Casting Call

Long before Pam Anderson bounced down the beach in Baywatch, the original purveyors of jiggle TV were filming beautiful women running in Charlie’s Angels. And as bouncing bossoms never really go out of style, the lady crime fighter series is currently being remade by ABC. This time, however, the drama’s…

Watson, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and Other Robots on Television

IBM’s Jeopardy! playing super computer Watson has had us glued to the TV screen the past few evenings. We are drawn out of curiosity: we wanted to see if human contestants can beat a computer and if this is what finally pushes Jeopardy past the Wheel of Fortune in the…

Adam West Talks Batman, Family Guy, and Comic Con

Attention nerds: The Wizard World Miami Comic Con is going down February 26 and 27 at the Miami Airport Convention Center. For fans of comic books, sci-fi, professional wrestling, and all sorts of other guilty pleasures, it’s an opportunity to step out of the proverbial nerd closet and openly embrace…

Why RuPaul’s Drag Race Is the Best Thing on Television

If you are lucky enough to have the sensational and spicy LOGO TV channel on your television set, the show to watch on Monday nights is Ru Paul’s Drag Race. Now in its third season, the show combines creativity, artistic expression, personality, and comedy. It puts all other competition reality…

Basketball Wives, Episode 8: B-Ball Broads Abroad

Oh Basketball Wives, how we have missed you. The show came back last night after its hiatus bigger and better than ever. Royce Reed continues to confuse us. In the first five minutes of her trip, she explains that her throat feels like “golf balls with razor blades.” First, great…

The Illusionist Hits a Sad, Charming Note

Originally written by legendary French filmmaker Jacques Tati, The Illusionist, which opens in Miami this Friday, is a touchingly simple and beautifully drawn film by renowned animator Sylvian Chomet. When Tati died in 1982, he left behind the screenplay for The Illusionist, which he had intended to be shot in…

The Illusionist hits a sad, charming note

Originally written by legendary French filmmaker Jacques Tati, The Illusionist (not to be confused with the live-action Edward Norton film of the same name) is a touchingly simple and beautifully drawn film by renowned animator Sylvian Chomet. When Tati died in 1982, he left behind the screenplay for The Illusionist,…

This year’s Oscar-nominated short films

In past years, the theatrical release of Oscar-nominated live-action and animated shorts has provided a fun peek into intriguing bite-sized cinema from across the globe. But for the 2011 edition, the series is at last making room for five nominated documentary shorts as well. Unfortunately, this year’s nonfiction crop largely…

Andrew Hevia Talks No Matter What, Premiering at SXSW Film Festival

We’re big fans of local filmmaker Andrew Hevia and his affiliated projects, whether it’s his raunchy web series The Adventures of a Sexual Miscreant or his work as one of the impresarios behind the increasingly influential Borscht Film Festival. So when the South By Southwest Film Festival announced it’s slate…

Bravo Announces Real Housewives Of Miami Premiere Date

For years, we have been hearing rumors that Miami would finally get a Housewives franchise of our very own. Everyone from singer Gloria Estefan to PR Guru/Queen of the night Tara Solomon was rumored to be in the cast. Then, a couple of months back, Bravo officially confirmed that there…

My Dog Tulip will make you cherish your pet

The antithesis of both Marley & Me cuddliness and Cesar Millan militance, J.R. Ackerley’s 1956 memoir about his recalcitrant German shepherd, My Dog Tulip, is one of the finest, most insightful chronicles of inter-species devotion. A complex love story, his book plumbs the inner lives of hounds: “I realized clearly…..

Now playing: Inside Job

Inside Job, Charles Ferguson’s followup to his Iraq War gut-twister No End in Sight, is a documentary that inspires sickening ire — 20 minutes into this lucid yet stupefying account of the 2008 global economic meltdown, my vision was clouded by the steam wafting from my ears. Inside Job makes…

Werner Herzog and Pitbull Announce Borscht Film Festival 2011

Mark your calendars. The Borscht Film Festival announced the date and location for their next cinema fest: April 23rd at the Arsht Center. At last year’s, we saw working cuts of a flaneur’s stroll through Liberty City in “Day N Night Out,” which later screened at Cannes, and “Xemoland,” an…

MasterMind Award Finalists: Narrative

There’s more than the one way to tell a story. The finalists in our next category of MasterMind awards spin yarns through dance, happenings, performance, theater, and cinema. And next week, on February 10, we’ll choose one the following three artists for a $1,500 genius grant during our annual Artopia…