It happened in this country and it could happen again. The place was Laramie, Wyoming, and the crime, awful. A young man was tied to a fence, seriously beaten, and left to die because of his sexual orientation. His name was Matthew Shepard, and this nation’s history may never forget him. With quality plays like The Laramie Project, his death will linger in our minds for years to come. What a relief it is to enter a theatre and be presented with the bare facts within this well-told production. It bravely leaves the audience to decide what is right and wrong.

Laramie is much more than a show about a hate crime against a gay college student. It is about the deep-seated hate that can be found within many Americans still to this day. This type of hate becomes vicious and eventually intrudes itself upon other human beings’ ways of life. It is hate that wastes time, energy and space, and Laramie makes sure to run this beneath its surface. It is a sad story, one that will bring tears to your eyes, and also make you uncomfortable and angry-this is the premise to the show, and it is one formula that is utilized in all efficacious theatre.

Stories of this nature tend to border queasy melodrama for an audience, but fortunately, this production never does. It becomes obvious as one is viewing the show that much effort and commitment was put into it. Director Vincent J. Cardinal does a wonderful job in visualizing/blocking each sequence – a very difficult task in this particular instance considering the demands of the script. To aid the direction, it would not be fair to single out any names from the 13-member cast, being that they are all equally as compelling and invested in this wonderful piece. The technical crew also helps greatly in assisting the piece’s almost seamless movement into numerous segues. They come together to provide a most enjoyable and moving experience.

The Denver Theatre Company, located in New York City, produced the United States World Premiere of The Laramie Project. A few years later, the play found a home in a world that remains burgeoning with hate and strife, with no signs of letting up. One historical incident or play might not be able to change the world, but this is a damn fine display of faith.

The Laramie Project plays until Saturday, Oct. 12, at the Ring Theater with performances from Tuesday to Friday at 8 p.m., and Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. Tuesday night performances are free to UM students.

Josh Caraballo can be reached at chachibro@aol.com.

There’s no odder pairing in Hollywood than Rush Hour director Brett Ratner and the newest movie in The Silence of the Lambs series. The likely result should be a trendy, fast-paced, MTV-style flick (“Don’t you ever touch a cannibal’s radio!”). Instead, Ratner, who’s also directed The Family Man and Money Talks, shows great poise in maintaining the feeling of the previous movies.

Red Dragon is set in the early 80s, before the sinister events of The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. It’s actually a remake of Manhunter, which was released to poor reception in 1986, five years before The Silence of the Lambs hit theaters.

Red Dragon begins with FBI agent Will Graham capturing Hannibal Lecter. At this time Lecter is still a well-respected psychiatrist, although everyone who’s seen the other movies knows that he’s always killing people and eating them, or, for even more fun, serving their flesh to unsuspecting dinner guests. Graham had enlisted Lecter’s help on a case, before realizing the killer he was after was the doctor himself. The battle with Lecter leaves Graham wounded, and the resulting stress causes him to retire from the bureau and spend more time with his family. Lots of dramatic baggage, and that’s only the first 15 minutes.

The twist comes when Graham is called back to duty to investigate a serial killer who calls himself the Red Dragon. In order to catch the killer, Graham seeks the imprisoned Lecter’s “help.” The rest of the film follows Graham in his attempts to find the killer, and also in his dealings with his former friend, Lecter.

The reason why this film is such a great mystery is that it’s not preoccupied with shocking and wowing its audience. The film is paced slowly, but that doesn’t make it boring. Instead of racing through an obstacle course filled with explosions and shootouts, like most modern mysteries, it has long periods of dialogue and character interaction. These scenes wouldn’t be nearly as powerful without the eerie music and dark set design.

Everything about Red Dragon is superb. Ratner’s directing is flawless, the camerawork and acting are also top notch. Edward Norton (American History X, Fight Club) stars as Graham, and, of course, Anthony Hopkins is back to further impale Lecter into the American psyche. These two are great, but the movie wouldn’t be nearly as memorable without its supporting cast of Ralph Fiennes (Quiz Show) as the Red Dragon, Harvey Keitel (Bad Lieutenant) as Graham’s partner, Philip Seymour Hoffman (Happiness) as a sleazy tabloid journalist and Emily Watson (Gosford Park) as the killer’s blind love interest. Watson and Fiennes are particularly effective, and deserve to snag a couple of Oscar nominations in the supporting categories.

This film will be better received than Hannibal because of its writing. Ted Tally, who won an Academy Award for his The Silence of the Lambs script, also wrote Red Dragon. He skipped out on Hannibal, however, leaving the scripting duties to super-scribe David Mamet and Academy Award winner Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List).

Going by credits alone, the latter two are clearly the more successful and well- known writers. Tally, however, connects deftly in adapting these screenplays from the novels written by Thomas Harris. Tally’s The Silence of the Lambs screenplay impressed Harris so much that he refused to watch the film, afraid that it would influence his own writing.

Ratner’s first serious film succeeds with flying red colors, confidently proving that he is a versatile director. Hopkins is Lecter, and the other performances are equally impressive. Still, Red Dragon will likely be overlooked at awards time, due to the fact that it’s a prequel. Solid prequels are few and far between (isn’t that right Mr. Lucas?), and ones that can challenge the quality of the original are almost non-existent. Red Dragon doesn’t reach the caliber of The Silence of the Lambs, but it’s too endowed and cogent to be left for dead with countless green-sighted rip-offs. It’s not Rush Hour 3.

Shawn Wines can be reached at shawnwines@aol.com.

The subways, roaring buses, highballing yellow cabs, the bustling Broadway streets, the Gotham towers, the bright lights, big city-if New York were a color, it would be flashy, vibrant and unquestionably hard to miss. Strange then how Harvey Zipkin and Patisse, contributors to the exhibit NYC: the Pretentious and Pedestrian at the Daniel Azoulay Gallery, have depicted the incomprehensibly busy metropolis in simplistic black-and-white photography. The display stars a collection of monochromatic snapshots that attempt to reveal the big picture behind the Big Apple.

The gallery, planted in the heart of Miami’s trendy art district, is an archetypal setting for showcasing photography. Inside, stark concrete floors and white walls match the minimalist simplicity of the high ceilings. Sparse studio lighting subtly brightens the room and throbbing world music forms a satisfying atmosphere for drinking.

Zipkin, a New York native who’s been photographing professionally since the early 1960s, includes nothing complicated in his work. There’s no intricate symbolism, no fussy lighting techniques, no unnecessary bells and whistles. Rather, he depicts real, raw humanity: the ups and the downs, the ordinary and the extraordinary, the heart-pounding excitement of life as well as the simple beauty found in everyday routine. “The Hyatt 42nd Street” offers a delightful glimpse of businessmen en route as the busy workday trickles on. Brilliant in its veracity, “Golden Earring” shows a woman staring out of a bus window, the light glinting off a large gilded hoop that dangles from her left ear. “Along Broadway” is a simple aerial shot of a crowded intersection, its focal point a splashy billboard for “Donahue.” Also noteworthy are the cheery scenes that smell of summer-from a swimmer diving neatly into a pool to panoramas with Coney Island roller coasters arching dizzily in the background.

Contrastingly, Patisse takes a darker look at the city, her photos filled with imagery from New York’s bleaker underbelly during the excesses of the ’80s. Nightclubs provide much of the setting for the murky prints, which include shots of glitzy elitists and singers, as well as, interestingly, shots of the then-fledgling pop star Madonna. She also captures other New York personalities such as artist Jean-Michel Basquiat on the road to his eventual demise, as well as drag queens and socialites of the time. Her intuitive view of New York after dark is enticing and elucidating.

Whether you hail from Long Island, have racked up several frequent flyer miles to LaGuardia as a tourist, or even never set foot on the warm streets of Manhattan, there’s something to pique your interest in NYC – don’t pass this one up.

The exhibit runs through Oct. 12th. For more info, call 305-576-1977.

Jessica Misener can be reached at jessm02@yahoo.com.

Hearing Brigitte Bardot’s sexy, French lyrics wafting through the air is enough to tempt your eardrums. The melodies stem from the private music collection of Olivier Corre, the owner of A la Folie – a cozy French caf

The world of fashion and chi-chi saw a rupture of tastes at the Paris ready-to-wear collections this past Sunday. The split flavors stirred up the fundamental fashion question: what is elegance? Julien Macdonald at Givenchy featured skimpy knittings and scant macram

The Clown Prince of Rap (or that’s at least how he’s been labeled by the media) hovered his corpulent figure and idiomatic sense of humor above the South Beach surf and onto the glittering stage at Billboard Live this weekend to spin on the one and twos. We didn’t see him perform his signature goofy and amusing breed of hip hop, though, as he only appeared to twist turntables for a meager crowd of about 70 fans anticipating the onset of the main acts (we were disappointed to not see him making faces when performing “Just a Friend” or putting his words into action with “Pickin’ Boogers”).

Currently on tour with Jaheim and Truth Hurts, Biz Markie is working on his new album, Weekend Warrior, after keeping a rather low profile since the release of 1998’s On the Turntable on which he had guest MCs performing over his beats. The last time he doused us with his husky rhyming style on a solo LP was on 1993’s All Samples Cleared, which he put out to counter the sampling controversy that arose with his 1991 album, I Need a Haircut, where he used an unauthorized sample from Gilbert O’Sullivan’s hit “Alone Again.” When the latter sued Biz and won, the rules of using samples in rap songs radically changed, forcing hip hop artists to buy rights to samples before being able to include them in their songs.

After a long wait in SoBe’s Royal Palm Hotel, we finally got in touch with Biz to put together this interview.

Q: Biz, it seems like you’ve been in the musical shades lately. What have you been up to?

Biz: I’ve been just finishing my new album and DJing around the country. I’m not really in the shades actually. Whenever there was a big event, like a Superbowl or whatever, I was there, spinning.

Q: Tell us about the new album.

Biz: It’s coming out next spring. I can say that it’s gonna have a mixture of “now,” the more mature Biz, and of what I did on my first two albums when I was much younger. It’s still got that funk though and there’s a track called “Chinese Food” so you know what to expect.

Q: When did you start beatboxing and were you always the class clown?

Biz: I’ve been beatboxing since junior high. Everyone thought I was retarded when I was doing it back then, but yeah, I was always the class clown. I was even the class clown in all the other schools too!

Q: What made you want to get into hip hop and why do you have such a humorous approach to the form with songs like “Vapors” and “Pickin’ Boogers”?

Biz: The reason I rap the way I do is because that’s the way it comes to me naturally. In ’78, I heard a song by the EL Brothers and I had never heard anything like that before. It sounded so pure and made me wanna get into hip hop. From then on, I was hooked, I was a [rap] junkie.

Q: How do you think the O’Sullivan lawsuit affected your career?

Biz: It didn’t affect my career. It just brought sampling to the forefront. I was one of the first to get sued for sampling without paying and it made people start paying to use samples from copyrighted songs.

Q: How do you go about choosing samples when making a song? Do you have any samples you particularly like?

Biz: It comes to me in mysterious ways. I usually play a sample in the mixer and, if I like it, I’ll add a kick and a snare. I like slow samples best, but I don’t shout out samples. There’s a code of ethics involved.

Q: You’ve been making music since the mid-eighties. Why do you think hip hop has evolved from the early Marley Marl days of spitting simple rhymes and MCs battling just for the fun of it, to its current beefing and show-offing status?

Biz: It’s just that rappers got in touch with the business side of the game, they developed their business sense. They made hip hop more exciting and there’s always been beefing anyway, just like with Boogie Down Productions vs. The Juice Crew back in the day. I think 2Pac and Biggie should have just battled it out on the mic and then shook hands afterwards.

Q: What contemporary hip hop artists do you give most respect to these days?

Biz: I give respect to all artists, whether they’re Jay-Z, heads from Cash Money or Talib Kweli, because they’re all keeping hip hop alive. They make sure that it’s not just a fad.

Q: Tell us something strange about yourself that we don’t already know.

Biz: Well…I have the best memory you have ever seen. I don’t forget anything. I know so many damn records, it’s unbelievable!

Q: Give us a typical Biz Markie day when he’s not working.

Biz: I’m out looking for records or videotapes or just relaxing, making my game better. I gotta stay up in this DJ game ’cause someone might try to dethrone me at any time.

Q: Are you happy being labeled the Clown Prince of Rap or do you see yourself getting more serious one day?

Biz: I’m satisfied with it. I don’t mean to be funny on records, it just comes out that way. “Vapors” is a serious song, but people saw me doing jokes on the video, so they didn’t think it was serious. “Nobody Beats the Biz” is also a serious song.

Q: What have you been doing down here in Miami? Any heavy partying?

Biz: I come here a lot actually. I don’t really party or anything though. I usually go DJ, then go back home to my own. I wanna keep my riches and my money, and I don’t wanna get into any trouble (laughs).

Omar Sommereyns can be reached at SOASIS@aol.com