Halloween
If you want to genuinely be scared this Halloween, do yourself a favor and skip that notoriously lame
Fright Nights event at the South Florida Fairgrounds. Instead, check out the fifth annual installment of “X-Scream Halloween” at G Star School, 2030 S. Congress Ave., Lake Worth. In 2008, the motion-picture studio won the distinction as one of the Travel Channel’s 13 scariest haunted attractions in America, and this year’s expanded event should prove just as frightening. In addition to live entertainment, carnival attractions and food vendors, participants can choose up to six creative haunted walk-throughs, fashioned after high school (What was scarier than that?), a mental ward, Broadway, Victorian and Western set-pieces and that most local of scares: a horror-filled hurricane. The haunts begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and admission is $10 advance or $13 at the gate. Buy tickets at www.xscreamhalloween.com or call 561/531-0806.
Art
Producer Howard Alan’s art festivals are considered top of the line, and few are more heralded across the nation than the massive Las Olas Art Fair, slated for 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The free event promises more than 200 artists and crafters sprawling along traffic-blocked Las Olas Boulevard selling paintings, drawings, photography, sculptures, jewelry and more, with prices ranging from $15 to $2,000. Artists and festivalgoers are encouraged to wear pink in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Visit the website for a list of participating artists. For information, call 954/472-3755.
Movies
Clint Eastwood, probably our country’s reigning titan of classical Hollywood storytelling, returns with his annual masterpiece “Hereafter,” a quiet study of three tortured lives – a French TV reporter who survived a tsunami, a young British boy who recently lost his twin brother and an honest-to-goodness psychic who resents his powers – intersecting via paranormal communication. It’s a compelling, wide-eyed, challenging movie that works both because of and despite its potentially hokey premise. Eastwood approaches the material with profound sensitivity and even-handed skepticism. As the director peers through clouds of death for the silver linings of hope and rebirth, it results in the acceptance of both the inevitable and the spiritual from an artist in his twilight years – not to mention one of the year’s most exquisitely calibrated and emotionally unforgettable experiences. “Hereafter” opens in most theaters Friday.
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For a film experience of a more lowbrow fare, visit the Bill Cosford Cinema at the University of Miami in Coral Gables for Friday and Saturday midnight showings of Jack Arnold’s 1954 monster movie “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.” The film will be shown in its original 35mm, 3D format, back when the device was still a B-movie gimmick rather than the ubiquitous A-level standard it has become today. Considering its silly subject matter – an expedition of explorers discovering a prehistoric amphibian man with a penchant for hot babes – “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” is considered by many to have genuine artistic merit. Please see this instead of “Jackass 3D.”
