Art
In its four years of existence, Stitch Rock has evolved from a gleam in one craft artist’s eye – that would be
Delray-based cupcake queen Amanda Linton – to a veritable institution. The craft fair has spawned many imitators and spinoffs, growing exponentially year after year. The craft fair and bazaar will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at Old School Square in Delray Beach, featuring more than 70 vendors hawking DIY fashion, home deco items, natural bath and body goodies, vintage finds, hot rod paintings and pin-up photography. Linton has long had her pulse on the counter-craft-culture zeitgeist, and this year’s event should be no exception. Admission is $5.
Movies
So yes, technically, the chilling new horror film “Let Me In”
which opens Friday, is a vampire movie, but please, don’t let this trendy concession prevent you from seeing one of the best films of 2010. A pitch-perfect remake of the 2008 Swedish film “Let the Right One In,” “Let Me In” transplants that film’s early ’80s-set story to New Mexico and keeps the original film’s structure and themes, even retaining many of its unforgettable deep-focus images. Like the Swedish movie, the film is less about the film’s vampire girl – arriving in town under the guise of an innocent adolescent – than it is about the horrific domino effect of school bullying, where violence begets violence. Toss in some clever “Romeo and Juliet” references and few images of Ronald Reagan spouting empty platitudes about human goodness and you’ve got a subversive thriller that profoundly examines the moral equivalency of evil and murder.
Books
The short-story anthology “Florida Heat Wave” hit stores earlier this month with the tagline “Florida: Like Hell, only hotter.” Pulp fiction has perhaps never been as relatable as it has in this locally set collection of tales from 18 crime writers over 400 pages. The stories span from South Beach to North Florida, and at 7 p.m. Friday, the great Delray bookshop Murder on the Beach will host five of the book’s contributors: Michael Lister, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, John Dufresne, Jonathon King and James O. Born. Get ready for a hard-boiled dialogue. The event is free. For information, call 561/279-7790.
Theater
Florida Atlantic University’s theater department opens its theater season this weekend with “Six Degrees of Separation,” John Guare’s award-winning 1990 play about an African-American con man who infiltrates the lives of a white bourgeois couple in New York City by convincing them he’s the son of Sidney Poitier. A wry exploration of race, class, sexual orientation and celebrity, this was one of the defining plays of its decade, and it’s remarkable how few times it’s produced by professional stages in South Florida. Here’s hoping the FAU graduate students are up to this difficult task. The 1993 film version, incidentally, comes off tamer than the stageplay but contains the best performance, still, of Will Smith’s career. The play opens Friday and runs through Oct. 10. Tickets are $20. Order online at www.fauevents.com or call 800/564-9539.
