Passion, not diplomacy Adore or despise her, Madonna has surprised us once again. We’re not talking about her pregnancy here, but her recent incarnation as a big-wigged music-biz executive. Her Warner Bros. vanity label, Maverick, boasts a double dose of lightning strikes: a megaplatinum superstar named Alanis Morissette; and a…
The critical disdain into which playwright Edward Albee sunk from the late ’70s through the early ’90s isn’t the surprise of his career. That he ever enjoyed the relatively brief affection of Broadway audiences and critics is the real anomaly. Albee has been called the heir to Arthur Miller and…
thursday september 12 Three Tall Women: Six years ago, Edward Albee couldn’t catch a cold in American theater, having been pretty much shunned as a has-been writer wilting in the camp shadow of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Thanks to a 1994 Pulitzer for Three Tall Women and a spectacularly…
When filmmakers who already possess morbid, vibrant mentalities discover the topic of food obsession, duck. Audiences are likely to be splattered with all manner of deeply personal opinions about the human condition. Trouble is, our most neurotic talents in contemporary cinema know that a ritual so intimate as eating is…
The neglect of American playwright Clifford Odets is partly his fault, partly ours. It’s certainly true that Odets–who applied his talents to screenwriting but could barely stomach the Hollywood establishment in the ’40s and ’50s–had a sanctimonious tone in his author’s voice. Indeed, his political affiliations were more naked than…
thursday september 5 Utopia Danza-Teatro: Based on a reading of its press information, it would be tempting to describe the Mexican dance troupe Utopia Danza-Teatro as “experimental,” but there is nothing new or uncertain about the themes that underlie its mixed-media work–economic instability in its homeland and the anonymity of…
There’s a moment near the beginning of Into the Woods, Theatre Three’s latest production, when you know you’ve ventured into Sondheim territory–and director Jac Alder has provided you with a whip-smart, conscientious map. Little Red Riding Hood (Emily Parsons) has just detailed her purpose for traveling through the trees–to bring…
Just three months into the gig as Dallas Observer stage critic, I found myself in a peculiar situation: hiding from the performer I was about to review. I wasn’t alone when I arrived at the opening night of performance artist Fred Curchack’s latest one-man symphony, The Comeback of Freddy Chickan:…
thursday august 29 Rocket to the Moon: New Theatre Company picks up the Clifford Odets baton handed to it by the Richardson Theatre Centre, which staged a sumptuous Odets script called The Big Knife a couple months back. That one concerned the evils of Hollywood greed and was bedecked in…
It’s hard to decide which we hear more often: that there are no good roles for women in commercial American cinema, or that this–fill in current calendar year–is The Year of the Woman in film. Whatever the case, there’s usually a self-serving public-relations motive lurking behind these proclamations. The women…
thursday august 22 The Comeback of Freddy Chicken: Internationally acclaimed Dallas-based performance artist Fred Curchack is a lamb on the phone, a lion when he steps on stage. Curchack, a hands-on kinda performance artist, is happy to give us a ring and follow up with his own bit of publicity…
During a summer movie season dominated by a 300-pound celluloid gorilla named Independence Day, The USA Film Festival has offered a smashing August menu of sci-fi classics to remind moviegoers that once, not so long ago, the genre provided greater opportunities for audience involvement than thrills and chills. This is…
The word “improvisation” is often bandied about when people talk about stand-up comedy; indeed, the most famous comedy club chain in America was named after it. But watching HBO’s Comedy Showcase or Comedy Central’s A-List, you’ll find precious little real improvisation. The reason is simple: Improv comedy by its very…
thursday august 15 Seven Underground Films: Press material for the traveling program “Seven Underground Films Tour 13 Cities in 13 Days in One ’65 Chevy” indicates that the short films on this bill are united by “an artful lowlife sensibility.” Co-sponsored by the nationally celebrated Austin Film Society, which recently…
Here’s a dirty little secret about film critics that won’t make an amusing bon mot at the next National Society of Film Critics dinner, unless you want Pauline Kael to introduce her cane to your head: Critics are herd animals by instinct. There are disagreements, to be sure; the next…
Although different scenes may hop from century to century, a stage play really must concern itself with the moment. In the theater, real time isn’t a trick the director and producer pull from a toy box full of gimmicks, as in filmmaking. The playwright, the actors, and the director are…
thursday august 8 Donna Lovely and Stewart Charles Cohen: The Bath House Cultural Center hosts a pair of photography exhibits by award-winning professionals who entered a foreign culture and emerged with little pieces of time. In the case of Donna Lovely, the “foreign culture” she explored happens right here on…
I don’t know what I expected Douglas McGrath to look and sound like after I had been told the writer-director of Miramax’s sterling new version of Emma was born and raised in Midland, Texas. But the last thing I imagined was the polite, dapper, dandyish man with the glittering eyes…
Nicky Silver is probably the hottest young playwright lurking in off-Broadway right now, with his last play The Food Chain easily his most critically and financially successful New York production to date. Additionally, since the ’90s began his works have been staged dozens of times by big-city theaters, including three…
thursday august 1 Fredrik Noren: You can’t get much whiter than Sweden, which makes the idea of a Swedish ensemble playing jazz–a premiere African-American musical form–an easy target for snickers. So if you’re a jazz fan and the idea of listening to Basie and Bird played by men with names…
Everyone thinks he was the first to adore Louise Fitzhugh’s remarkably sophisticated 1964 short novel, Harriet the Spy. As with sex or illicit drugs, your average adolescent must be turned on to Fitzhugh’s smart-aleck exploration of a lonely girl’s traumatic introduction to the consequences of honesty. I had a whip-smart,…
The era of the mom-and-pop video store has pretty much died in Dallas, with the thrilling exception of four stalwart independents: Tapelenders on Cedar Springs; Premiere Video at Mockingbird and Central; and Forbidden Books and Alternative Videos in Exposition Park. Genre is the operative word at each of these valuable…
