Champagne, hors d’oeuvres and neurotoxin 10/8 ere’s a kick in our aging, destined-to-sag ass: Overactive muscles cause frown lines and wrinkles, or so says the Web site for the Advanced Facial Plastic Surgery Center, home of Dr. Benjamin Bassichis. That just figures. We have one set of overactive muscles in…
William Shatner, transformed man 10/8 William Shatner is hot. He pulled off the whole John Travolta comeback bit right under everyone’s noses with ABC’s slick Boston Legal, and he even won an Emmy for the show. And his shtick on the recent AFI tribute to George Lucas was, in a…
Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection (Universal Studios) Alfred Hitchcock may be the best pop filmmaker in our history, and this gorgeous 14-film set is certainly worthy of the master. Licensing issues kept it from being as “definitive” as the box claims–missing, most notably, are Hitchcock’s classic Cary Grant collaborations To…
The Amityville Horror: Special Edition (Columbia/Tristar) Beyond the Gates of Splendor (Fox) The Black Keys Live (Fat Possum) Christmas With SCTV (Sony Music) Count Duckula: The Complete First Season (Koch Vision) Cream: Royal Albert Hall (Warner Strategic Marketing) Drawn Together Uncensored: Season One (Paramount) The Fly and The Fly II:…
Last year’s Katamari Damacy was so quirky, it should have been subtitled “Marketed to Stoners. Its star, a little green prince, was forced to roll a giant gravity ball to atone for the sins of his father, the King of the Cosmos, who had gotten drunk one day and knocked…
Director Curtis Hanson, a journeyman only recently bestowed the title of Great Director, has already made his horror movie (1973’s The Arousers), his kiddie action comedy (1980’s The Little Dragons), his teen sex romp (1983’s Losin’ It ), his handful of Hitchcock riffs (1987’s The Bedroom Window, 1990’s Bad Influence…
In 2001, Jonathan Safran Foer made an astounding literary debut. “A Very Rigid Search,” published by The New Yorker, was his hilarious, heartbreaking account of an attempt by a young American man (named, cheekily, Jonathan Safran Foer) to find a Ukrainian woman who had saved his grandfather from the Nazis…
Robots (Fox) The story of a small-town ‘bot (voiced by Ewan McGregor) who bolts for the big city, Robots is the first non-Pixar film to compete with that studio’s razzle and dazzle. The thing’s stunning to look at–and, frankly, it’s better to stare at than listen to, since listening entails…
American Pie: 3 Movie Pie Pack (Universal) Beethoven: The Pooch Pack (Universal) Billy Jack: The Ultimate Collection (Ventura) Blind Melon: Live at the Metro (EMI) Bouncing Souls: Live at the Glasshouse (Fontana) Britney & Kevin: Chaotic . . . the DVD & More (Jive) Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power (Universal)…
Serenity, Joss Whedon’s big-screen spinoff of the 2002 TV show Firefly, which didn’t even last a dozen episodes, is already a cult phenom well before its opening. The show’s DVD boxed set lines the shelves of every fanboy who dreamed of gunslinging in space alongside preachers and prostitutes, and already…
To the knowledgeable comic book fan, all one need say about MirrorMask is that it was scripted by Neil Gaiman and directed by Dave McKean, with a final product that, while less plot-heavy than most of Gaiman’s writing, faithfully adapts McKean’s unique drawing/collage style into three dimensions. Since those who…
Into the Blue offers precisely what one would expect from the director of Blue Crush and the writer of Torque: beautiful stupidity. Its every frame dripping from a noxious recipe of suntan oil, summertime sweat and salt water, this heist movie (or whatever it is, which isn’t much) delivers a…
It’s almost impossible to watch Roman Polanski’s rendition of Oliver Twist without drawing parallels between the deprivations endured by the book’s young protagonist and the director’s own brutal boyhood. A Jew raised in Nazi-occupied Poland, Polanski first tackled the Holocaust head-on in his 2002 film The Pianist, but Oliver Twist,…
About once a year–twice, if we’re lucky–a first-time director shows up with something original, electrifying and humane, a film that shows us a new way to see, that presents complex and memorable people in whom we recognize ourselves. Last year, it was Joshua Marston and Maria Full of Grace. This…
Anyone vaguely familiar with the rules of golf knows that you may not improve your lie, ground your club in a sand trap, or–most grievous of all–subtract strokes from your score. This last one apparently never occurred to the makers of a new movie with the grandiose title The Greatest…
Louise Bourgeois Etchings Much more interesting than pop star-turned-Kabbalah expert Madonna and more creatively charged than the bête noir of academe, Camille Paglia, Louise Bourgeois channels change like a chameleon with a penchant for maintaining the same warm place in the sun. Though she has perfected the art of reinventing…
Charlotte’s Web E.B. White’s timeless tale of life and death and unexpected miracles on the farm gets its fourth production at Dallas Children’s Theater. Forget any preconceptions about plays for kids. This is big-budget, high-quality entertainment worth seeing even if you don’t have rugrats tagging along. Equity actors Karl Schaeffer…
Actors are animals. That’s the theme of this week’s hayride, which takes us to a happy barnyard and a dreary backstage rat’s nest. Over at Dallas Children’s Theater, they’re doing Charlotte’s Web, with a charming cast donning the fur and feathers of all who populate the farm in E.B. White’s…
Forget milk, soy, eggs and power bars. The real perfect food is the corn dog. One dog has a serving of protein (from that sweaty, shriveled chunk of meat in the middle) and a serving or two of carbohydrates (the lovely, chewy, crispy–when cooked the correct way–batter outside). For herbivores,…
Thursday, September 29 There’s no doubt that we fully support sexual health education, family planning and the organizations that promote such programs. However, we are the Dallas Observer, and boy, do we also love a good bit of irony. We couldn’t help but chortle just a bit as we sorted…
Food is the best part of the State Fair of Texas, and if we’ve got it, well, we fry it. Fried pickles, fried ice cream, fried tamales, fried corn dogs–we even fried marshmallows last year. This year’s new food standout promises to be…wait for it…wait for it…something fried. As the…
A punk icon speaks his mind 10/4 Henry Rollins is the quintessential badass. Few people can simply walk into a room and make an observer think, “Damn, he’s funny, intelligent, talented and hopefully not planning to kick my ass.” It’s impressive that one person can command a room in so…
