This latest film from 82-year-old French New Wave stalwart Eric Rohmer is enough of a departure that it may either confound or irritate his fans. Unlike his usual stylistically restrained explorations of morals and manners (My Night at Maud’s, Claire’s Knee), The Lady and the Duke, based on the journal…
Here we have an intuitive, polyrhythmic art form bridging cultures and titillating the young at heart. This definition could easily apply to baby-making or gang-banging, but in Doug Pray’s trenchant documentary, it’s “turntablism” distracting the passionate kids from reproducing and/or mowing each other down. Immersing us in the endlessly inventive,…
A real missed opportunity, this update of a Herman Melville short story is all surface and no substance, like the pilot episode of yet another workplace sitcom. David Paymer steps into the role of the nameless boss, with Crispin Glover as the troublesome employee Bartleby, who for no apparent reason…
Only a darned good writer could turn the subject of methamphetamine addiction into a spirited comedy romp. The Abandoned Reservoir, now onstage at the Bath House Cultural Center, is evidence that Stuart Litchfield was such a writer. It’s a shame he’s not around to hear the laughter and applause. Litchfield,…
In one of his finest essays from the mid-’90s, an exquisite savaging of Mother Teresa, the columnist, critic and professional gadfly Christopher Hitchens leads with an anecdote about Private Eye, a defunct satirical magazine. As Hitchens tells it, when the editors and writers of Private Eye were casting about for…
When this column debuted at the beginning of 2000, readers and editors scoffed at its occasional subject matter, the comic book. Kids’ stuff, they growled, junk food for adults who still live in their parents’ basements. And maybe they were right back then. The industry was dying; the art form…
The most difficult task for those wanting to attend Martice Enterprise’s production of Rick Najera’s Latinologues: A Comedy Without Borders may not be finding the pocket change to cover the $12 ticket. Nor will it be locating the Wilson Carriage House, the unconventional venue being used for the first half…
If you want to be straight about it, Captain Kirk, not Picard, got there first. “William Shatner in…William Shakespeare’s…Julius Caesar,” he once enthused, pitching a complete-text production (“like Branagh”) in which he would play all the roles, meaning both Caesar and Brutus; “I’ll stab myself in the back,” Shatner insisted…
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal,” wrote T.S. Eliot. For 1930s poet Laura Riding, that meant stealing not rhymes but husbands, notably Schuyler Jackson, a rather shiftless sometime writer for Time magazine who was married to a plain New England farm girl named Kit. Charismatic, ego-driven Riding was the companion…
Terry Allen, a West Coast conceptualist with a Southwestern twang, has been at the scene of just about every art-world crime in the past three decades. It isn’t entirely his fault. Born in Kansas, raised in Lubbock, Allen attended L.A.’s Chouinard Art Institute (now Cal Arts) in the mid-’60s, which,…
The single life: All the late nights with their pseudo-philosophical discussions about nothing until 4 a.m. and waking up hung over only to do it all again, wishing all the time for that special someone to relate to and give life meaning. Then, when they claim they weren’t looking for…
You could argue that during most of these long, hot summer baseball seasons, the Texas Rangers play like stiff-legged, bandaged-head-to-toe, eyeless, earless mummies. You know, with knees and elbows that hardly bend, growling and groaning on the way to first base, trailing muslin streamers and looking for all the world…
The bad news for Memento fans is that Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia is far less complex and challenging in form than the backward-edited art-house hit that sparked as much disdain as devotion among moviegoers last year. The good news for Memento-haters is that Insomnia is far less complex and challenging in…
The plot of The Importance of Being Earnest, for those unfortunates who’ve missed it these past 109 years, goes something like this: A dandified London wastrel by the name of Algernon (Algy) Moncrief (portrayed in this adaptation by Rupert Everett) welcomes into his chambers his friend and ally Ernest (Colin…
A year ago, Jeffrey Katzenberg hit the promotional circuit to support his green baby Shrek, and even before its release he proclaimed that its successor would be “bold and daring and unlike any other animated movie ever made.” If by “bold” he meant “monotonous” and “daring” he meant “histrionic,” the…
It’s very tempting to not just dismiss Enough, the latest bill-paying gig by Michael Apted (Enigma) starring Jennifer Lopez, but shred it altogether. Ms. Lopez hasn’t exactly added to her acting credibility with a string of showy, glamorous roles in such mediocre fare as The Wedding Planner and Angel Eyes…
This 2001 Spanish production, directed by lvaro Fernández Armero, is so derivative of numerous other sources it’s almost novel; it’s either a brilliant fusion or a heap of baffling confusion, but the end result’s not entirely unsatisfying. At first, it plays like little more than a I Know What You…
Every movie lover has heard of Pepe le Moko, the suave French crook hiding in plain sight in the slums of Algiers, with his romantic watch-cry of “Come wiz me to ze Casbah.” But in America, Pepe has always been connected to the romantic myth of Charles Boyer, the star…
Anime director Rintaro (X) is out to dazzle us with this adaptation of a 1940s Japanese comic, and for the most part he succeeds. Blending eras as deftly as Baz Luhrmann in Moulin Rouge, he gives us a detail-heavy computer-animated city populated by hand-drawn characters who resemble old newspaper comics…
Roman Coppola and L.M. Kit Carson, filmmakers and friends and co-conspirators, sit in front of an audience of 30 on the University of Dallas campus. Their appearance together, in this wood-paneled auditorium on this verdant site, completes a circle, or perhaps a dozen of them, and the moment makes Carson…
Here are the things you should know about Crawfest 2002: 1.The Dallas Observer sponsors the event. 2. A pretty young lass from the sales/promotions department at said newsweekly asked if we could write something about this event. (Can we ever!) 3. This reporter feels no conflict of interest in writing…
Three years have passed since The Phantom Menace thrilled some and infuriated others, yet the schism in the Church of Lucas remains. Die-hard supporters still refuse to admit that Episode I has some truly awful acting, dialogue and borderline offensive caricatures; and dyed-in-the-wool detractors won’t acknowledge that, despite its faults,…
