With luck, Yi Yi (A One and a Two), the seventh release from writer-director Edward Yang, one of Taiwan’s most respected filmmakers, will open a vein of interest in Taiwan’s cinema, but it will be an uphill struggle. While it’s a rich and rewarding film, its pace is more leisurely…
A co-worker who regularly attends the theater fairly recoiled when he learned that Dallas Theater Center had programmed Margaret Edson’s Wit into the final slot of the season. He had seen the New York production, and while he could note some of its admirable qualities from a safe distance, he…
All Access: Front Row, Backstage, Live! does not offer the no-holds-barred access to the excess that its name implies. That may not come as a big surprise since IMAX prides itself on maintaining its wholesome, family-entertainment values. And most of the artists highlighted in the film left their decadent periods…
We still can’t decide which type of educational filmstrip did the most damage to our delicate young psyches–the ones in driver’s education that made us fear accelerating over 20 mph and crossing train tracks, the sex films where cartoon kids reacted stoically to the news they’d soon be experiencing nocturnal…
Gabe Kapler calls from Tulsa. His voice is friendly but a little garbled. It’s not the phone line, though. Sounds like he’s munching on something. “My leg feels great,” he says, chomping away, nourishing a body muscular enough to launch a fitness craze if he’d ever go Billy Blanks. “It…
There is no good place to begin with Harry Shearer, because he doesn’t sit still long enough to allow one the chance to focus. He is a blur, forever in motion–on his way to the radio station, on his way from the movie studio, on his way to the publisher’s…
As a kid in Brooklyn, Darren Aronofsky used to steal into Manhattan, taking the D train across the East River to sneak into movies such as A Clockwork Orange and Eraserhead. These were R-rated, and he was still 15 or 16. “They were films,” he says, smiling, “you weren’t supposed…
If you don’t like Tom Green, there’s no point in going anywhere near Freddy Got Fingered, as it won’t win you over. If you don’t know much about Tom Green but are curious, you might be well advised to watch videotapes of his show first, and be aware that inasmuch…
Joe Simon doesn’t read comic books anymore, and not because he’s an 87-year-old man with far better ways to spend his time. The former and, perhaps, future comics writer and illustrator simply doesn’t get them anymore; he doesn’t know who they’re for, what they’re about, why most of them even…
The game is still fresh. Plastic beer cups and wax popcorn bags litter the floor while 18,000-or-so fans strut their way to the nearest Reunion exit, beaming. Some steal one last glance at the frozen scoreboard, nodding approvingly before shuffling off like herded cattle. It was a good night, one…
Playwright Diana Son, who contributed some of the best material to last season’s TV show The West Wing, is a woman who wears her hair very short and eschews makeup. In interviews, the Korean-American writer talks about having been mistaken for a man at various times in her adult life,…
Robert Schimmel, talking from a hotel room in Las Vegas, is a smorgasbord of medical procedures: At this very moment, the stand-up’s on painkillers because of yesterday’s root canal; he suffered a heart attack in 1998; and he spent last year undergoing chemotherapy after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Some…
Sports are a good way to measure a culture. Cricket, for example, reflects the English culture that developed it. In the same way, football (Australian-rules style, natch) rules Australia. In the upcoming World Cup soccer championships, one can witness how a nation’s culture dictates its style of play–from the methodical…
Come clean. You were freaked. It was scrawled across your face, plain as a girl from Tarrant County. Easier to read than simple cousin Merl from Argyle. Even if you don’t follow hockey, even if it isn’t your bag, you were at least a little concerned because, when the second…
“Keep a diary and one day it’ll keep you,” said Mae West, and while the sentiment rings true, it does little to explain the mystery of why Helen Fielding’s sliver of literary history managed to keep anyone. Fluffy, shrill and approximately as deep as Cosmo magazine, the book somehow hit…
Josie and the Pussycats is not a comedy, and it’s even possible the movie’s not a work of fiction, despite being “based on” Dan DeCarlo’s 38-year-old Archie Publishing comic book. It’s tempting to brand the film as documentary, this year’s Scared Straight. There’s very little that’s funny about a movie…
One doesn’t watch Amores Perros (Love’s a Bitch) so much as absorb–like a body blow. “I wanted to make a movie that smelled of filth,” Alejandro González Inárritu has said about his feature directorial debut. He has succeeded beyond perhaps even his wildest dreams. One of this year’s Academy Award…
September 9, 1966: Adam Sandler is born in Brooklyn, New York. He is raised in Manchester, New Hampshire. September 1987: Sandler joins Ken Ober, Colin Quinn and Denis Leary as cast member on MTV’s game show Remote Control. Sometime in 1989: Sandler lands first starring role in a movie, playing…
Playwright-novelist-children’s author-film director Phillip Ridley is one of those multi-hyphenated artists who believe that the message transcends the medium or, plainly put, that a compelling story is paramount in every field in which he works. He does more than just “dabble” in all these professions. He understands that the tools…
One prominent stage director in town confessed to me that he found Blood Bondage, the quasi-evangelical vampire saga that marked ProgreXssive Arts’ first full production last year, perversely enthralling and funny. Any show that climaxes with a battle between an evil mentor bloodsucker with an English accent and a charismatic…
Southern Methodist University has always suffered from a bit of a split personality. Its better-known persona is as one of the nation’s top-tier party schools, a place of awe-inspiring intellectual perversity, full of not-too-bright frat boys and Idlewild debs and hometown princesses with eating disorders. It is a university with…
What is the potential of the human mind when everyday distractions are removed? Is there a wellspring of untapped aptitude waiting to be awakened and used for the good of all mankind? Or is the result more primal, focusing on the satisfaction of needs and desire for attention? Most likely…
