The joke that opens Jakob the Liar, the new Holocaust comedy (and talk about an oxymoron) starring Robin Williams, captures the bittersweet quality — the grim reality mixed with laughter — that the rest of the movie tries and fails to embody. The story takes place in an unidentified Jewish…
There’s a long tradition of stories about mysterious drifters who arrive in a small town and either create trouble or catalyze an explosion of long-simmering problems. Mark Twain used that hook, as have Dashiell Hammett (Red Harvest), Akira Kurosawa (Yojimbo), and Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars). Now Hampton Fancher…
The only tools a nice fellow needs to repair the damaged psyches of an entire town are a guilty conscience and a dash of insight. That, at least, is the premise of Lawrence Kasdan’s silly new social parable, Mumford, in which the eponymous hero poses as a psychologist and, despite…
It is the wry humor and amazing equanimity of the men profiled in the documentary Return With Honor that proves most astonishing. They were among the 462 American fighter pilots who were shot down over North Vietnam and became prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. Some were held in…
There are a few plot loopholes in Double Jeopardy that, if scrutinized, would unhinge the entire story and seriously truncate the movie’s running time. Two of the more gaping ones involve narrow escapes allowed between a profoundly wronged wife and her devious, scheming husband. In the heat of their conflict,…
Have yourself nailed to the top of a Volkswagen Beetle, have yourself shot in the arm at close range, crawl over some broken glass. No? It’s all just another day’s work for Chris Burden, an artist who in the early 1970s introduced a confounded press to the concept of performance…
There’s a certain rush of anticipation when entering the TI Founders IMAX Theater at The Science Place and seeing the 79-foot domed screen come into view — in front, above, and around. It’s like waiting in line at the roller coaster. The next train is coming down the tracks, and…
“You and me?” asks catcher Gus Sinski (John C. Reilly) of his old friend, veteran pitcher Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner). “One more time?” It’s a poignant moment, the top of what may be the last game of Chapel’s career before he’s either traded or quits the game he has loved…
Since his TV show ended, Martin Lawrence has gotten more ink for his off-camera life than for his movie career. There’s nothing about Blue Streak that is likely to change that. It’s a shame, because the basic plot — which sounds like something from one of Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder…
Modern word processing has made life easier for screenwriters. After all, there’s no need to retype some old classic with your own little changes; nowadays, you can just download the screenplay for, let’s say, The Exorcist, search for “adolescent girl,” replace with “twentysomething single woman,” and — voila! — you’ve…
I don’t know if it was apocryphal or not, but the story goes that toward the end of her life, playwright Lillian Hellman was asked after a speaking engagement why, considering that she’d taken up arms against all manner of social injustices throughout her career, she’d never explicitly endorsed the…
I was privileged to spend this past weekend in the company of not three, but five masterful women actors, if you add to Toys in the Attic the Saturday matinee I caught of Grace and Glorie at the Bath House Cultural Center. Everything about advance reviews I’d read of Tom…
He’s the finest pop singer-songwriter of his generation, which, by my count, was two generations ago. Paul Simon has released only three records this decade: 1990’s Rhythm of the Saints (otherwise known as Back to Graceland); a live walk-through in 1991, recorded in the intimate confines of Central Park; and…
We’ve all seen them — the black velvet canvases with garish paint slathered thickly like margarine on sandwich bread, sold from a beat-up truck on a street corner, banished to the back of thrift stores, or stacked in booths at the many festivals this city spawns during the spring and…
Micromanaging The rumor that Fort Worth Star-Telegram art critic Janet Tyson was fired August 23 after making an irreverent comment about senior features editor Julie Heaberlin seemed too ridiculous to be true. The story went that Tyson, with a 10-year track record covering art at the daily paper, popped off…
Whether it’s bad or good commercial luck that the thriller Stir of Echoes follows so closely on the heels of The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan’s wildly successful ghost-story sleeper, it’s bad critical luck. The film has some startling parallels to The Sixth Sense: Both concern psychic communication with the…
Kevin Bacon is talking about his penis. It’s not his fault — not exactly, anyway. Bacon didn’t bring it up, so to speak. He never does, at least not in public. He’s just trying to promote his latest film, the small supernatural thriller Stir of Echoes. But here he is…
If British writer Robert Cedric Sherriff became best known as the co-screenwriter for films like Goodbye Mr. Chips and The Invisible Man, that’s only because his most famous play, Journey’s End, suffers from the same historical neglect as its subject. Plano Repertory Theatre currently offers this drama about life in…
If you happen to be of the opinion that Arthur Penn’s much-praised 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde has not aged well, you will come away from Inside Bonnie Parker, a one-woman show currently playing at Fort Worth’s Circle Theatre, with the joyous feeling that your dissent has been completely justified…
From the looks of things, the Gerald Peters Gallery is as placid as its neighbors, a collection of renovated vintage homes and tasteful commercial buildings lining Dallas’ “gallery row” on Fairmount Street. The gallery’s spacious and quiet rooms offer a soothing experience to patrons, who can enjoy a tranquil stroll…
The West End. That master-planned pit of money-generating quicksand was originally Dallas city planners’ answer to a mid-’80s, shadowy Deep Ellum. Build a nightlife-shopping resort, pave it with snappy red brick, erect a mall as its central attraction, and stock the area with mounted police. Not the most culturally enlightened…
The old vaudeville stripper motto in Gypsy was “you gotta get a gimmick.” It works just as well nowadays, and not just for strippers. It’s also perfect for comedians. Drew Carey talks about his weight, Jeffrey Ross reads poetry, and Bobcat Goldthwait has that voice — the trademark multi-octave, avalanche-of-emotions-at-once…
