Maybe it’s the damned blinking thing, because it’s not simply the foppish hair and boyish face–or, for that matter, even the vaguely befuddled reticence and wry, self-abasing demeanor we Americans prefer to see in our Brits. It’s got to be the blinking. That’s what he does, almost all he does,…
I have a friend who is obsessed with immortality, and not in the figurative sense: He doesn’t want to accomplish a feat so great that his name will live forever; he wants to live forever. He’s on the Internet daily, like some cyber Juan Ponce de León, looking up the…
Having once served as a story-reader, I thought I knew what to expect when I arrived at Borders Books and Music in Preston Royal last Wednesday morning. My personal philosophy was: Read the story, do some silly voices, show the kids some pictures, and get out…fast. I expected the same…
thursday may 27 People tend to romanticize writers. They’re introspective geniuses living in decadence while waiting for that divine inspiration. Anyone who writes for a living will say that there’s nothing romantic about staring down a deadline, and that it’s really desperation, not divine inspiration. But, hey, if anyone still…
Whether it’s Tennessee Williams’ characters clinging to booze-soaked illusions or Flannery O’Connor’s thousand clowns spinning their wheels under God’s pitiless eye, American literature is rife with romanticized depictions of Southern eccentricity that spirals in and out of pathology. Yet native Southerners have always tended to roll their eyes at stories…
One of least gratifying things about being an arts writer is taking the piss out of someone who has good intentions. Don’t get me wrong; there’s something oddly exhilarating about kneecapping any contingent that really deserves it, and there are always a few floating to the top in this town,…
Nearly a quarter of a century after the fall of Saigon, only a small film industry has managed to grow on Vietnam’s war-scarred soil. And what has emerged is rarely seen outside of local cinemas. If ever there was a country that needed to seize back control of its cinematic…
The Love Letter has the dubious distinction of being the other studio film to open this week. In a week when all the other majors have run for cover, Dreamworks has taken a gamble with a classic bit of counter-programming–in nearly every way, this sweet romance/romantic comedy is the opposite…
Relentlessly hip? You’d better be. Enjoy pretentious talk about the great god Art and the hidden meanings in old gangster movies? Couldn’t hurt. Like to sit up till dawn smoking cigarettes and exchanging ironic barbs about the tragedy of life? Bingo. Amos Poe, an East Village-based avant-gardian since the Talking…
If your poodle is decked out in the complete Captain Kirk uniform, you’ve taken Klingon language classes, or you once mailed DeForest Kelley a joint taped to a piece of cardboard just “to return the favor,” the 86-minute documentary called Trekkies is must viewing–love it or loathe it. In the…
The return of Jesus Christ would have trouble living up to the advance billing of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. (“I mean, it’s OK, but why isn’t he turning water into wine like he used to? And where’s Peter? He was, like, my favorite disciple.”) That’s not an…
From the interstate, Huntsville looks like every other midsize small town this state has to offer; it’s a flickering cavalcade of Waffle Houses and Texacos and $19-a-night motels, a pit stop on the way to somewhere by way of nowhere at all. It isn’t till you get off the highway…
thursday may 20 Only the Mafia can fix contests better than the organizers of the Lilith Fair. In fact, we already know the winner of the Lilith Fair talent search to be held at Trees on Thursday: She’s white, vaguely pretty in a hippie-chick way, and performs many of her…
Tragedy has a funny ripple effect. It can destroy, and it can create; it can tear apart families, and it can allow for a rebirth for its survivors. For so many years, Chris Perez was known only as Mr. Selena Quintanilla, husband of–and guitarist for–the most famous woman in the…
This, of course, is an exercise in futility. The Force is strong with this film; you’ve seen the Boba Fetted geeks lined up outside theaters, their freaky, frightening, flashlight-turned-lightsaber-wielding numbers growing every day. Good Lord, Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace could be two hours of static–and it nearly…
The other night at Pegasus Theatre, I waited for a kiss that I hoped would move the earth beneath my feet, even though I knew I wasn’t going to be the recipient. When that kiss finally did come, it was, as expected, a curious sight–many gay men would never admit…
The Castle is a modest little comedy from Australia that falls into the subgenre of Capraesque idealism, in the little-guy-triumphs-over-evil-powers-that-be division. The story revolves around the unpretentious Kerrigan clan: Darryl (Michael Caton), the father, has his own little towing business. Sal (Anne Tenney), the mother, is the family cook, and…
A Midsummer Night’s Dream came early in Shakespeare’s career. He had written it by at least 1598, in roughly the same period as another lyric-romantic masterpiece, Romeo and Juliet. Despite Samuel Pepys’ famous dismissal of Dream as “the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life,” it…
Even English actresses of a certain age have a difficult time finding good roles, so it’s understandable that Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and Joan Plowright might jump at the chance to star in Tea With Mussolini, Franco Zeffirelli’s new film about a group of English expatriates living in Florence during…
In 1932, when director Karl Freund wanted to scare the socks off the brave movie patrons who had come to see the original Universal Pictures production of The Mummy, he didn’t have the miracle of state-of-the-art computer imagery to create his bogeyman. All he had was gauze–a lot of gauze…
thursday may 13 When the USA Film Festival’s officials elected to cut off the Dallas Observer staff–or “naysayers,” as The Dallas Morning News likes to refer to some of us–from covering the fest’s recent rehash of the Dallas Video Festival (“Buzz,” April 8, and just about every issue since then),…
A USA Film Festival member wrote a letter accusing us of acting like spurned lovers because we took offense at the USAFF’s recent snub of this very newspaper. Well, we’d like to clarify: We’re really more like spurned, masochistic lovers. Slap us, and we’ll give you more publicity–providing you put…
