Based on his directorial debut, there are three things we can safely say about Antonio Banderas: He’s an actor’s director, meaning he can pick a good cast and coax great performances from them; he knows how to make a good image and where to point the camera; and he has…
There have been so many recent movies about modern gay teenage life, you’d think a filmmaker would be hard-pressed to find a new wrinkle on what has become an increasingly familiar tale. But Head On isn’t a pro forma drama of self-discovery and self-acceptance. As directed by Ana Kokkinos and…
Fort Worth is a prime town for a film festival. It’s got that historic look (even if it is brand-new), it’s easy to negotiate by car, and its city center is accessible by foot. It’s big enough to offer some non-festival options for those suffering celluloid burnout, and small enough…
The skeptics among us might be tempted to dismiss an archaeological find making its premiere at Dallas’ suspicious-phenomena clearinghouse The Eclectic Viewpoint; it’s just too easy to think of it as the doings of the far-out, the paranoid, or the just plain crazy. But it’s too hard to resist a…
David Fincher needs a hug, the poor bastard. Or possibly a diaper change. Ever since 1992, when he ruined the Alien series with the excrescence of his pointless, senseless third installment, he’s been making the same bratty, obnoxious movie over and over again: gloom, doom, indestructible protagonist, bureaucratic evil, quasi-religious…
Steven Soderbergh may have had some rocky times after his 1989 breakthrough with sex, lies, and videotape, but these days he’s on a roll. Last year he produced Pleasantville and directed Out of Sight, two of the year’s most praised films. This year he has The Limey, a complex, introspective…
Toward the end of his published journal on the making of the watershed indie film sex, lies, and videotape — his 1989 million-dollar feature debut that jump-started the independent-film-is-hip craze, put the Sundance Film Festival on the map, upset Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing for the top award at…
Am I a traitor to my gender because I didn’t find this unabashed film about female sexuality erotic, brave, or even — can I say it — interesting? The ironically titled Romance, directed by the audacious French filmmaker Catherine Breillat (36 Fillette), has become something of a cause célèbre wherever…
According to The Story of Us, men and women have different responses to life, love, and sex, and this can sometimes result in conflicts and tension in a marriage. And you thought American Beauty was daring. The “us” of the title are Ben (Bruce Willis) and Katie (Michelle Pfeiffer). He’s…
Surely it’s masking tape. When you closely scrutinize each of Kirk Hayes’ paintings — the wood grain, the torn paper, the meandering glue splatters — you eventually make out that it’s all actually paint. But when you walk to the next one, you’d swear the illusion has finally given way…
If we stage critics think our deadlines are cruel to us, they can be murder to actors — especially when a preview performance must be reviewed. Psychological preparation is everything for a stage actor, because that safety net known as “retakes” in the film world doesn’t exist on stage. The…
I think I may have discovered the perfect formula for enjoying a popcorn-throwing spoof at the Pocket Sandwich Theatre — mid-sized audience composed of a big chunk of theater people consuming moderate amounts of beer watching a script written by Dallas playwright Steve Lovett. Yes indeedy, all the stars were…
In denial Dan Hartsfield, lead attorney for Talley Dunn in her million-dollar lawsuit against former employer Gerald Peters, says Peters has answered by filing a general denial of all claims, which he expected. What he didn’t expect was Peters’ moving the case to federal court. “You could say they made…
Growing up in this melting pot of a country we call home, is it surprising that the exposure of most Anglos to the Hispanic culture came from reruns of Chico and the Man and a half-dozen Cheech and Chong movies? Sure, there was much to absorb from the adventures of…
There was a young curate whose brain Was deranged from the use of cocaine He lured a small child To a copse dark and wild Where he beat it to death with his cane Welcome to the perfidious pen of author-illustrator-playwright Edward Gorey, who for five decades has drawn those…
He still looks young, even up close — like a memory come to flesh-and-blood life, not yet the vestige of a hero. There is a little gray in the eyebrows, and his hands look callused and battered. But otherwise, sitting beneath a shade tree behind the Four Seasons Resort and…
You’d think that the biggest annual fair in the nation’s biggest state would pack some genuine art. Not only crafts — quilts, pottery, and such — which a fair seems obligated to showcase, but some indication of the region’s artistic leanings. If the State Fair of Texas is supposed to…
With all the recent publicity about school shootings, a story about a classroom terrorized by a sadistic, witchy substitute teacher seems quaintly anachronistic — no Goth makeup, no consciences deadened by video-game violence, just disruptive little tykes who love recess and hate homework. I couldn’t help but wonder how many…
By 1954, when English playwright-composer Sandy Wilson wrote the book, lyrics, and music for his first and only major stage success, The Boy Friend, a celebration of the 1920s, America and England were experiencing a déjà vu of decades. Folks on both sides of the Atlantic were comparing the ’50s…
Everyone’s a critic Two big names in art criticism are coming to Dallas, and neither one of them is New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who last week added his name to the list of politicians bent on shaping American minds about art. “It’s not art. It’s disgusting,” is Guiliani’s…
When I was growing up, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was the closest thing I had to a paternal mentor, the only authoritative voice I consistently trusted. Novel after freakish, scattershot, infinitely humane novel, the man provided tools to identify and cope with the daily horrors of America — this vast sea…
The triumvirate is complete. First, Paris, Texas; then Dancer, Texas Pop. 81; and now Happy, Texas. German existentialism. Coming-of-age melodrama. Screwball mistaken-identity crapfest. Is there any situation small-town Texas can’t fulfill, any scenario it can’t endure? Apparently not, according to indie filmmakers. In this one, two cons on the lam…
