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…
A valid, though unexpected, reason to hit the neighborhood pub this Friday night: to see Martians who look like the spawn of ancient Romans and the members of Kraftwerk, each sporting a headdress, clear plastic clothing, and heavy eyeliner. Granted, it’s only a film screening, but what an amusing reality…
All it takes is for the caller to identify himself as a reporter from Dallas. Erinn Bryan immediately knows where the conversation is going. “You want to talk about Colin.” Even over a phone line from Minneapolis, you can hear the breath leave her body. She exhales loudly, sadly, as…
What is it about gay men and straight women? Or, to phrase it more explicitly: Why are so many gay men drawn to powerful, emotional women? In theory, we shouldn’t give a damn about the female personality: most men (hetero and homo) are hounds, eager to bury our bones in…
Despite dozens of travel shows and guide books–namely the homogenized promos covering transatlantic journey–we have little media that give us the real skinny on what it’s like to traverse another continent. Michael Palin’s PBS series Pole to Pole comes closer than most. The intrepid Monty Pythoner braves the fringes and…
The latest release from Paramount Pictures’ bouncing baby, MTV Films, is set in a high school and has been inoculated with the usual doses of teenage angst, teenage wit, and teenage lust. Here’s the surprise: It declines to get down on hands and knees to woo Generation Y to the…
A hand-wringing reassessment of the libertine 1960s has hit full stride–stirred as much, you can’t help thinking, by the transfiguration of former acidheads and ex-leftist firebrands into establishment power-mongers as by the half-baked grumblings of their children. The antiwar and civil rights movements were shot through with self-service and intolerance,…
When we first see Isa, the 21-year-old heroine of Erick Zonca’s The Dreamlife of Angels, she’s trudging under the weight of a huge backpack through the chill dawn of an almost featureless European city. With her close-cropped dark hair and street urchin’s sniffle, she seems to be carrying the burden…
For the second week in a row, Dallas is being treated to a dazzling new Spanish import. Last week it was Alejandro Almenabar’s Open Your Eyes; this week it’s Julio Medem’s Lovers of the Arctic Circle–arguably an even more intriguing work. The two stars of Medem’s film, Najwa Nimri and…
While many people are still waiting in line for tickets to see Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, I’ll already be watching it, courtesy of the $300 ticket I bought about a week ago for a special advance screening on May 17, two days before the film officially hits theaters. All…
“I guess I won’t bet on that one,” my friend says as she watches the thoroughbred hurl its body against the paddock stall and crash to the ground, all while kicking its long legs at its trainer. It was the second time Number Six, otherwise known as Merge Right, had…
