British actress Jane Horrocks is thrice-gifted: She can act, she can sing, and she can sing like Judy Garland–and like Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, and a host of other legendary performers. Horrocks’ ability to mimic the singing and speaking voices of these artists lies at the heart of…
In 1933, producer Merian C. Cooper, director Ernest B. Schoedsack, and pioneering animator Willis O’Brien created one of this century’s most indelible and powerful archetypes: King Kong. Then they did a peculiar thing: As if appalled at what they had wrought–but also delighted at the money it made them–they spent…
Given the manipulative tendencies of many mainstream pictures, Stepmom easily could have slipped into a sticky morass of sentimentality and melodrama. Instead, it proves a genuinely affecting movie that approaches its adult themes with intelligence, maturity, and rare authenticity. The film stars Susan Sarandon as Jackie, a divorced mother of…
The talents of Maya Angelou–she is or has been a teacher, memoirist, prizewinning poet, actress, civil rights activist, editor, playwright, composer, dancer, producer, theater and TV director, and advisor to three presidents–range so far and deep that no feat she accomplishes could come as a surprise. Give this quick study…
At the heart of Pat O’Connor’s rich, bittersweet Dancing at Lughnasa lies the quaint notion that once upon a time, people–especially women–whose youthful dreams were dashed, even those who lived entire lives of quiet desperation, might attain a state of grace, a kind of ascetic nobility to which the rest…
Geniuses often come across unimpressively in the movies. Amadeus presented Mozart as a giggling fop. Both Kirk Douglas and Tim Roth gave us Van Gogh as a pathetic head case. I.Q.’s Albert Einstein was a cupid-playing old duffer. Ken Russell’s freaky depictions of Liszt and Mahler speak for themselves. The…
Guess it’s not too often that a group exhibition in this town includes such luminaries as Jonathan Borofsky, Francesco Clemente, David Salle, and Eric Fischl (sounds like class reunion of Art Stars ’86). Leave it to Turner and Runyon, the one contemporary space in these parts that fairly ignores local…
At this time of year, there are few places to hide from the seasonal attack of nonstop Christmas lights, bad lawn ornaments, and the too-cheery carols that stalk us even into the supermarket. Movie theaters are plagued with Disney blockbusters, and we can’t stand the thought of watching another television…
thursday december 24 Depending on your situation, Christmas Eve is either the happiest night of the year or the most depressing, and for some people, it’s both. Sure, you get to be around all of your family, but hey, you also get to be around all of your family. But…
Virtually every Dallas theater company that’s managed to hang in there more than five years has a holiday show that will, hopefully, finance the less commercial excursions of the rest of the season. December is the month when people are willing to drop cash in symbolic recognition of all the…
Something makes me suspicious of these paintings, though at first glance I like them. At last glance I like them also–swoon over them, in fact, for at least a moment. But somewhere in between the initial and parting glances, I feel uneasy, disconcerted by their unquestioning confidence, as though what…
Old-fashioned romantic comedies are an endangered species, and in these generally unromantic days it’s always a pleasant surprise to find a decent one like Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail. Ephron, of course, made her bones five and a half years ago with the huge hit Sleepless in Seattle, but since…
DreamWorks’ grandiose attempt at an animated feature for adults is a flimsy musical about Moses–a Sunday-school filmstrip writ ultra-large and decked out with the spectacle of Hollywood Bible epics. Slender sermons nestle among flashy action sequences and diaphanous fashion statements from the more tasteful pages of the Nefertiti’s Secret catalog…
In The Eel, which won the Palme D’Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, director Shohei Imamura once again demonstrates his empathy for the outsiders and aliens of Japanese society. In this case he muses on the tormented relationship between a paroled wife-murderer who’s struggling with his past after eight…
Back in the day, when a band split up, it stayed that way. Now, the phrase “last show ever” only means it’s the last show until the next one, and you can be sure there will be a next one. Two years ago, the Denton ska band The Grown-Ups went…
thursday december 17 It never feels like Christmas in Texas. The closest we’ll get to a winter wonderland is by turning on the air conditioner and spraying snow all over our windows; white Christmases just don’t happen here. Since we’re desperate, we’ll settle for a wet Christmas, especially since driving…
Nazis, a suicide attempt, a brutal kidnapping, death by heart attack, a villain named Burgermeister Meisterburger. What do these have in common? They’re all elements in some of the best Christmas movies ever. Most of ’em you won’t catch on TV, though. Obvious favorites are just that: too damn obvious…
It’s 7 o’clock on Saturday night, 30 minutes before the scheduled tip-off of a celebrity basketball game featuring out-of-work professional National Basketball Association players, most of whom wouldn’t be celebrities if they were actually picking up paychecks. But the game, such as it is, will not begin until nearly 8:30,…
Beginning in the mid-’80s, the devastation of AIDS opened the floodgates of theatrical imagination, engulfing audiences across the country. The Neptune King of the genre is, of course, Tony Kushner’s two-part epic Angels in America, and although the old boy still has some fire left in him, he is doddering…
Ultra tough guy Jesse “The Body” Ventura says he means business as the new governor of Minnesota. But for now the nasty crime wave in that state continues unchecked–in the movies anyway. Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan, a psychological thriller that shows us how dangerous life can get after three…
The relentless charm of Kirk Jones’ Waking Ned Devine lies in its embrace of two lovable Irish geezers who manage to work beautiful mischief on the world, in the raw beauty of their sun-splashed coastal village, and in the general notion that Ireland is the land of poetic conversations, enduring…
“I just find it all so bizarre,” notes John Maybury, popping a cigarette into his mouth and lighting it in what appears to be one quick flip of the wrist. “All those issues of ‘being out’ and ‘are you in?’ We should have gone beyond that by now. I know…
