For the cultural stragglers who still think “Japanimation” means the childhood nostalgia of Speed Racer and Battle of the Planets, here’s the news: You’re waaayy behind. Called anime by the coterie, the genre has made quantum leaps in aesthetics, subject matter, and–across the Pacific as well as stateside–popularity. The AnimeFest…
Not long before he died, Bertolt Brecht asked a reporter to “write that I was inconvenient and intend to remain so after my death. Even then there are certain possibilities.” Well, he must be laughing to himself these days. As theaters around the world celebrate the centenary of his birth,…
The dog days of August are national gallery blackout time. From the alternative spaces scattered throughout Los Angeles to the polished venues of Manhattan’s Chelsea district, it seems everyone’s closed up shop to take a breather before the big fall openings. But while art dealers–a self-serving lot if there ever…
There are two words guaranteed to cause mainstream movie audiences to avoid the box office–OK, two words besides the “The Avengers”–“low-budget” and “documentary.” That’s exactly what Hands on a Hard Body is, a low-budget documentary, but oddly enough, it’s also one of the most mainstream films to play Dallas this…
Slums of Beverly Hills is the first feature by the young writer-director Tamara Jenkins, and it has its mild amusements. It’s one of those movies that gets bonus points for being “personal”–it bops along from episode to episode, as if the filmmaker were discovering her subject as she went along…
The idea of destiny–especially the notion that two people are fated to meet and fall in love–is a load of crap, but a surprising number of people buy into it. Probably for that reason it has proven to be a fairly popular component in movie romances, City of Angels and…
thursday august 27 Echo Theatre’s inaugural production, Dream of a Common Language, may be set in 1874, but its theme is entirely modern. The play, written by Heather McDonald, explores the delicate balance between a woman’s career, her family, and society’s expectations. Women have been allowed–and encouraged–to work for quite…
Of all the electronica acts bent over sequencers, scratching up vinyl, and looking to steal the perfect hook, the Crystal Method has certainly shown great promise in a realm of empty promises. And in the face of a U.K.- and New York-driven scene, Method’s Los Angeles identity kicks off its…
You work downtown. You’re tired of the standard lunchtime fare. Eating at your desk just doesn’t do it for you either. So you take a stroll, head down Commerce Street, looking for something new to break the boredom. What you stumble across is a small, unassuming building–the home of Teatro…
The program for Bucket Productions’ latest show, the Southwest premiere of Anne V. McGravie’s Wrens, declares that the troupe is “dedicated to the production of fun, entertaining, watchable theatre. We don’t have any social agendas or themes, and we have no pretense of a grand artistic vision.” It’s a refreshingly…
Edward Albee’s most famous play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, so scandalized American theatergoers when it was produced in New York in 1962 that no Pulitzer Prize for drama was awarded that year because the committee was passionately polarized over the play, or so the legend goes. The ever cautious…
As the lights came up after a screening of the new Neil LaBute movie Your Friends and Neighbors, a colleague next to me growled disapprovingly, “That was a nasty movie.” For LaBute–whose divisive debut film, In the Company of Men, is probably the worst date movie ever made–this comment would…
After a summer filled with third-rate pulp, Blade arrives with a pedigree that suggests first-rate pulp: characters and situations from Marvel Comics; a screenplay by David S. Goyer (who gave us this year’s truly transcendent pulp masterpiece, Dark City); and the presence (as star and producer) of Wesley Snipes, a…
As a maker of musical parodies, “Weird” Al Yankovic has an unimpeachable track record, from 1979’s Knack spoof “My Bologna” to 1996’s foray into the world of gangsta rappers, “Amish Paradise.” As a movie star, well, that’s another story. Yankovic never made a film before 1989’s UHF, and there probably…
thursday august 20 Before it was even completed, Grapevine Mills was being touted as the mall to end all malls, the shopping center that would make all others in the metroplex obsolete. Why would anyone want or need to go elsewhere? The Mills has been up and running for almost…
The point of any collection is, presumably, twofold: build it, and show it off. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth does just that on occasion with its ever-growing permanent collection; they’ve recently lassoed enough new additions to launch an exhibition, Recent Acquisitions and Selections From the Permanent Collection. In-your-face…
The timing couldn’t be better for How Stella Got Her Groove Back. The dog days of summer are upon us, and few prospects could be more welcome to asteroid-weary moviegoers than a light romantic comedy that includes a trip to Jamaica as part of the package. Director Kevin Rodney Sullivan…
Darren Aronofsky’s debut feature, Pi, won the Dramatic Directing Award at Sundance this year, and it’s easy to imagine why: Whatever its faults–and it has more than a few–it is unquestionably different. It at least takes a stab at interpolating cerebral ideas into the format of a thriller. Max Cohen…
The editors who put together the TV ads for Return to Paradise deserve an Oscar. The spots are suffocating montages of suspense, claustrophobia, and desperation–each one a compressed 30 seconds of overwhelming doom that resonates after it’s gone. Lewis McBride (Joaquin Phoenix), captured on video, his gaunt and haunted face…
Victorian costume romance? Oh, no. Jewish Victorian costume romance? Oy, no. Historical romances–particularly Brontë sisters-style bodice-rippers–are difficult enough to swallow on-screen without feeling as if you’re gagging on a mothball. One colored with Hebrew Orthodoxy? That’s going to be one camphoric matzo ball. But Minnie Driver, fresh from her star-securing…
As long as there have been storytellers with the guts to explore all corners of the human experience, there have been listeners who’ve insisted–sometimes with the force of the state behind them–that nothing but harm can come from exploring traditionally taboo subjects…especially those that emanate from the dark, moist corners…
Fulvio descends on the casino oasis to impress his business colleagues and wakes up the next morning beside a blonde named Darla. Like an Italian-bred millionaire getting drunk in Vegas and marrying a Brooklyn-bred showgirl, there are matches made in irony heaven–not built to last, but a hell of a…
