Probably every film director itches to make a western, so let’s be thankful that, with The Newton Boys, Richard Linklater has scratched his itch. Now he can go back to making movies about subjects for which he has some genuine feeling. Linklater should not be begrudged his chance to “stretch.”…
Lovers of American movies used to joke that foreign films wouldn’t look so good if you saw them without subtitles. John Sayles’ latest movie, Men With Guns, plays better than his other films because it does have subtitles. Bald dialogue always sounds better in Spanish and Indian dialects. Set in…
Radiohead is finally coming to town. Why do I hear groans? I’m so tired of critics trying to be perverse by denouncing Radiohead’s 1997 release OK Computer. Seems some of them are compelled to label it pretentious and arty and smug after the first wave of critics deemed it brilliant…
New Theatre Company may have lost a terrific space with the closing of the Theatre on Elm Street, but they got a helluva consolation prize: the almost-black box space called Theatre Too in the basement of Jac Alder’s Theatre Three in the Quadrangle. New Theatre’s artistic director, Bruce Coleman, admits:…
Thursday March 26 America’s intellectual elite hammers us daily with how television has rotted our brains. But the explosion of popularity in staged readings, poetry slams, and spoken-word performances suggests to us that many people have reached the saturation point with electronic sounds and images; the live, one-on-one exchange of…
For all the major American film critics who conspired to cram the ludicrously overpraised L.A. Confidential down the country’s throat, I have found a penalty befitting the crime. Fess up now that you got a little careless after downing a few too many macho-celluloid cocktails shaken by the likes of…
Though critics often compared Virginia Woolf’s nonlinear, almost cubist narratives to the then-burgeoning cinema’s use of montage, close-ups, flashbacks, tracking shots, and rapid cuts, the strength of Woolf’s novels lay in the rhythm of her arresting style, and in her heroines’ poignant and melancholic musings, which insidiously seep through the…
After a quick scan of a list of the past lectures presented by the Eclectic Viewpoint, it’s hard to resist the temptation to denounce the organization as mere coattail riders, snake-oil salesmen preying on the neo-conspiracy theorists who spend their time prowling anti-government chat rooms and their money on X-Files…
The American reissues of Jackie Chan films have met with declining box-office success since Chan burst onto the scene in 1996 with Rumble in the Bronx. With any luck, the latest Chan opus to be recut and redubbed for Americans, the year-old Mr. Nice Guy, should reverse the trend. No…
If ever there was an Op-Ed movie–a movie destined to be written about in an “elevated” realm beyond just the movie pages–it’s Primary Colors. Thanks to Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones, the Hollywood/Washington nexus has lifted this new Mike Nichols picture, based on the 1996 bestseller by Joe Klein, into…
thursday march 19 Locally based documentary filmmaker Cynthia Salzman Mondell has done a Mike Wallace on one of the most exclusive and secretive realms of public life–the Amazonian domain of the ladies’ restroom. The Ladies’ Room is her new seriocomic documentary about the conflicts and confidences that occur when female…
One more time: Dallas ain’t Cowtown. Never was. Fort Worth is. The old cattle drive routes were west of here, but ever since Trammell Crow dropped a bronze stampede in downtown Dallas, the culture hounds’ arguments over the city’s cowboy history have erupted again. Why? Because everyone wants in on…
They crowded around Dennis Rodman until it seemed as though they were suffocating him with their cameras and questions. He spoke as he dressed, covering himself in a vomit-yellow silk shirt and a red crushed-velvet hat and dark wrap-around shades to block out the blinding TV lights. The reporters–and there…
Can I compose a critical mash note to Dallas actor Terry Martin, star of the Texas premiere of Dan Butler’s The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me, that doesn’t sound foolish? Probably not, but any such effort would contain some sentiment like: It’s hard as hell to make…
In print advertisements for its current production, Dallas Theater Center declares Eugene O’Neill’s 1940 Long Day’s Journey Into Night to be America’s greatest play. Leaving aside the strained hyperbole of calling any piece of art the greatest in its field, there are certainly other contenders for this specious honor, from…
The John Grisham industry has claimed another heavyweight. A few months back, Francis Ford Coppola delivered up John Grisham’s The Rainmaker, and now Robert Altman sails into view with The Gingerbread Man, based on an “original” Grisham screen story–although it’s basically a recycling of other Grisham recyclings. Who would have…
On the surface, Chairman of the Board, the film debut of comedian Carrot Top, seems perfectly aimed at young, creative, slacker types. It’s about a bumbler who accidentally makes it big in business, and its plot can be summed up as “Technicolor Gen-X freak conquers the business world without really…
thursday march 12 Raymond Nasher: You may know him as the filthy-rich Dallas bigwig who owns more than 250 artworks by Rodin, Picasso, and de Kooning. But businessman-art lover Raymond Nasher is a key player in the revitalization of the downtown Dallas Arts District, which means his expertise in the…
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla.–The voice is loud and off-key, and it can be heard above the stereo blasting bad rock and roll through the locker room. “SHE TALKS TO FUCKIN’ ANGELS!” The man singing along with the Black Crowes’ awful anthem looks around and grins, like a kid trying to rustle…
We’re living in a world where Dilbert creator Scott Adams, supposed hero of the corporate grunt and Office Depot shill, has gone on the record with a major national newsmagazine with the comment that, ya know, downsizing may not be such a bad thing after all. Actually, you could argue…
Jeff Bridges is so euphorically wacked as a social dropout in The Big Lebowski that you get a secondhand high just looking at him. Padding around Venice, California, in a T-shirt that barely covers his midriff bulge, he’s like a beach bum who bowls instead of surfs. His nickname is…
A movie starring Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, James Garner, and Stockard Channing ought to be a whole lot better than Robert Benton’s Twilight. It’s one of those “autumnal” movies about a private detective who is too old for the game but still goes through the motions. Benton, in…
