Before the USA Film Festival’s arrival last year–its Silver Anniversary–the pre-festival buzz was a mix of hype, anticipation, and dread. Its young, newly anointed artistic director, Alonso Duralde, had held the post for only four months, didn’t have a shred of experience, and was forced to start from scratch in…
This year, the USA Film Festival introduces a new series called “Cinema on Film” that peeks at the glistening guts of filmmaking as the medium turns 100. But unfortunately, ticket buyers can’t savor the two best documentaries in this series–profiles that scrape away the paunchy, narcissistic hide of two filmmakers…
Nightjohn, the new film by acclaimed director Charles Burnett, recounts the mythical journeys of an escaped slave named John (Carl Lumbly) who returns to bondage after having learned to read. With his intellect freed by literacy, he undertakes a mission–to liberate others from the bondage of ignorance. He envisions that…
The standard definition of “documentary” seems inadequate to describe Mark Rappaport’s intriguing new nonfiction film, From the Journals of Jean Seberg. It doesn’t subscribe to the usual documentary conventions, coming closer in style and structure to performance art. Although it features clips from Seberg’s films, it also has plenty of…
In Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean, when asked by an adult what he’s rebelling against, spits back, “Whaddaya got?” And with those words, Dean became a voice for his day’s youth culture, an aimless teen looking for some tangible image to which he could cling to justify the emotions…
thursday april 18 The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Get a jump on the sure-to-be-insipid animated Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which will be released this June, with a surefire unpredictable evening. This 1923 film version was the first cinematic take on the classic and remains (Charles Laughton’s…
There are certain names on a video box that just cry out: “Rent me! Rent me! Rent me!” I guess for some people it’s Mira “Thank You, Daddy” Sorvino, but for me there’s nothing like a good Brigitte Nielsen video. Will she have hair? What color will it be? Will…
Congratulate artistic director Gretchen Swen and her Extra Virgin Performance Cooperative, which turns 3 years old this month. Toast her not only for surviving this long in a local theater scene paralyzed by crushing audience indifference, but also for refusing to trade her integrity in the bargain. Case in point:…
When a Los Angeles publicist for a major Hollywood studio asks, “Which Kid do you want to interview?” the choice is tough. Two days apart, two different staffers in Paramount’s L.A. publicity office called with offers to chat with any of the five Kids in the Hall about the feature…
The original screen version of Jane Eyre, released in 1944–with Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles, both at the height of their powers–is one of the minor masterpieces of the studio system’s Golden Age. Like all the best Victorian pictures of the time (The Heiress, Gaslight, and others) the entire production…
thursday april 11 Guarded Territories: The author of the new play Guarded Territories, which is being presented by the Beardsley Living Theatre in its North Texas premiere, was born in Canada, educated in the United Kingdom (where he studied scriptwriting), and currently lives in Fort Worth. Yet it’s not a…
Have you noticed how there’s been a backlash against the use of stunt breasts? Guys are deciding that they’re not that crazy about artificial breastskis anymore. There are only so many Silicone Sacs you can look at before you go: “You know what? I knew this girl who had breasts…
thursday april 4 Ray Wylie Hubbard, Darden Smith, Chuck Pyle: This three-headliner event at Sons of Hermann Hall is called “Writers in the Round,” which in this open-mic crazy town suggests yet another convergence of literary muses. Actually, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Darden Smith, and Chuck Pyle all work firmly within…
The realists of this world have the romantics by the balls, but the romantics refuse to cry uncle. Instead, they produce epics like War and Peace, Moby Dick, or Angels in America–works which suggest there is some kind of overarching moral or spiritual purpose to the universe, even though the…
On an uncharacteristically chilly morning in March, writer-director David O. Russell looks every bit the brooding auteur: uncombed black hair stands up in patches all over his head; flinty brown eyes manage to penetrate and deflect every bold question. Russell doesn’t take his image seriously, but he’s earned it in…
Most domestic dramas fall into two types: The profound kind tends to be confrontational and even loud, where the true characters of the participants are forged in an intense furnace of conflict, and big emotions get played out for everyone to see. The gentle kind has conflict, too, but the…
First came topless dancing. Then came table dancing. (This doesn’t mean the tables dance, it means the girls dance on your table or at your table, even though sometimes the table is more attractive than the girl.) Then came couch dancing. And couch dancing begat lap dancing. I think the…
Leather dildos, oral sex, untamable erections.These are the kinds of objectionable subjects that right-thinking Americans want to bar from their homes via the mighty V-chip. The rest of us, however, couldn’t imagine life without them. Neither could the ancient Greeks, those pioneers of such dangerous concepts as democracy and self-expression…
Diabolique, the black-and-white 1955 French classic from director Henri Georges Clouzot, seems like a murder thriller, but it’s much closer in tone to a ghost story. The callous headmaster of a boys’ school cheats on his prim wife Mia (played by the director’s own wife, Vera Clouzot) with the more…
As Antonia’s Line begins, Antonia (Willeke van Ammelrooy) is 88, and fully aware that she will be dead by the end of the day. As a kind of final purification, she fondly recounts the events of her life, beginning with her return 40 years ago to the village in the…
thursday march 28 Soup’s On: The media information for “Soup’s On,” the performance showcase sponsored by The Writer’s Garret and Stone Soup Workshop, is titled “BYOA–Bring Your Own Art.” That pretty much sums up the collegial attitude of “Soup’s On,” which is scheduled the last Thursday of every month. The…
What is this deal with three people in bed? I’ve reviewed at least 10 movies in the last two years in which people are aardvarking around in weird combinations, making the sign of the triple-snouted octopus with so many arms and legs flopping around on the bed covers that you…
