Writer-director Tim Burton’s recent biographical film, Ed Wood, offers an easy metaphor for the state of the horror film: an elderly, decrepit Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau) dressed in his Dracula getup, now incapable of scaring even an 8-year-old trick-or-treater. The image encapsulates one of the central concerns of Burton’s films:…
This guy got his head cut off by an elevator in the Bronx. Did you hear about this? The guy’s gettin’ off the elevator, it starts to go up real fast while the door is still open. The guy loses his balance, leans toward the elevator, and it cuts his…
Set in 1817 during the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, Colonel Chabert is about a legendary soldier presumed dead who returns home to discover that life has proceeded without him, then struggles to reclaim his identity, causing intense emotional disruptions all around him. The title character is played by the…
It’s pointless to respectfully review a film as ineptly written, indifferently directed, and slothfully performed as Just Cause, the new legal thriller about a Harvard law professor and anti-death penalty advocate (Sean Connery) who heads down south to the Florida Everglades to win freedom for condemned black murderer Bobby Earl…
friday march 3 North Texas Irish Festival: It’s been said that the unhappiest people throw the most elaborate parties. This might go a long way toward explaining the centuries-old reputation the Irish have for celebrating life with raucous music, merry dance, and prodigious drink–when they haven’t been treated like a…
You must picture it first: five Irish sisters, single women in their 30s and 40s, tending assiduously to home and hearth in the small town of Ballybeg. Their only vice–and only an Irish Catholic could consider it such–is a wireless (a.k.a. radio) that plays “Irish dance music all the way…
Subdued, elegant, and directed with disarming simplicity, I, the Worst of All (Yo, La Peor de Todas) is the kind of historical drama whose resonance sneaks up on you. On the surface, it’s an intimate religious drama about a minor figure in Catholic history, a 17th-century Mexican writer and nun…
A distinctive voice in Texas criticism was lost February 16 when Dallas Morning News film writer Russell Smith died in his Dallas home of AIDS complications. He was 38. Born and raised in Dallas, he joined the Dallas Morning News 12 years ago, working as a copy editor and a…
Okay, I’m gonna describe this woman. She’s got fluffy blonde hair–teased, permed, and coiffed–about $300 worth. She’s got a straight nose, thin lips and large bedroomy eyes. She wears tiny pearl earrings and a simple pearl necklace that hangs down onto a tanned neck and chest. Her dress is classic–either…
Few literature students have escaped exposure to the works of T.S. Eliot. Although Eliot’s influence has waned somewhat, he represented, for the post-World War II American academic elite, a living wish-fulfillment fantasy of everything they thought a man of letters should be–Anglophilic to the extreme (he renounced his American citizenship…
thursday february 23 Valery Kuleshov: In retrospect, isn’t it strange that the former Soviet Union often made exceptions (albeit heavily guarded ones) for its most talented artists when the time came to export Russian influences throughout the rest of the world? That suggests there has always been, in many of…
Their names move across the computer screens of major league baseball offices, veiled in secrecy and controversy. Identities will not be revealed for weeks, even as they now begin to sever ties with employers and make dramatic adjustments in family life to become potential replacement players for Major League Baseball…
The story of Leni Riefenstahl’s rise from renowned professional dancer to beloved German movie star to perhaps the greatest woman filmmaker of all time is marked by one constant–her brash, archaic, even narcissistic belief in herself and her creative abilities. Her artistic achievements, specifically her film versions of the gargantuan…
About 10 minutes into Sam Raimi’s Western The Quick and the Dead, his nomadic, gunslinging heroine, Ellen (Sharon Stone), slouches down in a rickety chair on the front porch of a saloon in the middle of Redemption, a Southwestern town so desolate even the cacti look withered, and lets a…
There is perhaps no better place to film a Chekhov play, especially a postmodern adaptation of Uncle Vanya, than in an extravagantly distressed Broadway theater. The New Amsterdam theater on 42nd Street, home of the Ziegfeld Follies and an erstwhile porn house, is perfect for the part: dangerous and abandoned,…
Informed that his interviewer saw The Quick and the Dead the night before, Sam Raimi gets excited. “How full was the theater?” he asks. “Did they clap during the exciting parts? Did they go for popcorn during the quiet parts? Did everybody generally seem to like it?” He’s told that…
thursday february 16 15th Annual Fort Worth Home and Garden Show: In many ways, the paltry winter experienced by North Texas over the last few months has felt like a spring that won’t just come right out and reveal itself. Warm days, cool days, then more warm days–people who are…
First-time feature filmmaker David Frankel’s Miami Rhapsody is so fleet-footed, cheerful, and entertaining it’s tempting to dismiss it as just another piece of popcorn entertainment. But there’s clearly a certain craft–even art–to creating a motion picture that makes you feel this swoony, giddy, and grateful, and in that light, Frankel’s…
Anyone with even a passing interest in the culture of corporate America will enjoy Undermain Theatre’s ongoing production of Tiny Dimes. Playwright Peter Mattei, a founding member of Cucaracha Theatre in New York, has created an absurdist comedy that makes complete sense and none at all, a nonnarrative piece that…
Generally speaking, directors who try to make movies in which characters represent political or philosophical beliefs have a difficult time making those people feel authentic to movie audiences. One of two things usually happens: either the filmmaker reduces the characters to strident mouthpieces (David Mamet’s adaptation of his own play…
It’s rare that an independent film manages to survive and thrive outside the realm of major Hollywood distribution companies. Yet that’s exactly what has happened with Sankofa, a bold low-budget slave epic currently making its way across North America, city by city, drawing huge and enthusiastic crowds wherever it plays…
From the fertile mind of University of North Texas film teacher Justin Wyatt (who’s also the author of High Concept, a compelling analysis of Hollywood’s blockbuster mentality) comes one of the boldest and most provocative film festivals this city has seen in a while. Titled The Cinematic Body: A Film…
