“Whadyawant, motherfuck?” They’re the first words Charles Bukowski speaks in John Dullaghan’s documentary about the poet and novelist, famous for his writing and infamous for his drinking and brawling and screwing. The audience member, either the acolyte or just the curious stranger, might respond, “To hear your story, Hank, that’s…
Thursday, October 28 Want to see Dallas, we brag, then rent Office Space. From the stop-and-go traffic to the rows of chain restaurants offering “American food” to blocks and blocks of identical beige apartments, there Dallas is. That’s probably most cities, but, hey, Office Space was inspired by Dallas and…
Only once during her tenure as a Dallas Observer columnist did Laura Miller ever ask if she could go to an early screening of a movie, and it was, of all things, Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused. As I recall it now, some 11 years later, Laura had heard that…
How does Mike Leigh do it? The years pass; film fashions come and go; Hollywood churns its commercial pap. Careers sparkle; others fizz; whom the gods would destroy, they first make famous. Meanwhile, over in England, Leigh makes his films, tracking the intricacies of the lower-class family with the patience…
Whatever else can be said about Tarnation–and there is plenty to say–there is no denying this: It is a very brave movie. Rarely is the subject of a documentary willing to lay himself bare before the camera, exposing his very consciousness to the audience, and it’s still more uncommon for…
Let’s just get the term out of the way up front. The term is “fag hag”–and a thousand pardons, sensitive readers, but there is no PC equivalent. This new film, Stage Beauty, is an absolute fag-hag fiesta. Beneath its historical leanings and classic veneer, it’s utterly gaga for girls who…
The Grudge bears the imprimatur of Sam Raimi but, alas, neither his sense of fun nor his smarts. The wunderkind director behind the Spider-Man and Evil Dead franchises has followed in the path of Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver with their Dark Castle releases, launching his own lucrative spook factory,…
Let’s do the time warp again and again and again. The Rocky Horror Show returns, this time at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, where the rip-roaring, raunchy fun starts well before the first glimpse of that “sweet transsexual,” Dr. Frank ‘N’ Furter (played by Paul Taylor as a cross-dressing cross between…
Camelot Casting younger actors in the leading roles of King Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot and Pellinore is a nice gimmick. Too bad we don’t get a good look at them in Plano Rep’s current production of the 1960 Lerner and Loewe musical. Instead, Regan Adair (a dramatic actor who turns out…
We imagine dead celebrities are granted VIP access to some big postmortem party. In this afterlife Green Room, Julia Child is serving hors d’oeuvres. Richard Avedon is taking candid photographs of Christopher Reeve, Janet Leigh and Rodney Dangerfield. Marlon Brando is hiding out, not wanting to be photographed. In the…
Thursday, October 21 Single people with dogs, wouldn’t it be good to know that someone you meet approves of your schnauzer from the beginning? And doesn’t it feel good to support homeless pets? And wouldn’t it be even better to meet a caring, animal-loving friend while sipping wine, spending quality…
Surely you have friends in Fort Worth who’ve been nagging you to visit. “A nice long weekend visit,” they may have said. “And bring the kids.” Wow, you thought. A weekend in Fort Worth with the kids. We’ve found a good way for you to meet your social obligations, enjoy…
10/23 If you can only afford to attend one comic book convention this year, then save your pennies for next month’s Wizard World Texas in Arlington. But if you have an unlimited budget to “get your geek on,” the Dallas Comic Con (actually taking place in Plano) is a pretty…
10/22 It pains every last journalistic bone in our cynicism-addled body to admit it, but Pillsbury’s publicity plan for hyping its new Perfect Portions Refrigerated Biscuit was just about the neatest, most skeptic-proof notion we had encountered in a long time. Because Perfect Portions biscuits are baked two at a…
10/23 By the time you hit first grade, you’ve learned there are bodily functions that aren’t supposed to be expressed in public. Flatulence is inappropriate, as is eructing. Polite society frowns on fingers plumbing the depths of nostrils and definitely does not allow sampling anything you’ve extracted from a bodily…
10/22 Cleopatra was not the dainty, beautiful woman movies and art make her out to be. The real Cleopatra didn’t look a thing like Elizabeth Taylor, Vivien Leigh, Claudette Colbert or any other thin, porcelain-skinned Hollywood actress who’s played one of the most infamous rulers of Egypt. But it’s not…
A parody of Gerry Anderson marionette shows (such as Thunderbirds and Joe 90), Jerry Bruckheimer action movies and the ’80s cartoon-toy line M.A.S.K. , Team America: World Police boils down all those ingredients to their essences, starting with the theme song “Americaaa… Fuck yeah!” (scored like Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone”…
Outside Tinseltown, not everyone may be aware of the Hollywood Forever cemetery, which specializes in memorializing lives via a process the franchise owners call “LifeStories.” The century-old former Hollywood Memorial Park, retooled for the new millennium, presents carefully edited video montages of the lives of celebrities (from Rudolph Valentino to…
It would be so easy to titter and scoff at Shall We Dance?, a Miramaxed-out version of the 1996 Japanese film of the same name, which told of a bored businessman who is reinvigorated after a few dozen sessions of dance lessons. This version, with its cast of glow-in-the-dark movie…
Most film festivals–at least ones not in Toronto, Manhattan, Cannes or Park City, Utah–have no rhyme or reason to their schedules, no more than a street-corner proselytizer does to his ramblings. They’re subject to the fancies of a small group of programmers and the whims of distributors pushing new product;…
What is it about the blues that makes feeling bad feel so good? Two new productions are singing the blues in different ways–one musically, one satirically–but there’s something immensely satisfying for the theatergoer in both. It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues, the nostalgic revue that just opened the new season…
Dreaming America: In the Bunker With George What’s a comedy show this blatantly feminist, left-wing and intellectual doing in a red state like Texas? Echo Theatre’s Rhonda Blair, Terri Ferguson and Jerrika Hinton risk getting shipped off to a re-education camp if they keep performing material this smart, funny and…
