It’s daunting to hear that John Sayles’ new film, Sunshine State, is almost two and a half hours long and mostly consists of calm conversations. Don’t be deterred or you’ll miss out on a study of character, class and changing times that puts Robert Altman’s stodgy Gosford Park to shame…
Nobody dozes off during Blast! Several times during the high-concept marching-band event now playing at the Fair Park Music Hall, the blare of dozens of horns and the pounding of a hundred drums large and small get so loud you can feel your bones vibrating. At top volume, the noise…
It seems odd to call Pillsbury and Peters Fine Art’s new show of Leon Kossoff’s work “timely.” But it is, even though the London-based painter remains, at 75, what he has always been: a throwback. A member of the so-called London school, Kossoff is a figurative painter, an expressionist who…
A pal asked last week, “Who you writing about?” Told him, “Art Linson,” which screwed his face into a big ol’ question mark. “He’s a movie producer. He made Heat, Fight Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Untouchables, Car Wash…” Said said friend upon hearing that last one, “Dude…
It may seem like we just got the neon revolution terminated and the spiral perms grown out, but already the ’80s are back. Bands are being influenced by ’80s music, parties are being thrown with ’80s themes and more and more people are wearing skinny ties. OK, so maybe people…
Comedian Neil Hamburger evokes a sort of sympathy as he slouches about the stage mumbling anti-jokes. Much like Charlie Brown he gives off a sad-sack vibe that makes one root for him, perhaps even want to hug him. That is, of course, unless you are one of those who don’t…
Like a jawbreaker that changes color every few seconds you suck it, MIIB: Men in Black II delivers a quick buzz, lots of stuff to look at and a totally non-nutritious joy that can only be attained with the aid of artificial flavorings and Yellow #5. It’s the perfect summer…
In her recent book, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, journalist Rachel Simmons hits a very topical nail squarely on its very sore head. Coining the term “relational aggression,” she employs several case studies to buttress the obvious but significant theory that modern girls are extremely…
It has been 80 years since the adventurous son of a Michigan iron miner trained a silent-movie camera on the everyday life of an “Eskimo” family in the Canadian Arctic and virtually invented documentary filmmaking. Through the decades, Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North has attracted its share of criticism–Flaherty…
They stream in and out, all day and all night, one after the other: band members, producers, business associates, friends, family, strangers, hangers-on who stare at the familiar face made infamous long ago. The tour bus, this parked sanctuary where he can roll his joints and drink his bottled Starbucks…
Maybe we ought to rethink this outdoor Shakespeare thing. It was 40 years ago this summer that Public Theatre founder Joseph Papp moved his New York Shakespeare Festival into the just-built, open-air Delacorte Theatre in Central Park and made watching the works of the Bard a must-do event for Manhattan…
Ah, summer. The season of intellectual light lifting, of beach reading and crowd-pleasing museum shows, welcome respites from heat and headlines alike. Between WorldCom and Nasdaq and Al Qaeda, these are times that try Norte Americano souls. And so while there is no ideal moment for a show like De…
I never understood the mohawk. As someone who has shaved his head for seven years now, I feel as though I can speak on these matters as an expert. The shaved head makes sense. Male-pattern baldness creeps in, makes a young man appear infinitesimally less sexy, so he conquers his…
While countless American earthlings gaze with wonder at the colorful Fourth of July lights filling the nation’s skies, such behavior is nothing new for the creative creatures of a couple of local theaters. The result: an attention-starved extraterrestrial’s dream come true–two “otherworldly” theatrical productions under way in the Dallas-Fort Worth…
Talk about trading down: Adam Sandler now stands in for Gary Cooper, Winona Ryder for Jean Arthur, screenwriter Tim Herlihy (The Waterboy, Billy Madison) for Robert Riskin (It Happened One Night, Meet John Doe), director Steven Brill (Little Nicky) for the immortal Frank Capra. The mind reels at the possibilities…
There are a few dubious claims affecting the popular perception of the life and death of Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite the legend, he wasn’t, at 5-foot-6, particularly short. He was also more than just the sturdy product of military training at Brienne and Paris, considering that his Corsican mother adamantly disciplined…
Pretend Derek Jacobi is John Cleese, imagine it’s all but a daft and cruel joke, and you will find Paul Cox’s film tolerable; if you can’t, you will find it unbearable. The dancer, a startlingly handsome man who appears in photos like a silent-movie star begging to speak and shout,…
An evil industrialist (voice of Paul Sorvino) intends to knock down the neighborhood in which Arnold (Spencer Klein), the kid with the football-shaped head, and his friends happily reside. Needless to say, Arnold must fight the clock to thwart this catastrophe. In the ’80s, animator Craig Bartlett introduced Arnold in…
Clearly, director Malcolm Clark and writer Sean Kanan (an actor by day, not a writer, and no friggin’ duh) wanted to adapt J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, like thousands of other would-bes and wannabes before them. When they figured out that wasn’t going to happen, they instead…
Naked emotion is a tricky thing to sell, especially in semiautobiographical films about confused mama’s boys gradually learning that life exists beyond the control of their lens. The latter two of this cut’s three hours richly expand upon the romantic longing (for Agnese Nano young, Brigitte Fossey older) and deliver…
Just about everything in The Wizard of Oz at the Dallas Summer Musicals at Fair Park is like it is in the great old MGM movie we know so well. Dorothy skips down the yellow brick road in a blue gingham pinafore. Glinda the Good Witch floats into Munchkinland on…
The last time the McKinney Avenue Contemporary invited an artist to slap black paper cut-outs on its white-walled gallery, controversy ensued. Back in January 1999, Kara Walker waxed the MAC’s walls and posted black-paper silhouettes depicting sexual atrocities and violence which were as dark as her intended commentary on America’s…
