Lie back and think of England. That’s the advice Victorian-era mothers used to whisper to just-married daughters for coping with their wifely duties in the bedroom. It’s also a good tip for anyone burdened with a ticket to The Countess, the new production at Fort Worth’s Circle Theatre. This turgid…
There’s only one cheerleader for the Republican Party who travels the country with her own troupe of male exotic dancers to warm up her crowds. And it’s not Elizabeth Dole or Christine Todd Whitman. Her name is Sheryl Underwood, and she’s a study in contradictions. Whereas other comedians attempt to…
During the one karate class I took a couple of years back, one of the first things the teacher said was, “We’d like to think that after practicing a punch a few times we know what to do. Try practicing the same movement a thousand times and perhaps then you…
Ice Age posits a heretofore unfathomable question: Is it possible for computer-generated characters to go through the motions? Everything about this endeavor–from 20th Century Fox, playing cartoon catch-up after 2000’s Titan A.E., which smelled like something stolen from Saturday-morning television–feels pilfered and stitched-together. There’s not an original fossil in its…
To say that Showtime is the year’s best glossy studio entertainment film thus far may be the ultimate in faint praise. The first quarter is always pretty bad–following the majors’ traditional end-of-the-year marketing/release orgies–but 2002 has been several degrees worse than usual. From the dual Pearce-ings of The Count of…
In the original Resident Evil video game–named Biohazard in its Japanese incarnation–a brash young American infiltrates a large manor house in the country, only to find it inhabited by terrifying, soulless zombies. But since Gosford Park already came out, the makers of the Resident Evil movie had to go with…
Precious and cloying, Harrison’s Flowers sets out to prove itself a story of hope and human endurance, but swiftly deteriorates into a terribly obvious melodrama and rough-hewn vanity project for lead actress Andie MacDowell. (One can almost hear her shouting to her agent: “Hey, Meg Ryan landed a search-and-rescue picture,…
Given the latest outbreaks of Middle East violence–not to mention the continuing traumas of September 11–it is timely, if unsettling, that a new Israeli film about religious fervor and extremist political commitment in that embattled nation is being released in the United States. Written and directed by 33-year-old Joseph Cedar,…
While the governments of the two Koreas plan symbolic gestures that could lead to a long-dreamed-of peaceful reunification, Ryu (Han Suk-Gyu) and Lee (Song Kang-Ho)–two special agents in South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, which handles threats from the North–must track down a female North Korean super-assassin named Hee, whose recent…
Richard O’Brien’s 1975 drag show/sci-fi-gothic parody carries on at weekly midnight screenings, attended by its devoted audience-participation following. Even these cultists have often underrated it as a film–it’s a pretty good rock musical, with a witty ensemble cast led by Tim Curry in a hilariously swaggering, drolly macho performance as…
One day, years ago, Gregory Mcdonald was playing tennis with a man he’d known since they were both 12 years old. It was hot, the middle of summer, and Mcdonald was playing a good game–doing that tricky shit, making with the kind of moves that get under an opponent’s skin…
Under the harsh glare of an overhead lamp, actress Amanda Denton leans forward over a small table, peers up at an unseen interrogator and asks, “Should I just speak? Is that OK? ‘Cause I got to sort of ease into it, you know?” With dull, stringy hair and eyes as…
The Kimbell Art Museum’s new Murillo exhibition is the kind of show the Kimbell does best: the meat-and-potatoes old masters monograph. This time, the Kimbell has set out to resuscitate a rep that has spent the better part of 150 years in decline, marshaling its own resources and borrowing from…
“Geek” was probably one of the kinder words applied to us during our time in high school bands. But somehow the über-geeks in the drum line were always above the name-calling, possessing some innate cool for no other reason than they played drums. Heck, they even were allowed to wear…
There is no better network than Fox; there is no worse network than Fox. For every great series it offers, it counters with programming so puerile and sophomoric it threatens to undo its promise and, in the end, bring about the ruin of civilization–which is no hyperbolic generalization if you…
Science fiction can wow us with gadgetry, but only the truly ambitious stuff lights up our imaginations with disturbing and unshakable aberrations, be they incredible shrinking men, 50-foot women or Sting’s winged panties from Dune. In this vast genre, it figures that the ultimate human construct–time–proves most unsettling of all,…
By day, they drive their rippling torsos beneath the blinding desert sun, pausing intermittently to gaze sexily into the distance. By night, they head for the open-air discos of Djibouti to get squiffy with the locals. When time allows, they wash their socks, shave and wander around in cylindrical white…
Call it the art-house, or thinking person’s, Ocean’s Eleven. If you’re in the mood for an all-star ensemble but prefer conversation and reminiscence over thievery, try Last Orders, a Fred Schepisi film that features the strongest lineup of English talent this side of Robert Altman’s mega-cast in the forthcoming Gosford…
As bounty hunter Buccum, Ice Cube zaps people unnecessarily with tasers, points his gun at a kid, tortures a man using metal screws and engages in ethnic slurs–all in the service of obtaining some diamonds that aren’t rightfully his to begin with. Flawed heroes are one thing, but this is…
In the mid-1980s, San Francisco-based Paul Pena–a black blues singer/guitarist best known for writing the Steve Miller Band hit “Jet Airliner”–was listening to shortwave radio when he came upon a broadcast of “throatsinging,” a vocal style from the tiny region of Tuva, then part of the Soviet Union. The technique…
Shot 20 years ago and languishing unfinished on the shelf until 1998, this tale of an artist working at the edges of the New York music scene would have had a hard time finding an audience back then. Now, it just barely qualifies for one. The late Jean Michel Basquiat–playing,…
Cell phones and silk saris, dot-coms and arranged marriages–the latest film from Indian-born director Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay!, Mississippi Masala) captures the heady mix of old and new, rich and poor, traditional and modern that defines contemporary India. A sort of Father of the Bride set in New Delhi, it…
