We don’t like bugs. Spiders in our vicinity elicit a quick “yuck” and are thereafter squished. Wasps and their stinging brethren are cautiously run away from. Slugs bring on a severe case of the willies, but it’s not as if they’re going to charge at us. If you want to…
It’s a brave thief who reveals his booty to the man from whom he stole it. But Jim Jarmusch could not resist showing his film, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai to Seijun Suzuki, the 76-year-old Japanese director whose 1967 film Branded to Kill is echoed throughout Ghost Dog…
If you have read this space before, you know that I advocate theatergoing as a habit rather than as a secular, arts-patron version of the token-church-visit-every-Easter kind of attendance. While the best theater is more visceral than anything in a multiplex or on DVD, many folks are unprepared for that…
Unlike dog owners who tend to look like their dogs, or married couples who take on each other’s characteristics over time, artists seldom look like their paintings or sculpture. It’s often the smallish, geeky guy who paints big, bold canvases or crafts throbbing, tumescent sculpture. And it’s the squeaky-clean, plain…
Money, money, money You can count on one hand the number of living, local artists who can command $40,000 for a single work of art. So, heads up, all the rest of you. The Fort Worth Transportation Authority is requesting statements of qualifications, including résumé, slides, and supportive materials, from…
Roman Polanski begins this interview by asking the questions — about last names, countries of origin, family members murdered by the Nazis. After all, as much as any landmark film (Chinatown or Rosemary’s Baby) or connection to tragedy (the 1969 murder of his wife Sharon Tate by members of Charles…
The creationists are going to have a field day with this one. Oh, it’s not as though it’s possible to spoil the plot: The trailers for Mission to Mars reveal everything but the end credits. It would be near impossible to step foot into the theater without knowing the story,…
Calling the subject matter of Errol Morris’ latest documentary, Mr. Death, “unpleasant” is like referring to the lavatory on a tuna boat as “lightly scented.” The director who brought us the zany Americana of Fast, Cheap and Out of Control and the lukewarm Stephen Hawking snoozer, A Brief History of…
Three decades after Rosemary’s Baby, two decades after The Tenant, and after a series of five non-horror films, Roman Polanski returns to the supernatural thriller with The Ninth Gate. What could be more promising? Regardless of what one thinks about Polanski’s personal life or legal status, the man is clearly…
Titus, Julie Taymor’s gorgeous film version of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, with Anthony Hopkins as the doomed title character, may be the most opulent release of the season…and also the most perverse, on nearly every front. It’s easy to see why there has never been a feature version of this tragedy…
You’ve had to feel sorry for the Scottish Board of Tourism when the nation’s film industry started to do robust business. Normally a successful film industry would be great for a country’s image, but in the case of Scotland, it seems, well, counterproductive. After all, most of the films depict…
Just when the McCain mania of the presidential campaign peaks and Ross Perot’s Reform Party teeters toward meltdown, Ralph Nader arrives to pick up the banner of reform vérité. The respected consumer activist and critic of corporate power last month kicked off his fight for the fledgling Green Party’s nomination…
It seems that cooking, along with letter-writing, sewing, and being courteous, is becoming a lost art. And really, who needs to be able to cook these days? Preprepared, heat-and-eat “gourmet” foods, recently the domain of elite gourmet markets, are popping up at plain old grocery stores. Convenience foods are becoming…
I’ve spent some long evenings in the theater recently, but rarely has the time sailed by as intelligently and harrowingly as it did in Inexpressible Island, a U.S. premiere courtesy of Dallas Theater Center. And we’re talking about a situation, however based in reality, that seems like a gimmick manufactured…
League of their own Never one to mince words, Jack Alder, founder and executive director of Theatre Three, had his doubts about the future of the Dallas Theatre League, a 6-year-old nonprofit group established to get local theaters working together for the good of one and all. But that part…
Garry Shandling does not have a face for the big screen. He has a mug that seems to spread to the edges of the theater; it’s like an approaching storm front, a sky full of billowing clouds roaring in from the north. And it’s a face built for two emotions:…
The first thought one has while watching The Next Best Thing is, “Was Madonna always this bad an actress?” It’s a question that soon fades from consciousness, to be replaced by, “Was Rupert Everett always this bad an actor?” Then, a little later, arrives this query: “Was John Schlesinger always…
In the closing years of the 20th century, lowbrow white America finally learned to enjoy an ironic laugh at itself, led by Hollywood’s cheerful mockery of the culturally challenged working class. Outside the system, John Waters had this stuff pegged from the get-go, but the American grotesqueries of the original,…
Willie Morris’ autobiographical novel, My Dog Skip, is a nearly perfect piece of bedtime reading for children — and their parents. Each chapter is virtually a self-contained anecdote; the descriptions of World War II-era Mississippi are lush and dreamlike; and the escapades of the central canine character, depicted as smarter,…
If you think the prevailing attitude toward sex in the United States is often archaic, consider that of late 1960s Ireland, as depicted in Agnes Browne, the new movie directed by Anjelica Huston. When asked by her best friend, Marion (Marion O’Dwyer), whether she misses “it,” the recently widowed Agnes…
“I’ve got the world’s largest pubic mound,” Margaret Cho yells. She’s joking about her weight again — -one of her comedy-show standards along with her family (her Korean mother leaves hysterical messages on her answering machine and has a curious fascination with gay porn) and her hometown of San Francisco,…
Let’s face it, folks. Circuses stink. Literally and figuratively. Clowns are unfunny and strident at best, and at worst, psychologically scarring previews for kids of humanity’s freakish existential dilemma (“Mommy, why can’t that man stop smiling? Why can’t he stop smiling, Mommy?!!!”). And watching lions and tigers forced to perform…
