To hear Spike Lee tell it, Summer of Sam means to be a panoramic view of the summer of 1977 in New York City — when temperatures shot into the high 90s and power blackouts set nerves on edge, when the party agenda included snorting coke at Studio 54 and…
Run Lola Run is proof that the influence of MTV on feature filmmaking hasn’t been all bad. The jagged stylistic excess that dominates short-form music videos can be exhausting and irritating when drawn out to feature length: Michael Bay (The Rock, Armageddon) may be the worst offender, though far from…
Most people don’t want their art-going experience mixed up with God. To them — to us — the separation of art and church is a modern-day luxury we’ve grown to take for granted, necessary for keeping our high culture clear of any brainwashing effects of organized, God-fearing religion. Artistically inclined…
The list of tyrants and geniuses, critics and playwrights, politicians and serial killers who receive praise and condemnation in Jonathan Reynolds’ scorching comedy about the scrambled cultural circuits connecting American blacks and whites is too long to mention in this column. Suffice to say Stonewall Jackson’s House, given its second…
Americans are going to celebrate the Fourth of July the only way we know how — with a big, gaudy, over-the-top birthday party with titles using lots of alliteration and words such as sensational and extravaganza. See, stuff like that proves we really love our country. This year, with the…
The Freemasons are coming. Twenty thousand will be in town for the annual Shrine of North America Imperial Council Session, where they’ll perform their mysterious degrees and rites, including the Freemasonry initiation ritual that requires candidates to swear to maintain the order’s moral code and secrets. Once, when a former…
The new Adam Sandler comedy, Big Daddy, isn’t just the funniest movie of the summer; it’s also the most improbable feel-good movie of the season. It’s improbable because practically everything about Adam Sandler seems so unlikely, so strangely back-assward. His whole phenomenal career — from Billy Madison to Happy Gilmore,…
Woe to the scribe who presumes to rewrite a master — unless he is so deft that his invasion of privacy produces something new and exciting. Enter British writer-director Oliver Parker. He has the nerve to meddle with Oscar Wilde’s sublime farce An Ideal Husband and the skill to pull…
Pretentiousness masquerading as profundity; self-indulgence masquerading as art. The Loss of Sexual Innocence, the dreadful new film from writer-director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, One Night Stand), joins the ranks of the worst films ever made. OK, it’s a statement that may, on the surface, seem harsh and heartless; but…
It has not been lost on the Quinn brothers — actor Aidan, cinematographer Declan, and writer-director Paul — that in old Gaelic culture, the tribal bard (or storyteller) was held in the highest esteem. The Quinns want to be Irish storytellers too, and to that end they have loaded up…
In the Undermain Theatre’s world premiere of Shiner, one character asks auto-mechanic and serial killer Agate (Dalton James) why he smiles so much. It’s not really a smile, replies the sly, reptilian Agate: “It’s just bad teeth.” That icy little moment perfectly encapsulates the duality in almost every scene of…
I don’t know about you, but if I hear either of the phrases “politically correct” or “politically incorrect” one more time, I’m gonna commit a hate crime. It’s now quite fashionable to be rude to any and every minority group in America, save one — African-Americans. This is the void…
Art-wise, these early summer weeks are some of the juiciest Dallas will see all year. Short of the big fall and holiday seasons, this is the most well-attended time for the local galleries. People are more excited about the longer days than sick of them — they’ll step out often…
As he works his way through a crowded Denton bar on a Thursday night, Paul Slavens looks like a regular guy in his white T-shirt and jeans and brown hiking boots. But when the shaved-headed Slavens takes a seat at the keyboard and opens his mouth to sing, the voice…
I used to have this roommate who was addicted to video games. He’d play them all day, from the time he woke up until he went to bed; sometimes, he’d take a break and, like, go to work. But for the most part, he spent hour after hour ass-down in…
Garfield Heard doubted the day would ever come, and when it did, almost no one knew about it. ESPN and CNN/SI didn’t air the press conference live; newspapers didn’t splash the headlines on the fronts of their sports pages. OK, so in Washington, D.C., it got a little coverage, but…
This is the first thing you notice about John Travolta as he stands before you, extending his hand in welcome: He does not look at all like a Movie Star. At 45, he seems a bit softer and a tad shorter than he did even on television, where the small…
Joy isn’t a word that often comes to mind when thinking about the films of director Wim Wenders. But infectious, intoxicating joy is the emotion conveyed by every frame of this ravishing, exuberant documentary. Buena Vista Social Club is not only the German filmmaker’s most engaging, soulful film since 1987’s…
Anthology films are an odd-duck genre: While there once was a time, long gone, when books of short stories were published with nearly the frequency of novels, their cinematic equivalent has never amounted even to 1 percent of the fictional films released. You could argue that Pulp Fiction counts as…
Disney’s The Lion King, one of the studio’s most popular films ever, contained a streak of xenophobia that bordered on the fascistic. Think about it: The effeminate usurper of a hereditary title pollutes the leonine kingdom by integrating the hyenas — creatures with ethnic voices — into the pride. Late…
It all happened because Bill Maher lost a bar bet. Though probably not his first (likely there was one involving a beer, a dollar bill, and a monkey), this one dictated that once a week, an anonymous American gets to sit beside movie stars, politicians, journalists, musicians, and the occasional…
Craig Karges probably isn’t invited to dinner parties very often. He also probably gets kicked out of a lot of restaurants. See, he has this little problem of bending spoons, tilting tables, and making things levitate with his mind. Karges calls himself an “extraordinist,” because the word psychic is used…
