A classic that fully merits the designation, Jean Renoir’s 1937 anti-war masterpiece Grand Illusion is, quite simply, one of the greatest films ever made. Recently restored, with a new print struck from the film’s original camera negative — confiscated by the Nazis after the fall of France and thought to…
Period films are, in general, not what you would call a commercial sure shot in the current marketplace, unless of course the period in question is the 22nd century or some “long, long ago” that resembles the 22nd century. In Plunkett & Macleane, director Jake Scott — son of Ridley,…
The fact that Drive Me Crazy is actually based on a novel (How I Created My Perfect Prom Date by Todd Strasser) is a sad comment on the state of contemporary young-adult fiction. The story’s not entirely dreadful, but the fact that a script created from a shuffled deck of…
Ken Nelson, a regular at the “Branson-on-the-Brazos” show in Waco, was destined to have a career in music. His mother sang with a big band, his father was a trumpeter, and their home was filled with the music of Frank Sinatra. Nelson’s own calling began with his cabaret show of…
Almost everyone has a ghost story, or at least knows someone who does. Hard to buy into the spirit world at all until you hear some completely sensible, non-hoodoo person tell their tale: the high-functioning yuppie cousin who had to move out of her San Francisco Victorian in the wake…
The marketers of so-called “race records” — blues, rhythm and blues, and jazz recorded by black artists for black audiences in the first half of the 20th century — often conferred royalty on their headliners in an American society that made them separate and unequal in the most mundane daily…
I recently received a letter signed by “members of the theater community” about a very negative review I gave to Echo Theatre’s production of Maria Irene Fornes’ Fefu and Her Friends. Once I recovered from what I assumed to be a shot at my masculinity (these members said I was…
“Painting is dead” was a manifesto embraced by a swell of artists throughout the latter part of this century. As photography, moving film, sculpture, and conceptual art evolved, painting took on the rather unenviable role of static old grandpa: outdated, unsuited for dealing with modern concerns, narrow by its very…
The art of war Though Gerald Peters, president of the gallery that bears his name, has yet to formally answer the lawsuit filed by his former gallery director Talley Dunn, her pre-emptive strike in the form of a petition to invalidate her no-compete clause and seek $1.4 million in damages…
Behind the camera, Beauty’s driving forces are new to movies, but their theatrical résumés are faultless — a fact that did not escape the deep pockets at DreamWorks. The screenwriter, playwright Alan Ball, is the author of dark absurdist comedies such as Five Women Wearing the Same Dress and The…
The joke that opens Jakob the Liar, the new Holocaust comedy (and talk about an oxymoron) starring Robin Williams, captures the bittersweet quality — the grim reality mixed with laughter — that the rest of the movie tries and fails to embody. The story takes place in an unidentified Jewish…
There’s a long tradition of stories about mysterious drifters who arrive in a small town and either create trouble or catalyze an explosion of long-simmering problems. Mark Twain used that hook, as have Dashiell Hammett (Red Harvest), Akira Kurosawa (Yojimbo), and Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars). Now Hampton Fancher…
The only tools a nice fellow needs to repair the damaged psyches of an entire town are a guilty conscience and a dash of insight. That, at least, is the premise of Lawrence Kasdan’s silly new social parable, Mumford, in which the eponymous hero poses as a psychologist and, despite…
It is the wry humor and amazing equanimity of the men profiled in the documentary Return With Honor that proves most astonishing. They were among the 462 American fighter pilots who were shot down over North Vietnam and became prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. Some were held in…
There are a few plot loopholes in Double Jeopardy that, if scrutinized, would unhinge the entire story and seriously truncate the movie’s running time. Two of the more gaping ones involve narrow escapes allowed between a profoundly wronged wife and her devious, scheming husband. In the heat of their conflict,…
Have yourself nailed to the top of a Volkswagen Beetle, have yourself shot in the arm at close range, crawl over some broken glass. No? It’s all just another day’s work for Chris Burden, an artist who in the early 1970s introduced a confounded press to the concept of performance…
There’s a certain rush of anticipation when entering the TI Founders IMAX Theater at The Science Place and seeing the 79-foot domed screen come into view — in front, above, and around. It’s like waiting in line at the roller coaster. The next train is coming down the tracks, and…
“You and me?” asks catcher Gus Sinski (John C. Reilly) of his old friend, veteran pitcher Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner). “One more time?” It’s a poignant moment, the top of what may be the last game of Chapel’s career before he’s either traded or quits the game he has loved…
Since his TV show ended, Martin Lawrence has gotten more ink for his off-camera life than for his movie career. There’s nothing about Blue Streak that is likely to change that. It’s a shame, because the basic plot — which sounds like something from one of Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder…
Modern word processing has made life easier for screenwriters. After all, there’s no need to retype some old classic with your own little changes; nowadays, you can just download the screenplay for, let’s say, The Exorcist, search for “adolescent girl,” replace with “twentysomething single woman,” and — voila! — you’ve…
I don’t know if it was apocryphal or not, but the story goes that toward the end of her life, playwright Lillian Hellman was asked after a speaking engagement why, considering that she’d taken up arms against all manner of social injustices throughout her career, she’d never explicitly endorsed the…
I was privileged to spend this past weekend in the company of not three, but five masterful women actors, if you add to Toys in the Attic the Saturday matinee I caught of Grace and Glorie at the Bath House Cultural Center. Everything about advance reviews I’d read of Tom…
