thursday april 15 We have a simple method when it comes to handicapping horse races: Pick the horse with the funniest name and put all of your money on it. It’s not a foolproof method–we’ve won only once with it since we started going to Lone Star Park at Grand…
Embattled straights are probably thinking, “My stars, I can’t throw a rock at a TV or a movie screen these days without hitting a homosexual! What more do they want?” Actually, we just added one more request to the gay agenda: a little romance. Many of the gay-friendliest heterosexuals are…
Really, we don’t want to give Cameron Cobb a big head–being 23 and talented can be a recipe for obnoxiousness–but the recent world premiere of his Christ resurrection redux Didymus packs a quiet, even occasionally comedic wallop. Director Kimberlyn Crowe launched her theater company, Ground Zero, out of sheer passion…
Sometimes contemporary art can get so damn abrasive and antagonistic and pretentious that, after about two dozen of these “happenin'” gallery openings, you just wanna hurl your controversy-weakened body through the next gallery’s plate-glass window. What’s happening to me? I’m becoming one of the Chapman brothers’ mutated children! So it’s…
Courage comes in an infinite variety of forms and faces, but who among us would be brave enough to go back and relive our high school years, face the horrors of homeroom, and confront hallways so fraught with danger that the most treacherous battlefield would look as placid as a…
Jimmy Cagney brought the same electric physicality to gangsters that he did to song-and-dance men. He gave a bright-eyed mug like his character in Public Enemy extraordinary powers of attraction and repulsion. In The General, Brendan Gleeson enacts a real-life criminal chieftain–Dublin’s notorious Martin Cahill–with a belly-hanging-out buffoonery that is…
Has any major American director had quite so many career swings as Robert Altman? Maybe not, but if there’s one thing the last 30 years have made clear, it is that it’s never safe to count Altman out. The mid- and late ’90s have been particularly unfriendly to him. After…
Steve Martin says he doesn’t want audiences to expect the same old Steve Martin whenever he stars in a comedy. But that means one thing when he’s referring to Roxanne and L.A. Story, two inspired flights of romantic farce (based on his own scripts), and another when he’s talking about…
thursday april 8 There are times when we can’t find the television remote control for days, and we know where to look. When Roy Hazelwood was an FBI agent, he could find violent criminals in less time, and he had no idea where to look, or what he was even…
There’s something loathsome about Dallasites’ predilection for shucking their jeans and sweaters for tank tops and hot pants at the first sign of warmth. Bleach blond bimbos (of both genders) and tanning-booth-addicted jocks eagerly stripping down for the lower-Greenville scene, aging biker mamas and beer-bellied daddies parading their wears as…
We all know someone who’s been an extra in a movie, or whose college roommate’s cousin played a delivery boy in a sitcom, or who has frequented a restaurant/gas station/city featured in a film. Those people are sometimes pretty obnoxious. Well, here’s your chance to be just like them. Any…
A couple of years or so ago, Jane Austen suddenly rose from classical obscurity to become the hottest screenwriter in Hollywood. Now, it is Shakespeare himself who has become the magic name to drop. There are straight-up productions of his plays in the works–a star-studded version of A Midsummer’s Night…
Stuffed full of fantasy comics, addicted to action, and steeped in digital technology, the frenetic moviemakers Andy and Larry Wachowski have done what they must–create an eye-popping, morph-mad, quasi-mythical sci-fi flick that will thrill computer nerds as it kicks serious ass. The Matrix also presumes to (ahem) think deeply–although this…
Six Ways to Sunday is director Adam Bernstein’s second theatrical film, so it’s a little early to attempt a coherent analysis of his career. On the surface, this young mobster story couldn’t be more different from his earlier effort, the egregiously unfunny It’s Pat, which foolishly bloated Julia Sweeney’s one-gag…
Never knew quite what to make of Kinky Friedman, but that’s never been the point, has it? That would take a bit of the fun out of Kinky’s self-created, but not undeserved, legend. Besides, he likes it that way–loves it, really–being the eccentric joker laughing behind his ever-present shades, black…
So the undeserved hubbub over intergalactic summer blockbusters like Armageddon and Deep Impact has, rightfully, burned out faster than a dying comet. In fact, these overblown tripefests of quasi sci-fi and soapy drama have become punching bags for critics everywhere who need a quick illustration on just how obtuse and…
thursday april 1 Night & Day hasn’t quite grasped the concept of Art Bar, one-fourth of the four-bars-in-one concept that also includes Club Clearview, Blind Lemon, and Red. Essentially an art gallery inside a bar, Art Bar is definitely more one than the other. We’ve been there a handful of…
They surround him with their cameras and tape recorders, vultures picking apart their prey. And Dallas Mavericks point guard Steve Nash–the co-captain of this team, the six-million-dollar man, the man who cost Dallas next year’s first-round draft pick–sits there like a gentleman, absorbing every blow like a punch-drunk fighter against…
Now that I’ve enjoyed a sad, funny, subtle evening of family memories and unseen fates in WaterTower Theatre’s sterling production of Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain, I must express my gratitude by harassing producing director Gayle D. Pearson with the following plea. (Right about now, the sounds of collective…
Perhaps the biggest deficiency of Dallas theater is the tendency to cast performers against type. The pool of committed actors in this town is small, and chances are if you think so-and-so would be just perfect for this role, he or she is already working in someone else’s production. Sometimes…
Ah, youth. Jeffrey Silverthorne was only 27 when he first entered a morgue to take pictures of the bodies. Just the sort of thing a struggling, energetic artist might attempt: “What hasn’t been done? What can people not ignore?” Well, they sure as hell can’t ignore a bevy of large,…
Back in 1993, Disney released Swing Kids, a dead-earnest portrait of rebellious German jazz fans during the Third Reich. This bizarre hybrid–a blend of Footloose and Schindler’s List, of The Dead Poets Society and The Diary of Anne Frank–pitted big bands vs. armbands; it was a classic case of high-concept…
