This past year hasn’t produced much quality television. FOX, for one, seems to have completely abandoned ship, with its incessant airing of those When the World’s Most Dangerous Animals Attack Before They Were Stars specials. But the year has produced some memorable commercials, and some we wish we could forget…
Apparently, during the planning stages of Disneyland, Walt Disney referred to the castle–the one that’s become synonymous with not only the amusement park, but Disney itself–as a wienie. That’s right, a wienie. Maybe our minds are permanent occupants of the gutter, but we can’t help but notice the phallic connotations…
The round little boy wears a green plastic cowboy hat adorned with the Dallas Mavericks logo. The hat is a thousand sizes too small for his large blond head; it looks like a thimble resting atop a basketball. The boy sits next to Steve Nash, among the newest and richest…
“Racism is a device that, of itself, means nothing,” says a character from Lorraine Hansberry’s unfinished African liberation drama Les Blancs. “It is simply a means, an invention to justify the rule of some men over others.” The character, however, goes on to confuse his listener by declaring that racism…
The title of the mondo exclusive show at the Kimbell is disconcerting: Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry. “Gentle” isn’t the best word to pair with “rivalry,” and even less of a match for the temperament of these artists, but how else can the Kimbell get the point across? These…
The new Mel Gibson movie, Payback, is arguably the first major-studio release this year to have even a modicum of aesthetic ambition. For his directorial debut, Brian Helgeland–who won an Oscar for his screenplay for 1997’s L.A. Confidential (cowritten with director Curtis Hanson)–has chosen to adapt The Hunter, the first…
In the 1993 hit Groundhog Day, Bill Murray played a show-biz smart-ass who grew into a human being. Murray added a core of warmth and romance to his comic arsenal without losing his zinging wit and crack-up irony, and he’s kept that progress going, even in piddling vehicles such as…
The coming plague…yes, yes, that same one that’ll wipe out a third of our planet’s human population like ick in an over-crowded fish tank. The experts say it’s coming, that this earth is just too damn choked with people not to breed some kind of Yber-infection, one that’ll kill every…
The secret to Asian action films’ superiority to their American counterparts over the past 10 or 15 years is simple: Would you rather watch Bruce Willis huffing and puffing his way through a fight sequence–mostly just shooting everyone in sight and squinting too much–or Jackie Chan using any and every…
thursday february 4 How do you choose between an Asian film festival (see sidebar) and a French film festival? We’ll leave that one up to you. All we’ll say is that if French films are anything like French people, the choice should be fairly simple. We’ve never been to France–traveling…
“All women who’ve wanted to break out of the prison of consciousness…are strange monsters,” declared travel writer and poet May Sarton, “who’ve renounced the treasure of their silence for a curious, devouring pleasure.” She goes on to name Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, and Sappho as examples, so we know she’s…
The place has been closed for seven months. While the great unwashed didn’t notice, the rest of the art freaks sure did. Dallas can’t afford to lose a gallery–especially a great alternative space–like Gray Matters. We’d drive by the closed doors on North Haskell every once in a while and…
Nearly everyone–certainly every film buff–who saw the last James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies, came away excited, though the film was certainly no match for Goldfinger or From Russia With Love. Audiences were buzzing, not about the gadgets or about Pierce Brosnan, but about Michelle Yeoh–the Hong Kong actress who…
Between the current nostalgia for platform shoes and the epidemic of midlife crises that has so many baby boomers in its grip, director Brian Gibson’s Still Crazy just might be able to find an audience among the disturbed, the deafened, and the disenchanted. It is, after all, the comic tale…
No one messes with the King. No one. We learned our lesson a couple of weeks ago that our comments on the flurry of activity surrounding the 64th birthday Elvis Presley would be celebrating if he were alive–we said if–were a tad irreverent. Elvis may be dead, but his fans…
thursday january 28 The only positive thing to come out of a good band breaking up is that, occasionally, its members go on to form bands that are even better or at least as good. Legendary Crystal Chandelier and Centro-matic sprang out of Funland, UFOFU and Comet gave way to…
What would a week be without a mention in this paper of at least one of the following local wonders: The Dooms U.K., Centro-matic, Peter Schmidt, Corn Mo, or the Good/Bad Art Collective? None of these agencies is paying us under the table. We swear. This Friday, the Good/Bad Art…
It has often been written that while film is a director’s medium, theater is the province of the actor. Except for that phenomenon known as “director’s theater”–on the plus side, the current New York productions of Cabaret and Swan Lake and, on the minus side, Franco Zefferilli’s recent animal-costumed, boo-inspiring…
Elevate The Jerry Springer Show a notch or two–in other words, dispense with the one-legged serial killers who are having sex with their blind mothers, and other such nonsense–and you’ve got Willard Carroll’s Playing by Heart. Too harsh a judgment, some will say. After all, this well-meaning, relentlessly sincere ensemble…
“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,” Kris Kristofferson sings in his most beguiling song, “Me and Bobby McGee.” Stephen Frears’ The Hi-Lo Country tries in vain to be just as lyrical about love and liberty. In this 20th-century Western, a cattle rancher named Pete (Billy Crudup) narrates…
thursday january 21 The Lean Theater’s latest production, Kevin Kling’s Lloyd’s Prayer, is your typical boy-meets-girl story, except for one thing: The girl (Bobbi) was raised by raccoons, and the boy (Lloyd) is an ex-con who takes her on the tent-revival circuit to swindle money from the true believers. Hmmm,…
Even as you read this, 181 of this states’ most sought-after men and women are settling into their plush chairs in Austin preparing to do the state’s business. Since the Legislature is in session for only five months, lawmakers eager to show they’re worth the votes that got them there…
