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…
Maybe the last dance performance you saw was your sister’s ballet recital. Perhaps you vaguely remember long hours spent at the obligatory Christmastime Nutcraker and how the men in tights made you squirm. Maybe you’re one of those people who just never cared for dance, and you don’t see why…
Dallas Stars backup goaltender Roman Turek is having the best season of his National Hockey League career. He won 11 games all of last season; already, less than halfway into the 1998-’99 campaign that finds Dallas owning the NHL’s best record, Turek has seven wins. In the 12 games he’s…
Directed by Walter Salles (1995’s Foreign Land), the Brazilian film Central Station concerns the relationship between a homeless 9-year-old boy and the insensitive, acerbic woman who reluctantly agrees to help him find his father. Winner of the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival (as well…
History has always been among my weaker subjects: I carry around gaps in my knowledge that you could drop a war or a social movement through. But it was nonetheless startling to learn that Article III of the original Constitution was a clause forbidding theater critics. Frank Rich of The…
The lead story last week in the syndicated column News of the Weird was about how “Great Britain’s premiere art award, the Turner Prize, was won in December by painter Chris Ofili, whose signature finishing touch on his work is a few blotches of elephant manure. Ofili’s centerpiece…bears the title…
Viewers who find Hurlyburly one of the most weirdly annoying movies they’ve seen–which is likely–will probably locate different “last straws” in the self-indulgent bundle of hay that has been made from David Rabe’s grueling 1984 play. For me, it was watching Eddie (Sean Penn) stretched out beneath a glass coffee…
For critics (and for audience members who enjoy thinking too much), there are movie devices and there are movie effects. Movie devices–happy endings, sad endings, emotion-wracked confessions, harrowing confrontations–are those stock contraptions that filmmakers employ with varying degrees of subtlety to induce movie effects–making you laugh, making you cry, creating…
Somewhere under the glossy imbecility of Varsity Blues lurks an idea that could make a great American movie: a coming-of-age story in a setting where no one else has come of age, a place where the hero must find his way to maturity without a mentor. The setting, in this…
Info: Night & Day January 14 – 20, 1999 By Zac Crain thursday january 14 There’s no better indicator of a trend’s death than when Hollywood gets its grubby little hands involved. By the time the latest craze finally makes its way onto the studio heads’ cultural radar, it has…
This is perfect. Velvet Goldmine was destined for midnight-movie status before it even hit screens earlier this fall, packing all the elements of a great cult film–big rock music, subversive sex, a rambling narrative, pretty boys and girls (and more boys), and its focus on a pop subculture. In this…
When Langston Hughes wrote “Harlem No. 2” in 1951, he spoke of the hopelessness of lives spent fighting poverty and prejudice, with no promise of change except through bursts of violence: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun…Or does it explode?”…
The biggest disappointment in Dallas theater in 1998 was the conspicuous omission of the 1997 Jimmys by the winners in their artist bios on play programs. Granted, last year was the first year they were presented, so the adjective “august” doesn’t come to mind when describing their status, and granted…
The great attorneys of our time–Tom Cruise, Susan Sarandon, Tom Hanks–must now make room in the firm for a new partner. John Travolta, who in past lives has been a disco king, a hip hit man, and a deep-fried presidential candidate, reinvents himself in A Civil Action as a greedy…
