thursday december 17 It never feels like Christmas in Texas. The closest we’ll get to a winter wonderland is by turning on the air conditioner and spraying snow all over our windows; white Christmases just don’t happen here. Since we’re desperate, we’ll settle for a wet Christmas, especially since driving…
Nazis, a suicide attempt, a brutal kidnapping, death by heart attack, a villain named Burgermeister Meisterburger. What do these have in common? They’re all elements in some of the best Christmas movies ever. Most of ’em you won’t catch on TV, though. Obvious favorites are just that: too damn obvious…
It’s 7 o’clock on Saturday night, 30 minutes before the scheduled tip-off of a celebrity basketball game featuring out-of-work professional National Basketball Association players, most of whom wouldn’t be celebrities if they were actually picking up paychecks. But the game, such as it is, will not begin until nearly 8:30,…
Beginning in the mid-’80s, the devastation of AIDS opened the floodgates of theatrical imagination, engulfing audiences across the country. The Neptune King of the genre is, of course, Tony Kushner’s two-part epic Angels in America, and although the old boy still has some fire left in him, he is doddering…
Ultra tough guy Jesse “The Body” Ventura says he means business as the new governor of Minnesota. But for now the nasty crime wave in that state continues unchecked–in the movies anyway. Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan, a psychological thriller that shows us how dangerous life can get after three…
The relentless charm of Kirk Jones’ Waking Ned Devine lies in its embrace of two lovable Irish geezers who manage to work beautiful mischief on the world, in the raw beauty of their sun-splashed coastal village, and in the general notion that Ireland is the land of poetic conversations, enduring…
“I just find it all so bizarre,” notes John Maybury, popping a cigarette into his mouth and lighting it in what appears to be one quick flip of the wrist. “All those issues of ‘being out’ and ‘are you in?’ We should have gone beyond that by now. I know…
First of all, if you’re among the benighted who’ve never seen Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 shocker Psycho, stop reading at the end of this paragraph. A movie review, even one as incisive and elegant as this, is no way to be introduced to Hitchcock’s horror masterpiece. Your assignment is to rush…
Many of us fancy that we could earn a handsome living simply by sitting on a stage and talking about our lives in a clever way. After all, we spellbind friends, lovers, and co-workers for free every day, right? But truly, who among us is qualified for such a deceptively…
thursday december 10 If you asked most kids who was born on December 25–in theory at least–most would say Santa Claus. Christmas long ago stopped being solely a religious holiday. Actually, it isn’t even really about Santa Claus anymore either. It’s all about the gifts, baby. If you think we’re…
Thirty-five years have passed since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but people are still talking about it. While everyone is entitled to his own theory, only those who were there in Dealey Plaza on that sunny November day in 1963 actually have memories. Now, the Sixth Floor Museum…
The strained relationship between theater and the Christian church didn’t begin when Terrence McNally held a press conference to announce he was painting a lavender Jesus in Corpus Christi. Way back in seventh-century Europe, church elders declared a culture war against the cross-dressing, bawdy humor, and symbolic wine-pouring that honored…
About the closest most of us will ever come to the backwoods of Appalachia is watching Deliverance, and the harrowing misadventure upon which its plot hinges pretty much ensures that we won’t want to visit the backwoods of Appalachia. That the entire region and its natives have been defined for…
The character Simon Geist (Dan Zukovic) is a black-haired, dead-eyed intellectual who never smiles and never condescends when he talks: He’d never even think of kneeling to address you on your level. The actor Dan Zukovic is a playwright whose screenplay for his debut feature The Last Big Thing doesn’t…
Sandra Cisneros writes about what she knows, in the words she grew up with. This daughter of a Mexican father and Mexican-American mother brought the Chicano experience to mainstream literary circles with her first book, The House on Mango Street. Now, in celebration of December 12, the day of the…
thursday 3 We’ve never really seen the point of collecting autographs, especially ones you don’t obtain yourself. Sure, it’s tangible–albeit illegible–proof of personal contact, but that contact only lasts as long as the signature does, and probably only serves to irritate the person who is doing the signing. Buying autographs…
It’s rock! No, it’s art! It rocks! But it’s art! Ah. Must be the Good/Bad Art Collective up to its shenanigans again. Who better to yank the area’s music contingent out of complacency than the Denton tricksters-cum-artists, who for the third time in as many years will stage their(in)famous Rock…
According to the sparse information available in standard reference books, Chilean expatriate director Ral Ruiz, still only in his late 50s, has made more than 100 films since 1960; apparently only 50 or so are features, but that’s still an impressive number. He has been a staple on the festival…
When I was a kid, about 10, my mother was an extra in Semi-Tough, the film based on Dan Jenkins’ novel about Billy Clyde Puckett, Snake Tiller, and how football could turn grown men into morally corrupt cretins. Mom and Aunt Marilyn, my mother’s twin sister, were cast as sideline…
When The Dallas Morning News printed the Dallas Theater Critics Forum results on November 1, it was frisky foreplay working up to the climax of November 2, when the Dallas Theatre League distributed the 1998 Leon Rabin Awards at the Irving Arts Center. They are, of course, separate but related…
The Dallas Museum of Art couldn’t have chosen a better savior–and it’s not a new director but an artist–than Bill Viola. It’s not news that the museum has been trapped in an identity crisis for years now. Antiquity or modernity? Conservatism or gambles? Big-money exhibitions or small, pioneering ones? The…
In the rancid nightmare farce called Very Bad Things, Peter Berg, in his movie writing-directing debut, creates characters that you immediately want to see killed off. From the title to the ads to the Web site (which features a Vegas stripper who will dance for you), Very Bad Things has…
