Joyce Carol Oates, a journeywoman of American letters who has probably been discussed more carefully than she’s been read, has written about rapists, child-killers, and animal mutilators through a poet’s eye. Throughout her career, she’s been accused of having an obsession with violence, which is correct as far as it…
Leave it to a 26-year-old eccentric to make it snow in Dallas in August. Yet filling an art space in Exposition Park with cheerfully whirling snow is the least of Erick Swenson’s magic show. Visions of those sad, creepy animals he’s got traipsing around in the dramatic white stuff are…
Matt Damon, the blond matinee idol, has apparently become Hollywood’s idea of a deep thinker. After playing a math whiz in last year’s Good Will Hunting, he’s now been reinvented as a poker genius in John Dahl’s Rounders. So anybody who had doubts about the second coming of Albert Einstein…
The opening credits of Simon Birch assert that it was “suggested” by John Irving’s popular 1989 novel A Prayer for Owen Meany. Actually, it’s a thin but relatively faithful adaptation of the first few chapters of Irving’s comic ramble through the nature of religious faith, predestination, and heroism. Screenwriter Mark…
Men don’t get it. Moms don’t get it. Sometimes, even your roommate or best friend doesn’t get it. But if you bray and carp and vent long enough, someone will listen; someone will begin to understand the precious particulars of a young woman’s sexuality–whether they’re interested or not. That’s the…
Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once described the U.S.-Mexico border as a 2,000-mile-long scar. The frontier, drawn at the end of the U.S-Mexico war, is a permanent reminder to Mexicans of their country’s humiliating defeat in a war that resulted in America’s claiming half of Mexico’s territory as its “manifest destiny.”…
thursday september 10 Paul Rudnick’s critically acclaimed play Jeffrey had an incredibly successful run earlier this year in Fort Worth, playing to packed houses and capturing several awards from the Fort Worth Theatre Guild, including Best Studio Production and Best Actor. The original cast has assembled once again for a…
The horror. It’s like a Ray Bradbury short story–little kids know way more about technology than you do, and God only knows where that could lead. Face it, buddy, the world of computers and the Internet has left you eating dust, but you’re too scared to log on. “But I’m…
The early plays of Anton Chekhov were given such a cool reception by late-19th-century Russian theatergoers that the poor bastard almost quit the biz to devote all his energies to family doctoring, the profession for which he was trained. Russian theatergoers were accustomed to watching actors paint their faces with…
Shane, the teenage hero of Mark Christopher’s 54, wears the petulant expression of a Raphaelite cherub, and he comes complete with a halo of curly blond hair. He’s played by a pretty newcomer with the exotic name of Ryan Phillippe, but there’s nothing exotic about the voice that comes out…
In the pecking order of tragic black musicians, Frankie Lymon can’t hold a votive candle to, say, Charlie Parker or Billie Holiday. But now, like that pair, the late doo-wopper has his own movie–or, rather, he has his own space in a movie that, for better or worse, is really…
How vulnerable children are! And how wounding life can be. The Thief, a Russian film set in the post-World War II Stalinist era, was one of five nominees vying for last year’s Academy Award as the Best Foreign Language Film. (It lost to Character.) Written and directed by Pavel Chukhrai…
Armed again with the comedy of despair, but with a far sight more focus than last time out, Kicking and Screaming director Noah Baumbach takes on one of the more coiled and resilient of the seven deadlies in Mr. Jealousy, a bright comedy of manners. Even as Eric Stoltz romantic…
thursday september 3 One reason why the Liquid Lounge is one of the best new clubs–no, make that best clubs, period–is the DJs that take over the club every Thursday night: Mark Crowder, Shawn Francis, and Christopher Ryan. The trio–collectively known as Fine Time–plays an eclectic mix of records, everything…
For the cultural stragglers who still think “Japanimation” means the childhood nostalgia of Speed Racer and Battle of the Planets, here’s the news: You’re waaayy behind. Called anime by the coterie, the genre has made quantum leaps in aesthetics, subject matter, and–across the Pacific as well as stateside–popularity. The AnimeFest…
Not long before he died, Bertolt Brecht asked a reporter to “write that I was inconvenient and intend to remain so after my death. Even then there are certain possibilities.” Well, he must be laughing to himself these days. As theaters around the world celebrate the centenary of his birth,…
The dog days of August are national gallery blackout time. From the alternative spaces scattered throughout Los Angeles to the polished venues of Manhattan’s Chelsea district, it seems everyone’s closed up shop to take a breather before the big fall openings. But while art dealers–a self-serving lot if there ever…
There are two words guaranteed to cause mainstream movie audiences to avoid the box office–OK, two words besides the “The Avengers”–“low-budget” and “documentary.” That’s exactly what Hands on a Hard Body is, a low-budget documentary, but oddly enough, it’s also one of the most mainstream films to play Dallas this…
Slums of Beverly Hills is the first feature by the young writer-director Tamara Jenkins, and it has its mild amusements. It’s one of those movies that gets bonus points for being “personal”–it bops along from episode to episode, as if the filmmaker were discovering her subject as she went along…
The idea of destiny–especially the notion that two people are fated to meet and fall in love–is a load of crap, but a surprising number of people buy into it. Probably for that reason it has proven to be a fairly popular component in movie romances, City of Angels and…
thursday august 27 Echo Theatre’s inaugural production, Dream of a Common Language, may be set in 1874, but its theme is entirely modern. The play, written by Heather McDonald, explores the delicate balance between a woman’s career, her family, and society’s expectations. Women have been allowed–and encouraged–to work for quite…
Of all the electronica acts bent over sequencers, scratching up vinyl, and looking to steal the perfect hook, the Crystal Method has certainly shown great promise in a realm of empty promises. And in the face of a U.K.- and New York-driven scene, Method’s Los Angeles identity kicks off its…
