Dangerous Beauty presents a 16th-century Venice filled with statesmen who hop from bed to bed without fear of “bimbo eruptions.” That’s because the courtesans aren’t bimbos, and they aren’t hidden: Everyone from the admiralty to the bishopric patronizes them. Having developed their minds along with their erotic skills, they’re boon…
His eye trained on the manic collision of Catholicism and consumerism, Pedro Almodovar has made some of the most lively, genre-bending films of the last two decades. The commander of a visual style that emphasizes bright primary colors and bold geometry, he’s in love with the glittering surfaces of pop-culture…
The science-fiction works of the late, great Philip K. Dick haven’t been served particularly well on screen. The most recent adaptation, Screamers, was junk; Total Recall had its moments, but was less ingenious by half than the short story it was based upon. Blade Runner, of course, was brilliant, but…
Back in the ’60s and ’70s, when its animation unit was in the doldrums, the Disney studio made a number of live-action “family” comedies (No Deposit, No Return and Freaky Friday, for instance) that were, within their limited ambitions, genuinely funny. The studio’s latest film, Krippendorf’s Tribe, is very much…
thursday february 26 Carol Shields: For much of her 22-year career as a novelist, Illinois native Carol Shields has distinguished herself in the genre of what a colleague affectionately calls “chick fiction”–women telling the stories of their lives with a minimum of sentimentality and a maximum of emotional yearning. She…
In taking five of author Willa Cather’s early short stories and distilling them into a brand-new musical he calls Cather County, composer-librettist Ed Dixon would seem to have located one of the great themes of a great American writer: how the land transforms us even as we transform the land…
Bruno Barreto is the heir apparent of Brazilian cinema; he’s known on these shores for the lush romanticism of the Sonia Braga travel brochures Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (1977) and Gabriela (’83), and in his own country for teen fluff like ’81’s The Boy from Rio. With the…
Palmetto is a film noir set in a torpid seaside Florida town. It’s based on the James Hadley Chase novel Just Another Sucker, and when we first see Harry Barber (Woody Harrelson), he fits that moniker exactly. He looks dazed and confused–a sucker incarnate. Suckers are, of course, integral to…
The Only Thrill, directed by Houston native Peter Masterson, is a conventional, sentimental movie that nonetheless hits where it aims. The film, which otherwise would be competent but unremarkable, is distinguished by two memorable actors–Sam Shepard and Diane Keaton–and by the chemistry that grows between these two principals as the…
thursday february 19 Elmo’s Coloring Book: Some people think Elmo’s wide-eyed enthusiasm is really a cover for a seriously pushy personality, but compared with passive-aggressive Big Bird, he’s far more honest about his feelings. He just wants to color the world with his particular shade of joie de vivre. Case…
Since Barry Switzer’s, uh, resignation, the world has hardly stopped. We discovered that President Clinton probably screwed a 21-year-old intern. Sonny Bono died in a skiing accident, and former SMU football great Doak Walker was paralyzed in a similar mishap. More than 4,000 people died in an earthquake in Afghanistan…
If you’re looking for a tax write-off that also fortifies the First Amendment, not to mention the cause of artistic richness and innovation in our city, a wealthy Dallas businessperson could do worse than to drop a big wad of money into the lap of the Undermain Theatre. It prides…
In these paradox-ridden times, producers on the hunt for cutting-edge fantasies look back: They visit their boyhood or girlhood rooms and ransack their old books and videos, or peruse their studio’s property list for works that scored well in other media. In the mid-’90s, the English company Working Title made…
A colleague confided that he feared The Winter Guest because he didn’t want to watch Emma Thompson talking to her mom for two hours. This perfectly summarizes the kind of trap Alan Rickman’s directorial debut could’ve laid for art-house patrons: Hire one respected English actor to oversee a film starring…
Ludovic, the fiercely determined young hero(ine?) of writer-director Alain Berliner’s half-hilarious, half-tragic feature debut Ma Vie en Rose (My Life in Pink), proves how age, culture, and time all conspire to decide the difference between being feminine and being effeminate. Sure, he likes to wear frilly dresses and wants to…
thursday february 12 Conversation Pieces: Short Stories From Long-Term Memory: Texas artist Kathy Lovas found herself in the horrible state that thousands of other adults do every year: working with an aging parent who has Alzheimer’s. That degenerative condition creates a unique situation: Short-term memory zaps out, but long-term recollection…
thursday february 5 Charlie King: He may not have the household notoriety of Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, but singer-songwriter Charlie King has something even more impressive–their devoted fandom. Both have covered the songs of troubadour King, who for 35 years has crafted ballads and up-tempo tunes about contemporary issues…
Tom Hicks did not buy the Texas Rangers for $250 million because he loves baseball. He bought the Texas Rangers and the 270 acres of land around the Ballpark in Arlington because he loves making money. “I didn’t buy a baseball team for $250 million,” he says, sitting behind a…
How, you may ask, did 17th-century master satirist Moliere (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was the handle on his birth certificate) write with such incendiary insight on the vanity and frailty of human beings? You don’t have to read too far in his bio to figure it out: The guy was trained as…
Dennis Rodman’s life is an open book–it’s just not clear at this point how many people are left who care to read it. Rodman’s arrogance is unparalleled and far too well documented: He’s the, um, author of two autobiographies; he briefly had his own show on MTV, if you call…
Normally when he’s on tour publicizing his movies, writer-director Alan Rudolph likes to plan his day around tying one on. Relieved from the responsibility of writing, handling actors, and working with the cinematographer–but with the added stress of a hectic international travel schedule–he likes nothing better than to knock back…
John Woo has generated plenty of American disciples in the decade since his Hong Kong action films began playing film festivals in the West. Even before he began his Hollywood career with 1993’s Hard Target, bits of his action shtick started showing up in the work of savvy young filmmakers,…
