No genre of film is quite as beleaguered as the humble romantic comedy. Ideally suited to the modest budgets and limited chops of the burgeoning filmmaker–no horses, no explosions, no alien embryo pods filled with disgusting slime–the genre often takes the blame for twentysomething tales told without the benefit of…
The “Size Matters” marketing campaign for Godzilla is far more ingenious than the movie. It’s also highly annoying–and somewhat misleading. After all, as the ads for a new film called Plump Fiction remind us, “Width matters, too.” Perhaps the best thing about this week’s ballyhooed arrival of Godzilla is that…
Jerry Seinfeld killed stand-up comedy. He didn’t mean to, but the damage was done just the same. After Seinfeld, comedians don’t want to be just comedians anymore; they want a 13-episode deal and the time slot after Friends. A guest shot on The Tonight Show or Letterman used to be…
Two artists glancing through the same window may see the same hills, the same river, the same trees–but they damn sure won’t paint them all the same way. Two Texas painters, Julie Lazarus and Bruno Andrade, both concern themselves with landscape. Though their takes on flora and fauna come from…
thursday may 21 When artist Bill Haveron is at his best, his work is reminiscent of the doodlings of a creative adolescent whose mind has wandered from high school algebra class. The strange people and fantastical creatures that make up his crowded pencil drawings would look right at home on…
Fernando Tatis didn’t say a word as he stripped out of his civvies and put on his batting-practice blues. The normally talkative young man was unusually glum and silent, lost in a funk and in a hurry to get to the field to take some practice swings in the hours…
The 11th Street Theatre Project’s revival of Arthur Miller’s The Creation of the World and Other Business is timed well, as another of our premier stage moralist’s little-produced efforts, A View From the Bridge, has been generating a firestorm of critical and audience praise for its current New York production…
It’s a good four-and-a-half-hour drive to Houston; kind of a haul just to see some art, but then a spontaneous road trip can do wonders for the Dallas-weary soul. And Houston presents this odd, looking-glass parallel to this city, with its jutting skyline and crawling traffic and damp heat. You’re…
The Horse Whisperer, the latest film from Robert Redford–and the first of his directorial efforts in which he also stars–could almost serve as a compendium of Redford’s best and worst tendencies. It features his eye for gorgeous, pictorial vistas; his straightforward narrative approach; and, most importantly, his understanding of actors…
Not since the death of Diana has there been a pop phenomenon as cataclysmic as the demise of Seinfeld. The surrounding hoopla has reached such, well, titanic proportions that it has turned the series’ saturnine co-creator–balding, bespectacled Larry David–into a cult celebrity. The press has presented David as a mysterious…
It’s the tail end of the 1996 California primary election, and incumbent Democratic Sen. Jay Bulworth (Warren Beatty) is having a nervous breakdown. Sleepless for days, famished, he channel-surfs aimlessly in the darkness of his office where, in a rare moment of lucidity, he has an inspiration: He arranges to…
In Barbara Kopple’s new documentary Wild Man Blues, we follow Woody Allen around Europe on a whirlwind concert tour with his New Orleans jazz band. He’s kvetching from the get-go. “I would rather be bitten by a dog than fly to Paris,” he announces mid-air, then mellows on the Champs-Elysees…
Sharp edge meets mass appeal–not a common feat, especially by such a young ‘un. Heather Gorham, an emerging Dallas artist, somehow finds that rare space between abrasion and whimsy, the ominous and the welcoming. Her larger acrylic paintings and her minuscule bronze sculptures star a strangely cohesive stable of creatures–sideshow…
On the surface, the lineup for EdgeFest ’98–the annual music festival put together by 94.5 FM The Edge–looks like one of those package tours from the ’50s where the songs got top billing because nobody knew the names of the bands that played them. Other than Everclear and the Mighty…
thursday may 14 As if we needed further proof that American culture revolves around television, the week after a historic peace accord was reached in Northern Ireland, Newsweek ran a cover story on the final episode of Seinfeld. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We know all about lead…
From his perch in the seventh-floor press box at Lone Star Park, Chuck Badone watches through binoculars as the fifth race unfolds with disastrous results. The number-eight horse, with the frighteningly prophetic name Bush Won, crosses the finish line well ahead of the rest of the pack, and Badone, for…
Longtime patrons already know that the Undermain Theatre can mix a mean theatrical drink–comedy and drama shaken together into one potent cocktail, served up on some treacherous rocks. Rarely has the house recipe been more potent when you gulp it–and rarely have the effects felt more disappointing, when the buzz…
There’s this company over on McKinney Avenue, an enterprising outfit that handles post-production for television and radio commercials–editing, sound effects, voice tracks–and the building is overflowing with some of the best artwork in town. Only, the art collection at CharlieUniformTango (that’s the name of the place, though they like to…
Most disaster movies would be a lot better with more disaster and less “human drama.” In Deep Impact, the impending obliteration of much of earth by a pair of comets is merely the sideshow. The main event is all that goopy human-interest stuff–the daughter who reunites with her estranged father,…
One of the few seemingly spontaneous bursts of energy at this year’s Oscar ceremony was provided by motor-mouthing Dutch director Mike van Diem, who seemed genuinely surprised to have won the award for Best Foreign Film for his debut feature, Character. If the commercial popularity and Oscar sweep for Titanic…
It seems strange that the man who is practically synonymous with classical music in the metroplex–pianist Van Cliburn–hasn’t performed a solo recital in the area in more than 20 years. But Cliburn has always been seen as something of an eccentric, at least by classical-music standards. His behavior is not…
The Webb Gallery offers a double-layered excursion. One, it’s about 35 miles south of Dallas, in Waxahachie’s historic district. Nice little drive. Two, the artwork is a departure from all the newfangled contemporary and conceptual stuff you find in urban art spaces. See, Bruce and Julie Webb, the gallery’s youthful…
