thursday august 21 My Head Was a Sledgehammer: Scanning the two-page, small-type press release that Our Endeavors Productions prepared for its Southwest premiere of playwright Richard Foreman’s My Head Was a Sledgehammer induces a little chill in even the hardiest of experimental theatergoers. Foreman, a six-time Obie winner and acknowledged…
Ask 34-year-old playwright Neil LaBute how he came to see his controversial debut feature In the Company of Men hit the big screen, and he’ll tell you he doesn’t quite know. “I became a filmmaker by accident, by proxy,” LaBute says during the Dallas stop on a 15-city international tour…
By the end of Event Horizon, an ocean of red nearly drowns half the cast–this is a literal bloodbath. Blood pours from their throats, from their eye sockets, from their exposed veins and entrails; it splashes down corridors, runs down walls, fills every inch of screen space and then some…
The cops in Cop Land carry on like a bunch of goombahs. On the take from the Mob, they mimic the Mob. The fuzzy line dividing cops and crooks is the subject of many a strong police movie, but Cop Land goes a step further–it says there is no line…
When Time magazine columnist Walter Shapiro referred to himself last month as part of a generation that still believes “A Thousand Clowns holds all the secrets to human existence,” I thought he must be daft. Yes, high school students took Herb Gardner’s hit comedy about an urban dropout (played by…
thursday august 14 Landscape: Ever participated in those silly “Be Handicapped For a Day” office events where you ride around in a wheelchair or wear a blindfold to help you sympathize? There’s something about being able to remove your handicap at the end of the day that makes it…well, not…
Ion was written some 500 years before the birth of Christ by a man who, infrequently honored with literary awards during his lifetime, wrote and lived alone in a cave. (Like all juicy tidbits about classical writers, this last item may be apocryphal, originally invented in the interest of characterizing…
Jerry Fletcher, the hero of Conspiracy Theory, is a comic, glamorous variation on Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Like Travis, he’s a New York cabbie obsessed with protecting a woman from the world’s hidden malignancies. Unlike Travis, Jerry snaps when he achieves sanity. Mel Gibson has been almost too willing…
In the not-so-brave new world of independent filmmaking, low-budget movies premiere at Sundance or Cannes and win plaudits from over-psyched audiences, publicity from desperate feature writers, and distribution from boutiques that are usually subsidiaries of major studios. Right now Tarantino-style thrillers are out; crazy-clan stories and upstairs-downstairs tales are in…
All you heterosexual men looking for a film to see with your girlfriend, consider this a warning–Neil Labute’s In the Company of Men is not a date movie. Nor is this slow-burn indie drama a “black comedy,” as some critics have dubbed it. The film could be described as a…
thursday august 7 New Talent Exhibition: Texas may rank near the bottom in state and city funding for the arts in America, but what little support does manage to trickle through often helps one of the neediest of cultural populations–new artists who have a devil of a time breaking into…
John Leguizamo is lithe and full of juice–he’s like the shy boy who suddenly discovers he can dance and can’t keep still. Given his need to express himself physically–in his first one-man stage show, Spic-O-Rama, I don’t think his feet ever hit the ground–it’s a sad irony that his breakthrough…
There’s a famous maxim, ofttimes attributed to Mel Brooks, that tragedy is when I slip on a banana peel; comedy is when you slip on it. We can polish this little gem about human nature to a harder, more specifically theatrical gleam by adding: “But when we both slip on…
187, a number favored by adolescent thugs, is the California state penal code for homicide–and a harsh sentence for all involved in this hopeless, hapless movie. The gifted Samuel L. Jackson stars as a high school teacher who cracks under the constant threat of rabid teen machismo–and retaliates with his…
In Picture Perfect, Jennifer Aniston tells a whopper of a lie partially to win the attentions of a guy who has heretofore ignored her, interrupts a wedding, and humiliates a guy at his workplace. This follows on the heels of My Best Friend’s Wedding, which found Julia Roberts trying to…
thursday july 31 Ion: As the final production in its Adventure Series, Fort Worth’s Stage West has chosen a play written around 420 B.C. How adventurous, you might wonder, is a celebrated work by Euripides, the Greek master responsible for The Bacchae, Medea, and other classical lit staples? Well, that…
There are two kinds of despair in literature–mature and immature. Immature despair is a cry for attention disguised as a suicide attempt–it’s easily dismissed, even satirized, because the author cannot contain his or her narcissism for long. What might begin eloquently as a lament for the fragile human condition eventually…
It’s no secret that the “new” Jackie Chan releases in the U.S. aren’t really new at all. In fact, they’re not even showing up in chronological order: While New Line is issuing Jackie’s more current stuff in order, Miramax is putting out the star’s relatively recent back catalog out of…
Not satisfied with the president you have? Here’s Harrison Ford’s James Marshall in Air Force One–Vietnam war hero, straight as a ramrod, devoted husband and father. We first see him delivering a speech before a roomful of Russian dignitaries. Departing from the prepared, wishy-washy text, Mr. President fire-breathes his new…
Mrs. Brown (a Cannes hit and Miramax release) is dignified to the dead max–brownish-gray in mood and look and spirit. It’s based on the true story of the platonic but controversial bond between Queen Victoria (Judi Dench) and a Highlander named John Brown (Billy Connolly), who had been the devoted…
thursday july 24 Oh, Say Can You See…: The Dallas Poets Community couldn’t let July pass without staging its own skewed commentary on Independence month and the whole rocky love affair an individual has with his or her country. While there will doubtlessly be no burning flags displayed in “Oh,…
Since there’s no theater district in this town, the intrepid Dallas stagehound must sometimes endure a symphony of city noises–auto traffic, low-flying planes, construction equipment, etc.–to get a fix. But based on my recent experience at Theater Too, the small but surprisingly effective basement space of Theatre Three in the…
