What is it with Texas actresses and product endorsements gone wrong? First Brenda Vaccaro rasped about the absorbent properties of tampons, then Sandy Duncan chirped about the healthy, wholesome taste of Wheat Thins in TV ads that have hung like albatrosses around their necks ever since. Vaccaro couldn’t get arrested…
When I walked out of a screening of Dead Man Walking last January, I didn’t quite know what to think. Here was a movie written and directed by Tim Robbins, and starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn–three of the most unabashed liberals Hollywood has to offer–that did not allow easy…
The buzz on Heaven’s Prisoners, the screen adaptation of James Lee Burke’s novel, has been so miserable for such a long time that its release date has been changed more than Hillary Clinton’s hair style. (Not surprisingly, it’s been sitting on the shelf since roughly the Bush Administration.) I tend…
thursday may 9 And the Light Shineth in Darkness: Texas-based painter Calvin Davis is up-front about the agenda behind his series of gorgeously detailed paintings. Exhibited as And the Light Shineth in Darkness, the pictures are designed so “people will come away from it with a greater desire to seek…
Today’s lesson is on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. No matter how many times I’ve talked about this flick before, you guys still expect me to take time out from serious drive-in reviewing to go rehash all the Saw trivia just because you missed it the first time. So now I’m…
Short of dropping your pants, there’s no better way of exposing yourself than by writing a work of fiction. A novel or a play is just an author’s way of lifting the lid on the bait box of his or her brain to reveal the writhing, wriggling worms within. Open…
In 1975, Ellen Burstyn–who’d won the Academy Award for best actress the previous year–caused a stir when she publicly decried the lack of good female roles in movies, and encouraged her sisters in cinema to boycott the Oscars by refusing to nominate, vote for, or participate in the actress and…
Although they happen almost 60 years apart, a pair of funerals climax writer-director Ken Loach’s mournful Land and Freedom. The film opens with the death of one of these individuals: An English gentleman in his ’80s is found slumped on his couch by paramedics. We discover as his granddaughter discovers,…
thursday may 2 26th Annual Big D Charity Horse Show: There are those who bond with horses faster than Elizabeth Taylor could drop a violet tear in National Velvet. But you needn’t have much interpersonal equestrian experience to enjoy the 26th Annual Big D Charity Horse Show, which features four…
The scariest thing you’ll ever find in a flick is not a goo-faced, bug-eyed monster and it’s not Freddy Krueger or Jason or Leatherface and it’s not a bunch of skinheads with razor blades. The scariest thing you’ll find in a movie is the Psycho Hag. The Psycho Hag is…
Flinty-eyed realists–men and women to whom cant is a four-letter word–will tell you Broadway musicals are generally limp, lachrymose affairs long on surface sentiment and short on subtlety. And, of course, they will be right. Take Carnival, which opened at the Lyric Stage in Irving 35 years to the day…
Bob Schutze’s foray into the art business was almost grounded shortly after it got off the ground. In 1988, Schutze’s private gallery, Beaux Arts, which specializes in antique prints, was just 6 months old. That’s when he received a call from the owner of an Austin gallery who asked him…
Since his death in 1990, the late British author Roald Dahl has only strengthened his relationship with international cinema. Dahl, perhaps most famous in America as the husband who nursed Patricia Neal through crippling strokes and promptly left her, wrote about the world of adults with the same acrid wit…
Here’s news that could presage a disturbing trend at the movies: Two films opening in Dallas within days of each other both deal with nebbish murderers whose decisions to poison family members, friends, and enemies alike form the basis of comedy. But The Last Supper is merely a peculiarly unfunny…
thursday april 25 C.J. Crit and Literature on Film: The Writer’s Garret and the McKinney Avenue Contemporary join forces for one hot, cheap night of entertainment at the MAC. First up is poet-songstress-monologist C.J. Crit, who performs surgery on sex roles and other social absurdities with a finely honed spray…
Mardis Note: The 26th Annual USA Film Festival runs Thursday, April 18 through Thursday, April 25. All screenings are at the AMC Glen Lakes Theatre, 9450 North Central Expressway at Walnut Hill Lane. All tickets, available exclusively through Ticketmaster, are $6.50, except for opening-night tickets to The Grass Harp, which…
There is fact, and there is cinema. If the two happen to meet, you’d damned sure better guarantee the filmmaker understands the emotional essence of the story. That way, the documented events will be portrayed with an effective urgency. Stonewall purports to take the events of June 1969 and personalize…
Coffee houses have made a comeback. Could Jean-Paul Sartre be far behind? The Nobel prize-winning author, if not directly responsible for the reflowering of Left Bank cafes in postwar Paris, probably provided their paint-smeared patrons with more conversational grist than any other writer. His varied contributions to philosophy’s big “E”–existentialism–have…
Film history is strewn with the corpses of underappreciated artists and overappreciated craftsmen. This is not a point over which to become sanguine; rather, it is a simple fact of cinematic life, predictable as the tides. What is less predictable, however, is which directors will fall into which category–and when…
Before the USA Film Festival’s arrival last year–its Silver Anniversary–the pre-festival buzz was a mix of hype, anticipation, and dread. Its young, newly anointed artistic director, Alonso Duralde, had held the post for only four months, didn’t have a shred of experience, and was forced to start from scratch in…
This year, the USA Film Festival introduces a new series called “Cinema on Film” that peeks at the glistening guts of filmmaking as the medium turns 100. But unfortunately, ticket buyers can’t savor the two best documentaries in this series–profiles that scrape away the paunchy, narcissistic hide of two filmmakers…
Nightjohn, the new film by acclaimed director Charles Burnett, recounts the mythical journeys of an escaped slave named John (Carl Lumbly) who returns to bondage after having learned to read. With his intellect freed by literacy, he undertakes a mission–to liberate others from the bondage of ignorance. He envisions that…
