The surprisingly strong, sensitively handled feminist themes that run through the films of Chinese director Zhang Yimou have earned him praise around the world and vilification at home. In Ju Dou, a Double Indemnity-style drama set during the 1920s, he told the story of a peasant girl who dared to…
Before Stanley and Blanche and George and Martha, there was Julie and Jean. The leads in Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s gripping psychodrama Miss Julie set the pattern for modern stage couples who take turns ripping great bloody chunks from each other’s psyches. The play is considered a seminal work not…
There are many ways to get nookie at a drive-in, and some of them are legal. But the best way to execute the art of autoerotic suggestion is to pay good money for a flick that has proven to be so irresistible to women that sometimes just the title alone…
There is a moment in the controversial new film, Georgia, which will pretty much decide what you think of the movie and its star, the ever courageous, enigmatic Jennifer Jason Leigh. Actually, there are nine of them. Legendary “actor’s director” Ulu Grosbard (The Subject Was Roses, Straight Time) lets the…
Let’s apply a little Queer Theory to the Harry Hunsacker plays. Before beginning this instructive exercise, however, it’s necessary to explain to the benighted what the Harry Hunsacker plays are. Harry is the bumbling, narcissistic hero of a series of stage whodunits performed at the Pegasus Theater in Deep Ellum…
When critics talk about the great actors of American cinema, their opinions are often based on not upsetting the critical status quo–De Niro is a chameleon, Pacino a sizzling stick of dynamite, yadda yadda yadda. Forget what you’ve been told–compared to Sean Penn, De Niro is an anemic bore who’s…
For a few minutes at the beginning of Mr. Holland’s Opus, it might occur to you that if George Bailey, the Joblike hero played by Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, were a teacher rather than an S&L owner, this film might have been moot. Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfuss)…
thursday january 18 KNON Benefit: If you haven’t checked out the western swing stylings of Cowboys and Indians, investigate the Dallas Observer Scene, Heard compilation of local artists (next time, we won’t ask so nicely). You’ll find a jaunty little ditty about a happy fat boy called “Roly Poly.” It’s…
The first recorded theatrical performance, according to anthropologists studying Paleolithic cave paintings in Lascaux, France, was an audience-participation comedy. Several Cro Magnon hunters reenacted how Og, the tribal fool, was run through the kidney by a woolly rhinoceros during a particularly raucous foraging party. Meanwhile, the audience encouraged the players…
Am I the only person on the planet who’s watched all four Body Chemistry movies, including the one where Morton Downey Jr. has sex while making animal noises? Naw, let’s assume there’s two of us–me, and a paraplegic channel surfer in Boise. You guys can call him if any of…
Jimmy Fowler In alphabetical order: Chicken Hawk. One of the much-lamented Major Theatre’s last screenings was this controversial documentary about NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy Love Association. A must-see for anyone who believes he or she understands the boundaries of contemporary American morality. Dead Man Walking. Released selectively in…
I enjoy movies. You might be surprised how often I have to prove the truth of that simple declarative statement. “Critics are too…critical,” people often gripe. “We go to the movies for escapism, not for art. You never like anything.” Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Oh, most…
thursday january 11 Caroline Aiken: There are musical legends that you see on MTV and Grammy Awards broadcasts, and then there are musical legends you have to be turned on to by friends. Veteran singer-songwriter-instrumentalist Caroline Aiken falls into the latter category. She has performed her brand of smooth, supple,…
If you’re watchin’ a movie and you see a guy droolin’ over a porno magazine, you already know the guy’s complete character description, right? He’s a serial killer who hates beautiful women. Or if you see a guy hangin’ out at a topless bar in a movie, he’s automatically a…
Is the theater really dead? Not in Big D. In fact, a quickie look at area productions in the past year shows that theater in the Metroplex is a surprisingly lively, diverse, and resilient form of entertainment. Consider the options a curious (but not impecunious) boulevardier had to choose from…
Textile art is not new. It’s ancient Turkish rugs handwoven by two old ladies in Hereke, or Flemish tapestries keeping drafts out of the castle while simultaneously recalling the Battle of Hastings. It’s also early Americana: a wedding ring bedspread passed down through generations. It is usually women’s work, functional…
thursday january 4 10th Annual Southwest Boat and Tackle Show: The press material for the 10th Annual Southwest Boat and Tackle Show is rife with references to “the outdoorsman” and “serving the needs of the outdoorsman.” If, in the words of Fran Leibovitz, you believe The Great Outdoors is what…
Like a remorseless killer in a grade-Z slasher flick, The Fantasticks keeps coming back. You can strafe it, bomb it, drive it over the edge of a cliff, but it will not die. Since its May 1960 opening, this small, saccharine musical has run through 10,000 off-Broadway performances, and is…
thursday december 28 Earthly Pleasures: By this time of year, our ears bleed spontaneously each time we hear a “fa-la-la-la-la,” so it’s easy to forget that the Christmas classics weren’t exactly fresh when December rolled around. It’s time for a new set of hard-candy favorites–or, in this case, a set…
Alan Paton’s classic 1948 novel Cry, The Beloved Country managed to be both political and literary in a century of world literature that often tried to achieve greatness through its politics alone. The French had their existentialists, the Germans their realists, but South Africa had scarcely registered as more than…
In an age when the British Royal Family is more of a sick joke than it is a necessary monarchical body, it would seem to follow that many of Shakespeare’s regal tragedies (Henry IV, Richard II, etc.) become noteworthy for their historical significance even as they lose their obvious relevance…
If playwrights and producers would only subscribe to the “Journal of the American Medical Association,” they wouldn’t have to waste so much time worrying about the nature of laughter and what generates it. As the journal points out, laughter is merely a matter of the levator labbi superioris muscle lifting…
