Screenwriter Steven DeSouza, who wrote the scripts for such action opuses as Commando and the Die Hard pictures, summarizes the lasting appeal of blade weapons in movies with the succinctness of a letter opener to the throat. "Not many people have been shot or blown up," he says, "so when...
There's a modern cliche that it takes only three or four phone calls to get in touch with anyone in the world. But trying to contact action-film mogul Joel Silver for comment on Jack Crain, the Weatherford knifemaker whose career in action movies he singlehandedly created, repudiates it handily. The...
Lifestyles of the rich and Republican Governor-elect George W. may still be pinching himself, but wife Laura Bush has the makings of a Marie Antoinette stiff upper lip. Remarking on the trials of moving her two children into the Governor's Mansion, she told the Associated Press: "I heard it was...
Lots of people donate their bodies to science. But most of them wait until after they're dead. Not Charlie Procter. For five months earlier this year, the 45-year-old petroleum engineer allowed nurses to probe and prick him dozens of times while drilling for blood; underwent several bone-density sonagram tests forcing...
Sorry to begin with an apologia, but one of the things I try not to do as a commentator is put in my two cents' worth when I don't have enough knowledge to back it up. When I venture into international affairs or international economic issues--not my native turf, to...
Death of a family After reading Ann Zimmerman's article on the Krasniqi family ["'Tell Mama why you cry,'" November 17], I was angered and saddened. Of all our variety of stories of injustice these days, this one really wrenched my heart. After reading Ms. Zimmerman's article carefully and drawing on...
News craps out At its best, a newspaper editorial page serves as a beacon for a community. Newspaper editorial writers have the opportunity to cut through rhetoric and sloppy thinking--to stake out a clear position on a difficult or complex issue, and make persuasive arguments to support it. It is...
Before you can say "all-you-can-eat platter," we will have the biggest stock-car racing complex--as much as 1,000 acres and up to 250,000 seats--sitting in that undeveloped Tarrant County sprawl near Alliance Airport. At least, that's where the track should be if North Carolina racing titan Bruton Smith does what makes...
"What is a battery?" Rip asks his apprentice, Stan. "Two cells placed in a container, one dominant and one recessive," Stan answers in a flat and dutiful tone, as if he were studying to appear on the TV quiz show Jeopardy. This is the definition that Rip, the repair man...
Dazed and bemused One night last summer, an audience of 40 or so crowded into the back of the Angry Dog in Deep Ellum, craning to hear the whispery voice of the striking young girl singing by the pool table. Surrounded by musicians who more closely resembled a band of...
With his guitar dangling from his shoulders, Andy Martin approaches the edge of the Galaxy Club stage and begins launching projectiles into the crowd--vibrators, actually, ones that work. And the crowd greets the shower of party favors with expected glee: found among the mass fashion of hard-core apparel are several...
In their book Merry Christmas, Baby, Dave Marsh and Steve Propes explained the appeal of Christmas music this way: with the diversity of musicians recording Christmas standards over the decades--from Bing Crosby to the Ramones, from Bob Wills to Madonna, from Darlene Love to Run-DMC--"every conceivable emotion found its way...
As the year draws to a close, dozens of unlistened-to demos and CDs sent by local bands over the past months choke the file cabinets. Some are unpolished gems of genius; more often, they're the frightening proof that the gene pool's starting to mix a little too closely. The most...
We've got a Green Room, we've got a Blue Mesa. Of course we're curious. Why Yellow? "It's the word, the color--I don't know, it just felt right," says Yellow's chef-owner Avner Samuel. In other words, the only reason is why not? A refreshing reason--it opens your expectations. When every business...
Unlike many large, university-heavy urban areas, Dallas-Fort Worth has never hosted an event celebrating the work of young film students. And that's a shame, because once you wade through the usual undergraduate film program combo platter of angst, dreck, technical incompetence, and brain-numbing cliches (I'm-sad-because-I-just-killed-my-girlfriend movies, all-this-nudity-proves-I'm-a-brave-artist movies, I-just-saw-Reservoir Dogs-and-want-to-have-fun-with-blanks-and-squibs...
Adapted from Michael Crichton's bestseller about sexual harassment and office intrigue in a high-tech Seattle computer company, Disclosure is a lavishly photographed, smartly acted, superbly directed piece of hooey. Director Barry Levinson, who gave us such upper-middlebrow entertainments as Bugsy and Rainman, and screenwriter Paul Attanasio, whose work for Quiz...
Somewhere between Joan Rivers' 1978 bad-taste classic Rabbit Test and the $200 million-plus success of Mrs. Doubtfire teeters Junior, a film whose thudding lack of inventiveness marks the first time I've never laughed once at an Ivan Reitman film. Considering the track record of the major players involved, this is...
It should be no small irony to film buffs that 76-year-old filmmaker-author Ingmar Bergman, having directed and written 36 movies during his lifetime, is finally beginning to convey authentic, vital emotion in his work. His most generous feature, Fanny and Alexander (1982), about the sumptuous excesses of his grandmother's family,...
I have a question for the Lesbos. Is it possible to turn Lesbo? People talk about this all the time. They say, "Well, after that third divorce, she just went plumb lesbo on us." Or they say, "She's a lesbian, but she has a boyfriend. She's just doing it 'till...
thursday december 8 Big Fat Christmas Goose: Fort Worth's Hip Pocket Theatre serves up one of its reliable grab bags of dance, movement, music, and lighting effects, an original production which manages to yoke the Christmas tradition to American culture and still leave all that stifling mega-bucks commercialism behind. They've...
Chip's new location in the former International House of Pancakes on Lovers is bound to give Harvey Goff across the street a run for his money--the burgers are better, the French fries are better, and the atmosphere is free and easy, a little less like an outpost of the Citadel...
One exciting night at Cafe Expresso, the patrons sat politely, patiently smiling, ordering more wine and more foccacia while their dinner took as long as 45 minutes to arrive from the kitchen. At another establishment, these people might have walked out--might have lost it, might never have returned--but this is...
