Here’s a family movie for the 21st century. Forget cuddly animal adventures and commercial toy spin-offs. Live the daily reality of the thousands of kids who have just gotten divorced. If your parents’ match wasn’t “made in heaven,” you often find yourself going through the same hell they’re experiencing when…
Living in East Dallas, the plight of the historical structure is of great interest to me. I see these beautiful homes—or perhaps I should say they were once beautiful—slated for a coldcock by a new development company’s wrecking ball, and I get choked up. Then I come to work and…
This is amazing to me: According to the Bill Gaither Homecoming press release, Pollstar declared Gaither’s 2004 gospel tour outsold concerts by Rod Stewart, Elton John and Fleetwood Mac. Seriously? OK, now Rod Stewart we could see (we could go the rest of our lives never hearing “Maggie May” again)…
“Western swing ain’t dead, it’s Asleep at the Wheel.” So goes the slogan for big Ray Benson’s beloved ensemble, the band that’s kept Bob Wills alive for longer than he’s been dead while touring everywhere from Texas to Timbuktu. Most western swing bands only sport twin fiddles, but this Friday…
Some things were clearly meant to be played out in an opera, like the story of starcross’d lovers or anything involving Vikings. Less operatic, perhaps, would be the story of a woman locked in the same room for 19 years. Tragic, yes, but what of the glorious tradition of operatic…
Nowhere Man (Image Entertainment) There’s good reason why you’ve never heard of this UPN show from the mid-’90s, which lasted 25 episodes before getting shuttled off to, well, nowhere. It’s a convoluted mind-fuck that owes its existence as much to The Prisoner as The Fugitive, and if you missed one…
With a Blade TV show in the works from Spike TV and powder-faced My Chemical Romance fans carrying the goth torch at Hot Topic, this would seem the perfect time to resurrect the Castlevania franchise. Castlevania debuted 20 years ago on the Nintendo Entertainment System and was an instant classic,…
Ab-Normal Beauty (Tartan) Art of the Devil (Tokyo Shock) Bram Stoker’s Dracula/Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Sony) Caged Heat (Buena Vista) Dark Water (Buena Vista) Diary of a Mad Black Woman: The Play (Lions Gate) Empire of the Wolves (Sony) 15 Things You’re Not Supposed to See (Xtreme) Happy Here and Now…
Amid Hollywood’s zillion-dollar explosions and computer-enhanced trickery, plenty of quieter, better films sneaked into theaters virtually unnoticed this year. Following are our reviewers’ favorite overlooked movies of 2005. Some of them never made it to local screens, but many have since made it to the video store: Balzac and the…
Kids don’t want to learn a damn thing unless they think they aren’t learning. Michelle Pfeiffer understood that when she brought her karate skills and Bob Dylan records to Dangerous Minds—how else did you expect her vatos locos to get all weepy and respectful about poetry? Similarly, the Slice of…
If you time your vacation days correctly, you’ll probably be able to make your New Year’s Eve weekend into a four-day weekend. You’ve probably got a random personal day stocked up there somewhere, right? And besides, it’s not like your incompetent, unappreciative sloth of a boss would even know you…
It’s hard to understand how buying meat and fish at Central Market is upscale, cultured and classy while bagging it yourself is classified as low-class and white trash. The camouflage culture seems to be as easy a target as a fish in a barrel for mockery, but in truth, many…
We’re sick of your attitude. Every week, you expect someone else to entertain you—to dance, sing, dunk a basketball, whatever-and that’s selfish. Put forth some effort, and be an entertainer instead of an entertainee, slacker! Try the Thursday night acoustic jam session at Sons of Hermann Hall, where you can…
Those who will sit around wondering whether Munich is the work of an anti-Israeli or just a self-hating Jew–which is to say, Steven Spielberg, who has been branded both by Israeli officials and newspaper columnists in recent weeks–give the movie and its maker far too much credit. The story of…
The notion that Wolf Creek is opening nationwide on Christmas Day brings to mind the scene from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, in which a young boy opens up his holiday gift and finds a severed head. The movie is about as diametrically opposed to the concept of “goodwill…
In 1968 it was a movie. In 2001 it became a musical. Now it’s a movie again? Yep, and there’s actually pretty good reason to return The Producers to the screen. The original film, though intermittently inspired, was slow and often boring, and its homophobic, misogynistic humor no longer plays…
The Jerry Lewis chromosome is running amok again inside Jim Carrey, and if you don’t feel like getting clubbed half to death with a slapstick, stay away from Fun With Dick and Jane. On the other hand, if Carrey’s tireless antics–slithering onto nightclub tables, speaking in tongues and all manner…
We popcorn-chomping hitchhikers never know who will pick us up on the roadside. In Flirting With Disaster, it was a neurotic Manhattan adoptee on a nationwide search for his biological parents. The desert-parched heroines of Thelma & Louise brought us along as they raised hell en route to their doom…
For your Heath Ledger holiday-movie options, you have a) a cowboy in love with another man and b) history’s most infamous womanizer. Since the name Casanova is synonymous with an unquenchable thirst for straight sex with women (or at least boasting about it), the role might seem to be a…
The gifted Irish novelist and filmmaker Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Michael Collins) says that his overriding concern is “how individuals work with what they’ve been given.” Case in point: Jordan’s new feature, Breakfast on Pluto. This bittersweet, gender-bending drama takes a page from Candide–its beleaguered hero, too, happily perseveres…
The studied British theatricality and sharp wit of Mrs. Henderson Presents are likely to make it a favorite among nostalgiaphiles, theater buffs and the tea-and-crumpets set. Sailing along on the strength of another showy performance by Judi Dench, Stephen Frears’ period frolic is this year’s Being Julia, adorned with the…
It’s impossible to talk about The Ringer, a comedy about someone pretending to be retarded in order to rig the Special Olympics, without mentioning that episode of South Park in which Cartman does the same thing. The Ringer was already in production when that episode was made and has taken…
