Serenity (Universal) Joss Whedon’s film version of his TV series Firefly came and went like a lightning bug in October; the predicted phenom stuck around the multiplex just long enough to lose millions. But like Firefly, which sold enough boxed sets to warrant a movie, Serenity’s bound to do well…
The myth of the Wild West has mutated over the past half-century. Where once we thrilled to the wholesome exploits of the Lone Ranger, now we wallow in the mesmerizing depravity of HBO’s Deadwood. Film geeks can argue about when it started to change, but by 1992’s Unforgiven, pop culture…
The Amazing Race: The Seventh Season (Paramount) Battlestar Galactica: Season 2.0 (Universal) The Biggest Loser: The Workout (Lions Gate) Bob the Butler (First Independent) Cry_Wolf (MCA) ER: The Complete Fourth Season (Warner Bros.) The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Sony) Frankie & Johnny Are Married (MCA) The Great Raid (Miramax) Ice…
Sin City: Recut, Extended, Unrated (Buena Vista) Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s near frame-for-frame adaptation of Miller’s bone-crunching comics finally gets a rewarding DVD treatment, following a shamefully sparse edition earlier this year. The theatrical cut boasts two commentary tracks (with Quentin Tarantino and Bruce Willis, among others), but there…
No wonder Iraq is a mess. If the battlefield in America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier is an accurate picture of what it’s like in the Middle East, we should cut and run ASAP. The United States Army’s officially licensed shooter puts you smack in the middle of the action…
Bad News Bears (2005) (Paramount) The Beautiful Country (Sony) Death Race 2000: Special Edition (Buena Vista) F.I.S.T. (Columbia/Tristar) Gallipoli: Special Edition (Paramount) Gilmore Girls: The Complete Fifth Season (Warner Bros.) The Island (Universal) Kiss: Rock the Nation Live! (Image) The Last Day (Strand) Marvin Gaye: Behind the Legend (Red Dist.)…
For whatever reason, the modernized, comic redo of King Kong released exactly 29 years ago has become less the “pop classic” that Pauline Kael insisted it was at the time than a dimly remembered punch line. It barely registers with modern-day moviegoers, who recall it as a campy, eco-aware update…
It’s not hard to predict how Ang Lee’s controversial Brokeback Mountain will play in John Wayne country. This romantic tragedy about a pair of lean, wind-burned cowpokes who secretly live to poke each other flies in the face of everything that most people in Casper or Riverton or Laramie think…
One cannot, in good conscience, describe the countless strands of plot and strains of characters skittering through The Family Stone without knowing that description merits at least a snicker…OK, all right, bellowing guffaws. The movie’s too overstuffed by half with pointless people and plot lines that dangle like warning signs,…
“Agony and beauty for us live side by side,” laments Mameha (Michelle Yeoh), the most successful geisha in Gion. You’ll know how she feels: Memoirs of a Geisha, as directed by Chicago’s Rob Marshall, is beautiful to look at, but when it comes to the dialogue and storytelling, agony just…
Artists Among Us Hidden away on the third floor of the shed-like Women’s Museum at Fair Park, this show is a terse exposé of talent in the metroplex. The work seems a hodgepodge; shared genitalia does not mean shared creative disposition. Luckily diversity wins out. Homes and toupees won’t be…
Children of Eden Adam (James Wesley) and Eve (Kia Dawn Fulton) dance around the garden with God (Keith Ferguson) and lots of little children dressed as animals. The Stephen Schwartz musical comes nowhere close to the composer’s hits, Wicked and Godspell. It’s really more church youth pageant than professional theater…
In the beginning, Children of Eden looks like it might have a prayer. What else would you expect from a show that stars God? Adam, Eve and their kids make an appearance. Noah and his bunch come with herds of animals played by adorable young’uns with paper plates and Dixie…
Cinderella Man (Universal) Back in the Great Depression, boxing matches only cost a nickel and the ring was uphill both ways. That’s the central message of this well-made if sappy bio of 1930s boxer Jim Braddock. Ron Howard’s direction and a stellar cast save the film from its one-dimensional characters…
In less than a decade, first-person shooters like Doom and Halo have grown from a niche genre to a cottage industry. Whether it’s our love for their immersiveness, competition, or just old-fashioned bloodlust, the popularity of FPS games shows no sign of waning. They’ve become so much of a draw,…
Dirty Love (First Look) Dragonball Movie Boxed Set (Funimation) Everybody Loves Raymond: The Complete Fifth Season (Warner Bros.) Fun With Dick and Jane (1977) (Columbia/Tristar) The Future of Food (Cinema Libre) Gilbert Gottfried: Dirty Jokes (Image) God Save the Queen: Punk Rock Anthology (Music Video Dist.) Hellbound (Warner Bros.) He-Man…
Warner Bros. put $50 million into Syriana and allowed writer-director Stephen Gaghan as much time and travel as necessary to research and write his story. They’d be well advised to pony up a few extra bucks to provide filmgoers with a flow chart that connects the scattered dots that make…
If you’re a fan of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, all you need to know is this: Disney has done right by The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It’s impossible to imagine it done much better, in fact. If you’re not a fan, perhaps you’re among…
Artists Among Us Hidden away on the third floor of the shed-like Women’s Museum at Fair Park, this show is a terse exposé of talent in the metroplex. The work seems a hodgepodge; shared genitalia does not mean shared creative disposition. Luckily diversity wins out. Homes and toupees won’t be…
A Christmas Carol Dallas Theater Center outdoes every previous production of its annual classic with a new musical adaptation by Richard Hellesen and David de Berry. Actor Robin Chadwick is the quintessential Scrooge, made all the more interesting by his well-tempered transition from miserly old grump into charity-minded hero. A…
Christmas may come but once a year, but Clive and Belinda hope to do so several times–and under the tree, no less–in Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s bitter farce, Season’s Greetings. In the sparkly, punch-drunk production on view at Collin County Community College’s Quad C Theatre, these two characters–dishy single novelist Clive…
Youth becomes Mark Searcy and Brian Gibb, co-founders of Art Prostitute, a slick, relatively new art zine that features both up-and-comers and established artists. Just by looking at the two fashionably subversive and nonconforming chaps, you wouldn’t know they’d elbowed their way into critical acclaim among artists from the East…
