When was the last time you saw Paul Giamatti? And when the film ended, did you realize how much you would miss him? It was just last year that Giamatti played the hilariously beleaguered Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, a role that he occupied with slumped, head-hanging perfection. Yet as…
Since its initial publication in 1986, myriad filmmakers have attempted in vain to film Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ comic book Watchmen, in which costumed superheroes have been outlawed and are being summarily exiled and executed by an unknown baddie. At the moment, Darren Aronofsky (Pi) is set to direct…
Writer-director Charles Shyer’s Alfie is less a remake of the 1966 film that made Michael Caine a star than it is a retooling that softens the horrific blows struck by the original; it’s sweeter, too, cotton candy spun from decades-old arsenic. The original, written by Bill Naughton (who also penned…
The Ramones have been commodified (shilling Bud Light with “Blitzkrieg Bop”), deified, even gentrified (on the soundtrack to The Royal Tenenbaums, where “Judy Is a Punk” thrashes for dear life alongside Vince Guaraldi), but seldom have they been so thoroughly analyzed. There have been myriad boxed sets and re-releases–Rhino seems…
Those familiar with the films of David Gordon Green (George Washington, All the Real Girls) likely have one big question about his latest feature, Undertow: Is there more of a story this time? The answer is…sort of. Green, who favors meditative, meandering portraits, and is often compared to Terrence Malick…
Throughout p.s. , a thoughtful, self-possessed film from director Dylan Kidd (Roger Dodger), there is a sense of the disaster it could have been. A 39-year-old woman, divorced and emotionally shuttered, meets an adoring, adorable young man. The boy (compared to her, he’s a child) is a replica of her…
Tom Stoppard is a tough sell to the typical theatergoer. And by typical I mean a real die-hard fan of live performance who pays to see several plays a year. Most people don’t go to the theater. Ever. Just like most people don’t eat fried calf brains or read Doris…
Blasted Within four years, British playwright Sarah Kane churned out a steady raft of confrontational plays, as if she knew she would die at 28 (at the very end, she did know–she committed suicide). Not everyone agreed she deserved a stage: London’s Daily Mail called Blasted, her violent first salvo,…
Barber/Kincaid/Pomara Scott Barber, Ted Kincaid and John Pomara are three artists who’ve harnessed technology to the betterment of their work. Using the computer to mediate and transform photography, they make colorful flat images that make you rethink painting and its surfaces in the present. Using cancerous cells as subject matter,…
No longer does the comic-book reader have to apologize for his (or her!) fondness for tales starring caped crusaders; no longer must we skulk into comics shops like trench-coat pervs trolling for porn in adult book shops. The medium’s all grown up now and worth a fortune, especially to movie…
Thursday, November 4 When we think “British music,” we generally think of Sex Pistols, the Clash, Joy Division, David Bowie, Radiohead and even Coldplay. It’s never an instantaneous connection to Andrew Lloyd Webber or Gilbert and Sullivan, but that doesn’t negate their influence or importance. The Symphonic Pops Consortium, composed…
He’s a franchise now–writer of two books, star of a series of DVDs, seller of a wireless Texas hold ’em game, even the face (literally) of a set of poker chips offered for a $200 buy-in and now, along with Tobey Maguire, on the board of advisers of EdgeTV, the…
11/4 Within the sphere of lofty cultural movements, there is the smaller, but no less lofty, category of culture that moves. Like mobile lending libraries that visit library-less villages, Artrain USA thrives on the idea of accessibility. It’s already pulled into many places where art usually does not arrive: LeRoy,…
11/6 Saturday’s Ride the Rim, a back roads mountain bike tour, at Glen Rose’s Fossil Rim reminds us of a race we once took part in at Fossil Rim when we were young. It started like any other school field trip as we packed into a yellow school bus, but…
11/5 Pop artist Paul Frank was a lot cooler before he opened a boutique in Dallas. You used to have to go to New York City, Chicago or Tokyo to get one of those trendy T-shirts with the funky monkey emblazoned across the front. Since the store opened in the…
Cirque du Soleil visits Varekai 11/4 Two years ago on Bravo’s reality series The Fire Within, Cirque du Soleil selected and trained 50-plus artists and musicians from 13 countries for the group’s most recent creation. Varekai–“wherever” in gypsy speak–captures the nomadic spirit of kindred tribes with enchanting costumes, elegant staging…
Ray, director Taylor Hackford’s 15-years-in-the-making biography of Ray Charles, begins as you might hope: with 1959’s “What’d I Say (Part 1)” pulsing on the soundtrack, the organ’s low moans building toward that familiar, funky frenzy. It almost serves as an early climax, a bracing thrill served up before a word…
Even before the movie begins, as the New Line logo is still coalescing on a dark screen, a man speaks on the soundtrack. He’s talking about reincarnation and about what he would do if his wife, named Anna, were to die and return as a bird insisting it was indeed…
The story goes that when Oscar Wilde traveled to America in 1881, he was asked by a customs agent if he had anything to declare. “Only my genius,” he replied. The Irish-born poet, novelist and playwright was the Victorian era’s most quotable aesthete, famously spouting barbed aphorisms even to his…
New York City is the materialization of order out of chaos. Boisterous crowds of pedestrian and vehicular traffic elegantly course through its veins on a minute-by-minute basis. Its manmade mountains, what Walt Whitman called “solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars,” mark the upward thrust of an endless hustle and…
Grateful: The Songs of John Bucchino In Theatre Three’s new cabaret act, five of the company’s most seasoned actors tromp onstage in a merry file to sing “That Smile,” the first in their hour-long lineup of Bucchino’s tender, wistful songs. Bucchino’s talent is for saying something indelible about life by…
Barber/Kincaid/Pomara Scott Barber, Ted Kincaid and John Pomara are three artists who’ve harnessed technology to the betterment of their work. Using the computer to mediate and transform photography, they make colorful flat images that make you rethink painting and its surfaces in the present. Using cancerous cells as subject matter,…
