Perhaps the most unlikely thing to capture on film is the creative process–the spinning of gears, the tripping of wires, the breaking of hearts and the snapping of tempers that go into the making of art. Movies about writers and painters and musicians seldom collapse the barrier between inspiration and…
Jonathan Demme’s gutsy The Manchurian Candidate, which dares to rear its head just as the Democratic National Convention convenes in Boston, is the anti-Bush administration movie for those who refuse to see Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 or Robert Greenwald’s Outfoxed because, well, they just ain’t Right. It’s less a remake…
You may have already heard the stories about A Home at the End of the World. In what many viewers have deemed a big loss, Colin Farrell’s penis no longer appears in the film. The official line is that test audiences found it too distracting, though that seems unlikely, given…
Winner of the Dramatic Audience Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Maria Full of Grace is an uncomfortably realistic look at a 17-year-old Colombian woman who, desperate for a job, agrees to swallow capsules of heroin and transport them to New York. Although a work of fiction, the film…
Many is the promising playwright who cuts his teeth on a one-act play or at least attempts one during those fondly remembered starvation years. Likely, some have three or four one-acts or short plays sitting around in some dusty trunk waiting to be brushed off after the author gets discovered…
Ellsworth Kelly in Dallas This show should be called “Dallas Collects Ellsworth Kelly.” It would be more honest, not to mention more intriguing. This dainty collection of top-quality painting and sculpture by the mid-20th-century artist does little service to the importance of Kelly. Kelly’s brightly colored and experimentally shaped opaque…
Noises Off Airborne sardines are a pretty good reason to see just about anything, and Noises Off at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre is no exception. In addition to multitudes of flying fish, audiences can expect an attractive young actress in lingerie for much of the play, snappy dialogue and attempted murder…
Check out this teapot. It looks like any other: short, stout. Here is its handle. Here is its spout. But what you can’t see is the story of this vessel. This teapot, made of pewter and wood in the mid-1700s in either England or Boston, Massachusetts, was owned by an…
Thursday, July 29 Who needs egotistical movie critics when you have the Internet Movie Database where anyone can be a critic? We doubt you could find a comment like this anywhere else: “This movie left me feeling uncleansed and unshaved. I immediately took a shower. If you want to see…
May these last few weeks of summer be as hot, hot, hot as your new boyfriend, that Renaissance man you’ve always craved but never, until now, found. He’s the one for you, all right. He cooks, cleans, writes poetry, paints pictures, gardens, sews, bends rebar in his bare hands and…
8/3 Residents of Lower Greenville may already know that there is a line of cottonwood trees coursing through their neighborhood that leads directly to a series of underground springs, which gurgle up through the earth during excessive rains. I, however, a New York transplant who lives in an apartment in…
7/31 Remember when volleyball was relevant in America? Television wore fluorescent sunglasses in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when all things coastal ruled the airwaves as Beverly Hills 90210 and Baywatch whored the wonders of beach entertainment to millions and even Saved by the Bell had an episode in…
7/30 There’s an almost irresistible urge to get snide about Late Nights at the Dallas Museum of Art ending at midnight on a Friday, but the event planned for this week is cool enough to do without the more-subversive-than-thou song and dance. Starting at 6 p.m., the DMA is hosting…
7/29 Perhaps you know the voice. It has a lived-in weariness to it, nasal and intelligent. Or maybe you know her performance attire: always a business suit and loosened shirt and tie. Then there’s her stand-up routine: dry, skewering, extemporaneous. Surely, you’ve seen this act or heard of it or…
Near the beginning of The Corporation, a damning documentary designed to expose everything that is irresponsible, immoral, inhumane and lethal about corporations, the narrator posits the film’s thesis: “We present the corporation as a paradox,” she says, “an institution that creates great wealth but causes enormous and often hidden harm.”…
It would be nice to declare, “Fans of Mike Hodges, rejoice!” or some such thing at the arrival of the veteran director’s latest film; alas, not this time. I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead shares elements with some of Hodges’ previous work, including a familial revenge theme (from his original Get…
The two summer shows at the Meadows Museum, The Triumph of French Painting and 20th Century Texas and Spanish Prints, provide the perfect excuse to visit the question: What gives on the Hilltop? When last we visited the Meadows’ edifice on Bishop Avenue, things were looking kind of grim. For…
Festival of Independent Theatres Marathon play-going, walks on the beach and more community theater buffs than you can shake a stick at can mean only one thing, and it’s not a Christopher Guest film. It’s the Festival of Independent Theatres at the Bath House Cultural Center. Showcasing local talent in…
Ellsworth Kelly in Dallas This show should be called “Dallas Collects Ellsworth Kelly.” It would be more honest, not to mention more intriguing. This dainty collection of top-quality painting and sculpture by the mid-20th-century artist does little service to the importance of Kelly. Kelly’s brightly colored and experimentally shaped opaque…
Adrienne ran her soft hands across Roland’s bulging chest. In her seven years as a lonely, stranded homemaker in Laredo, she had never felt a body as tremendous as his, while he had not known the touch of true love since his high school sweetheart fell victim to a yearlong…
Thursday, July 22 We’re too lazy to stop at the grocery store and buy a burrito we can microwave for 90 seconds. So we’re probably not the target audience for Benihana’s Roll Your Own Sushi Dinner. Or maybe we are. Perhaps it’s a nefarious plan: Invite the well-intentioned to a…
Welcome to the land of rusty poles and panels, hastily assembled to dangle you hundreds of feet in the air. Only careful maneuvering will keep you from trampling in mud, discarded Frito pies and puddles of vomit. A wide boulevard is filled with overheated teenagers exercising their groping skills while…
