It’s a great pleasure to behold a chunk of art that’s both dank and fresh at the same time, and this appraisal perfectly fits the superb Dirty Pretty Things. The latest from veteran director Stephen Frears (Gumshoe, Prick Up Your Ears, High Fidelity) immediately transports the viewer to a subjective…
For a few minutes, at least, things don’t look so bad. Watching Ben Affleck swagger around as the thuggish title character of Gigli (“Rhymes with really,” he tells us, twice) is amusing for a bit. Affleck’s eminently qualified for the role, actually–that of a low-level hood pretending to be more…
David Wolstencroft moved from London to Los Angeles in November, and not only so he could rise each morning for a game of tennis–though there is that, and that might have been good enough. He made the trip, which is thus far temporary but may well prove permanent, for the…
Lest you doubt that the 3-year-old recession lives on, consider the latest evidence for life after death: the Kimbell Art Museum’s new show, The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt. Coming some 18 months after our government declared the recession of ’01 deceased, the Kimbell’s exhibition is the gloomiest…
Squeezing Wagner’s four-opera, 17-hour Der Ring des Nibelungen down to two hours and 20 minutes leaves no room for the fire-breathing dragon. For Das Barbecü, a two-act spoof of the operas now onstage at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre, composer Scott Warrender and writer-lyricist Jim Luigs do that, no problem. But instead…
8/2 One would think that a piece about the topic at hand would all but write itself. After all, how difficult can it be to come off equally coy and informative about a local AMPRO boxing event featuring Tonya Harding? Still, we’ve got nothing. Perhaps the sheer simplicity of targeting…
8/4 It’s a dreary time of year for Dallas sports fans. The skates, sweat-mops and tact gloves have all been packed away, and we are left with the Rangers, a team doing so badly that some fans can’t help but wince upon mere mention of the name. But don’t resort…
8/5 Remember the ’80s? The decade that gave us The Empire Strikes Back, Michael Jackson, valley girls and, oh yeah, Night Court. When you sat down to watch this ubiquitous show all those years ago–and you know you did; don’t try to deny it, you little rascal–didn’t you think that…
From the lofty American vantage point, Mexico’s New Wave filmmakers have materialized like magic, the unexpected fruit of a renaissance that even many cinematically alert Yanqis hardly took the trouble to notice. Meanwhile, these new directors have fashioned a vivid style that combines, in various proportions, Latin American literary experimentation,…
We always imagine juvenile jail to be like either the orphanage scenes in Annie or like Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock. Basically, there was lots of singing and dancing. We never did get the chance to find out the truth, possibly because we were upper middle class and really boring. We…
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, B.J. Cleveland has returned. You can all rest easy now. Settle down. There was nothing to fear after all. We know that he wasn’t around for three weeks or so, his name hadn’t been printed for a while and nightmares of a possible assassination…
8/1 So often we fight others on the comparison of children to gerbils. They are not the same. Sure, they’re small, but the similarities end there. Kids have fingers, no tails, are human and don’t normally run mazes. Our last point, however, has now been blown with the arrival of…
7/31 They would crawl on their hands and knees through the desert for a taste of a Christian Louboutin mule. They’d conceivably kill their own sisters over the last pair of Prada loafers, size 38. Sometimes you’ll even see them, pale and twitchy, hanging around Payless, looking for the cheapest…
Thursday, July 31 Everybody has them. Custom ones, in fact. So different that no other person could ever match them…unless, of course, one is a psychopathic killer who removes them for lack of evidence like in Se7en. But that’s just creepy, so let’s move on. The Kleberg-Rylie Library invites artists…
Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald asserted that “there are no second acts in American lives.” But a horse named Seabiscuit and the three disparate men who shared his success would surely disagree. Based on the best-selling nonfiction book by Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit recounts the true story of an unprepossessing, knobby-kneed horse…
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over continues a fine tradition of turning third installments of film series into three-dimensional efforts; Amityville 3-D and Jaws 3-D exploited the gimmick long before Robert Rodriguez made clever use of the numeral signifying the milking to death of a franchise. But what Rodriguez lacks–say, Tony…
Everyone in his right mind loves Donald Sutherland. The spry 67-year-old boasts one of the most respectable acting résumés this side of Christopher Lee, so when he turns up in the documentary Fellini: I’m a Born Liar, he speaks with authority. Looking a bit dazed but generally enthusiastic, he waxes…
There’s magic in Northfork–both in the movie, by twin brothers Mark and Michael Polish, and in the Montana town soon to be drowned by the opening of the dam keeping the baptismal waters at bay. Northfork is a beguiling and bittersweet fantasy set in a netherworld where the living and…
Well, I almost screwed up. In fact, I came within a week of overlooking what may be the best show of the year: The McKinney Avenue Contemporary’s Baby-Boom Daydreams, an exhibition of the figurative paintings of Louisiana native Douglas Bourgeois. For this, I blame the dog days of summer. And…
For a moment in The Hollow, a toothsome Agatha Christie murder mystery now onstage at Theatre Three, it looks as if the butler did it. And what a butler. Played by the towering Chris Messersmith, this majordomo skulks around corners and looms like an ancient Lurch over his household of…
We’ve asked ourselves the question so many times: “What is the greatest thing about exotic dancers?” Is it their swanlike balance on 8-inch platform Lucite shoes? Their genius idea to transform a steel pole into a naked jungle gym? What about their uncanny ability to make one tassel go this…
Thursday, July 24 We actually like it when people from other countries think Texans all ride horses, own ranches and wear cowboy hats. It’s more intriguing than saying one lives in an apartment, drives an economy car and wears Gap khakis. But for a real glimpse at a Texas that…
