7/12 How come anything interesting that comes out of Australia fails to grab our attention for more than a year at a time? Think about it: Yahoo Serious, Paul Hogan, Silverchair and the Crocodile Hunter are a fraction of the 15-minute flashes that have used the convicts’ island as a…
7/13 On an ideal trip to the zoo, the polar bears are awake; the monkeys are more up for performing acrobatics than grooming one another; the lions are out in the open basking in the warm, but not hideously hot, sun; nobody smells too much and all petting zoo participants…
7/11 Takashi Miike. For some, simply the mention of the Japanese director’s name is enough to cause the relished and anticipatory rubbing of sweaty palms. For most, “Miike” only phonetically resembles Disney’s trademark mouse. No matter, as the filmmaker, whose conveyor belt output is matched only by each project’s schizophrenic…
7/10 Mush-brained by midweek, fellow indentured servants? Added toner to the copier one too many times? Thank gawd (or any reasonable facsimile) that you live in Dallas, where you may work like a dawg all week, but you can find real escape and cerebral stimulation somewhere, somehow, every weekend. Perfect…
Much like “hilarious Islamic comedy” or “sublime Affleck picture,” the term “terrific second sequel” isn’t bandied about too much. Name one. Took you a minute, didn’t it? Don’t be ashamed–there are probably support groups for fans of Smokey and the Bandit III. Generally, creative juices are drained by parte trois,…
ABC-TV has penciled into its 2004 schedule a series based on the 2001 film Legally Blonde, for which a pilot has been shot starring someone named Jennifer Hall in the Reese Witherspoon role of Elle Woods, the pretty-dumb-in-pink sorority girl-turned-whip-smart attorney. MGM, which owns the franchise, smartly decided to shoot…
DreamWorks’ Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas pulls into port but a week before Walt Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, the theme-park-ride-inspired, Jerry Bruckheimer-produced spectacle that bears a screenplay co-written by the very men responsible for last year’s Disney-made animated flop Treasure Planet, a…
Once in a while a film comes along that is as sound, smart, sweet and significant as can be, and Whale Rider is such a film. Fault the project on various counts if you like (I’ll try), but ultimately the tale is beyond reproach, a bane to cynics and a…
With a curtain time of 8:15 p.m., performances of Shakespeare Festival of Dallas’ current production of The Taming of the Shrew light up the outdoor Samuell-Grand Amphitheater just before the sun has dropped completely out of sight. Above the cool green lawn sloping up from the stage, purple streaks of…
We’re skeptics. Always have been; always will be. We don’t believe in UFOs manned by aliens bent on destroying the earth. We don’t believe in Bigfoot. And we don’t believe that turning our stereo up so loud it reaches the 145th decibel point can actually get us evicted, even though…
Ah, the circus. What traditional art form better captures the wonder of childhood, the mysteries of nature, the glories of human physical achievement, the… the… Oh, screw it. We won’t lie. What we remember of our one boyhood venture under the big top many, many years ago was not some…
7/4 Rest up, folks, the 2003 Trinity Fest Fourth of July celebration is going to take all the stamina you have. From an afternoon filled with music, rides, food and fun right up to the fireworks program choreographed by the pyrotechnic genius of Gruccis of New York, this promises to…
7/5 How does your garden grow? If the answer is, “What garden?” or, “Who has the time or the space?” check out the Heard Natural Science Museum’s “The Contained Gardener” class at 10 a.m. July 5. Bring a pot or jug or whatever you want to grow your posy in,…
7/3 Dallasites love ice-based entertainment at the utmost convenience. Think about it: Mall shoppers had a rink built in the middle of the Galleria; hockey nuts imported an entire team from Minnesota and this Night & Day staffer was once personally escorted from the Galleria for cross-checking an opponent. Granted,…
7/9 If you’re hanging on to the tired old cliché that the fashion industry is shallow, greedy and vain, then look no further than the good deeds of Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS to change your mind. OK, maybe fashionistas and their ilk are still narcissistic, but with more than…
7/4 Somebody should have told Adelaide the old adage: He’s not going to buy the cow if he can get the milk for free. Of course, Adelaide’s the kind of dame who wouldn’t take kindly to being compared to a heifer. Adelaide’s been engaged to gambler, hustler, good-for-nothing Nathan Detroit…
Thursday, July 3 Mmm, spitting. Nothing says America like spitting. At least, that’s what the Lakewood Library is going with today at 2 p.m. for its Watermelon Fun Day. We must admit, the name was reason enough for a mention, then when we heard about the seed-spitting contests we knew…
As the Columbia Pictures logo looms large in frame till its torch becomes the focal point, we find ourselves in what appears to be a tent full of sweaty medieval warriors forging axes, and have to wonder: Did they already make another Scorpion King movie and not tell us? No,…
There is one truly striking shock in the new made-in-Hong-Kong-by-Thai-directors horror flick The Eye, but unfortunately, directors Danny and Oxide (yes, Oxide) Pang saved the best for first. If the film’s opening moments don’t grab you, nothing will; the Pang brothers cut their teeth on commercials, and the first few…
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and it’s all PETA’s fault. Oh, we humored those wacky vegan extremists when they threw paint at rich bitches in hideously overpriced fur coats. We laughed when they’d come on conservative talk radio shows every Thanksgiving to get mocked for…
Once in a while a film comes along that is as sound, smart, sweet and significant as can be, and Whale Rider is such a film. Fault the project on various counts if you like (I’ll try), but ultimately the tale is beyond reproach, a bane to cynics and a…
Two years ago, a first-time filmmaker named Andrew Jarecki paid a visit to the Concord, Massachusetts, home of a man who might draw him a road map to his future. Jarecki arrived at the house, belonging to a Pulitzer Prize-winning child psychiatrist, after already traveling a circuitous route and taking…
