5/14 A while back we realized that the four years of French we studied in college were kind of pointless. Living in Texas and all, we didn’t get much use out of it. So we decided to learn Spanish. The classes were expensive, though, and they wanted us to give…
5/10 Baby, if you’re lookin’ for the real thing, check out Ashford and Simpson. Married songwriters Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson created some of the grooviest love tunes of the 1970s for the likes of Ray Charles (“Let’s Go Get Stoned”) as well as duo Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell…
5/10 To fully appreciate the gritty production of the prison drama In the Belly of the Beast, being staged by the Kitchen Dog Theater from May 10 through May 31, one should know its origin and the dark life of killer-turned-writer-turned-killer-again Jack Henry Abbott. Son of a prostitute, he spent…
It is rare to find a film that defies one’s expectations as sweetly and satisfyingly as this coming-of-age comedy-drama from first-time feature writer-director Peter Sollett. The surprise isn’t in the plot–that would be too easy–but, rather, in the extraordinarily subtle and convincing ways the characters grow and change before our…
At some fast-approaching point in pop-culture evolution, we’re due to hit Total Outsider Saturation, wherein everybody is an outsider and therefore there is no longer an outside. In the fleeting meantime we have scintillating reminders of the struggle like X-2: X-Men United, the latest bid from comic book land to…
The Chicago-based filmmaker Steve James rose to prominence in 1994 with Hoop Dreams, a gritty, uncomfortably intimate portrait of two inner-city kids who try to escape poverty and deprivation through basketball. Shot over four years, it was at once a stirring indictment of the social services bureaucracy, a tribute to…
He claims to be blacklisted and close to busto. Thirty years in the film biz, with a cult bigger than David Koresh’s and a disemboweled body of work that would make any studio boss blood-red with envy, and still he kvetches in a voice so eerily similar to that of…
On a stripped-down set of black metal scaffolding and simple black wooden cubes, Irving’s Lyric Stage company makes the audience see things that aren’t there. So inventive is director Drew Scott Harris’ staging of this fine new production of the musical Titanic, and so convincing are its 37 actors, that…
The last time we saw a dog fly was when we threw a Hebrew National at Carl Everett’s head. Seriously, we aren’t foolish enough to waste a good cell phone and be completely conspicuous. Nevertheless, we had never seen a Scottish terrier fly until Michael McWillie came along, paintbrush in…
Thursday, May 1 To Fort Worth filmmaker Philip R. Fagan, short films dont mean short attention span. Though his seven works clock in at about an hour together, theres a lot to digest here: silent Chaplin-style slapstick, heroin addiction portrayed through Ghoultowns Count Lyle, Jekyll and Hyde retold at a…
Country music raised me. Sunday afternoons, watching tapes of Austin City Limits featuring George Jones and Merle Haggard with Dad, Willie on the console record player and a transistor radio in “the shop” out in the garage that was never turned off. A rather pensive child, my favorites were the…
5/2 Much more than an occasion for getting the Frisbee out and hitting the park, the original Earth Day was closer to a nationwide “teach-in” dedicated to saving the planet. A massive demonstration in Washington forced Congress to adjourn for the day. An impromptu parade of environmentally conscious protesters brought…
5/3 If you hope to win the third annual Elvis Run, then concentrate on the young Elvis wiggling his hips to “Blue Suede Shoes,” not the overweight lounge lizard gasping for breath crooning “Love Me Tender.” Lay off the fried peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches if you hope to cross the finish…
5/3 As shameful as it was to be a citizen of Dallas on November 22, 1963, our collective dishonor was short-lived. This city is inextricably linked to the Kennedy legacy, and you could argue that the legend really began here. Dallas has venerated the events of that day and respected…
5/4 It’s not easy to gain in-depth knowledge of Mexico’s Tarahumara Indians, who originally retreated into the mountains to avoid Spanish slavery and missionization. The rough terrain has kept the Tarahumara, many of whom still live in mountainside caves, largely isolated. Their wariness of outsiders is well documented, so the…
5/7 Getting weary of romances, serial-killer whodunits and Stephen You Know Who’s things-that-go-bump-in-the-night novels? For a real jump start to your summer reading, the Literary Café is set to introduce you to a host of talented new writers. Created 11 years ago as part of Arts & Letters Live, the…
In Confidence, Edward Burns plays Jake Vig, a con artist whose body temperature runs a few degrees below normal. Even when things seem to go bad, when a would-be partner betrays him with a phone call or a seedy-greedy Dustin Hoffman lays maybe-gay and grubby paws all over him, Burns…
You can’t be sure what to make of Identity for its first hour: Director James Mangold’s first foray into the horror genre plays so much like a joke it’s almost impossible to tell whether he’s making you laugh on purpose or because, well, he is director James Mangold, maker of…
Director David Cronenberg has led his loyal fans down some pretty spooky corridors, including the telepathic netherworld of Scanners, the violent sibling rivalry of twin gynecologists in love with the same woman (Dead Ringers) and the drug-haunted imagination of William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch). So it comes as no surprise…
It had become sport in recent years to dismiss the USA Film Festival for what it wasn’t rather than what it was becoming. No, it is not a South by Southwest Film Festival or an Austin Film Festival, where would-be independent filmmakers gather each year to discuss a project or…
It’s the actor’s dream, to have more work than there is time to do it. At times, it may not all be the most pleasurable work, but for every paycheck there is the payday of working with a Ridley Scott, a Michael Mann, a Harold Ramis, a Norman Jewison, a…
They were loud once, deafeningly so–and dumbingly so, if such a thing is possible. They wore skins of leather stuffed with cucumbers of foil, towered over dwarves who danced around a Stonehenge made of pebbles, sang about women who fit like flesh tuxedos and explored the majesty of rock and…
