People engaged in warfare always believe that God endorses their cause and not their opponent’s. The Civil War drama Gods and Generals is filled with so much religious righteousness–endless Bible-readings, urgent recitation of prayer and ardent supplications to the Lord, to say nothing of the heavenly choir that intermittently bursts…
Tony Grisoni can always tell when his old friend Terry Gilliam, the visionary who sees too far for his own good, is in pain: He laughs. The worse the pain, the harder the laughter. If that is the case, then the Terry Gilliam seen throughout Lost in La Mancha, Keith…
Two plays, one question: What does it mean when members of an ethnic group practice intolerance toward their own? In Alfred Uhry’s The Last Night of Ballyhoo, now onstage at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, the Freitags and Levys, a noisy family of non-observant Jews in 1939 Atlanta, don’t take kindly…
Here’s a confession: I’ve never understood all the folderol over Texas sculptor James Surls. Yeah, I know, I know, he’s a Texas icon, a down-home artist who made good. And I have no doubt he’s a mensch, or whatever the Texas equivalent would be. He’s a teacher (of art, who…
For Louise Connolly, everything about the Celtic dance and folklore revue Lord of the Dance falls within the range of “amazing” and “absolutely amazing.” She thinks the show is amazing. Everyone everywhere also think it’s amazing. Creator and former “Lord” Michael Flatley is amazing. But, perhaps most important, the fact…
MADI is one art form even Sister Wendy can’t wax on about. No one knows what it is, or really why it is what it is. According to artist Volf Roitman, it’s a large, black wood circle mounted on a wall with a square mounted inside that opens up then…
Thursday, February 20 The films of Jay Rosenblatt tell epic tales in the time it takes Billy Mays to expound on the wonders of Orange Glo and Oxi Clean. It’s remarkable in itself that in one to 20 minutes, Rosenblatt can explore the boring lives behind the most evil of…
Thanks to the fickleness of pop culture, the French writer Aurore Dupin (1804-1876), a.k.a. George Sand, may well be better known for her relationship to Frederic Chopin than for her novels or her other romances or her generally bold life. Back in 1991, James Lapine’s Impromptu focused on the Sand-Chopin…
It begins in an almost playful mood. In a gallery of ancient art, a handsome, well-dressed man (Andrea Renzi) begins to make a pass at an equally attractive woman (Margherita Buy), who slyly rebuffs him. As we quickly learn, they’re actually husband and wife. Then, just as quickly, the direction…
His is an estimable and enviable filmography–not a bad movie to be found, if you’re willing to overlook Patch Adams, Twister and a few smaller offerings no one saw anyway. But even in the worst of films, and even in drag opposite Robert De Niro, Philip Seymour Hoffman keeps intact…
The fanboy suckled at the teat of comic-book writer-artist Frank Miller, circa 1980-81, will be satisfied, for the most part, with this cinematic Daredevil; if nothing else, the thing’s got enough Marvel Comics in-jokes to amuse ’em down at the comics shop for ages, or at least till Hulk smashes…
Everybody sings up a storm in Dreamgirls, the nostalgic backstage musical about a stormy Motown girl group torn asunder by ambition and clashing personalities. In the nifty staging by Dallas’ TFM Productions at the Trinity River Arts Center, everybody in the large cast sings great, which is a huge relief…
The exhibition Modigliani and the Artists of Montparnasse, now on view at the Kimbell Art Museum, aims big. Consisting of only 38 paintings, 14 works on paper and a handful of stone heads by Modigliani, this little exhibition nevertheless tackles not one, but two large subjects. First, it attempts to…
It was supposed to be make-believe, a disturbing but ultimately uplifting work of science-fiction from a celebrated author of grim futurama and glorious fantasy. The subject matter of Orbiter, a hardback graphic novel about a spaceship that disappears for years and returns sheathed in skin after visits to faraway places…
It’s no slight to Robert Mugge, a longtime maker of blues-tinged documentaries, to suggest his latest offering is a bit slight. Mugge, responsible for such important documents as Deep Blues and Hellhound on My Trail, simply couldn’t help it, as most of the juke joints–shacks in the middle of cotton…
If you are a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or its spin-off Angel, then you no doubt understand why a soon-to-be-41-year-old man has a Buffy poster hanging in his laundry room and a Buffy calendar on his office wall. And to you non-fans out there, let me just say…
Thursday, February 13 Five years ago, playwright Eve Ensler started hosting performances of her The Vagina Monologues to raise money and awareness about rape, domestic abuse and genital mutilation, renaming Valentine’s Day as V-Day and giving it a whole new focus. This year several colleges are continuing the tradition. Southern…
While virtually no one in this country foresaw the American disaster in Vietnam, the late British writer Graham Greene glimpsed it with astonishing clarity a decade before the first U.S. “adviser” set foot on Vietnamese soil. Greene’s 1955 novel The Quiet American, which has now been made into a disturbing…
If nothing else, because there’s nothing else to this movie, Shanghai Knights allows Jackie Chan, he of halting dialogue and poetic movement, to pay direct homage to his idols. He hangs from the arms of Big Ben, dangling off the stories-tall clock like Harold Lloyd in 1923’s Safety First; he…
Astaire & Rogers. Hepburn & Tracy. Heck, Ball & Arnaz, Houston & Washington or Vardalos & Corbett. Over the decades, Hollywood has proven that its romantic comedies needn’t suck. But alas, they often do, as is the case with How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Clearly, bigwig co-producers…
Director Gary Hardwick’s first film, The Brothers, was a refreshing take on the single black man romantic comedy, offering a surprisingly mature perspective full of depth and well-rounded characters without resorting to the time-honored stereotypes of black man as player and black woman as ball-busting bitch. Hardwick wrote the script…
Rawson Thurber has been so busy the past few days that by the time he finally returns a reporter’s phone call, he does so at 1:30 in the morning–and he doesn’t even realize the late, or early, hour till he hears the groggy croak on the other end. He’s sorry…
