Originally meant to be called Springtime for Hitler, Mel Brooks’ first feature as writer-director was only a moderate success when released in 1968. Now, it is legendary and for good reason. (It has, of course, also spawned a hugely successful musical.) This story of a manic, larger-than-life Broadway producer (Zero…
He’s one of Oprah’s Angels and an Olympic champ, a published author (of his own autobiography, Harnessing Anger) and, soon enough, the subject of a Walt Disney-produced feature based on his life’s story (cf. The Rookie, Remember the Titans). Till then, here’s Chris Dalrymple’s engaging (if, at a mere 75…
The son of a fascistic intelligence agency boss (Gregg Henry) is kidnapped by Sever (Lucy Liu), a ruthless, mysteriously hooded killing machine. The only one who can retrieve the boy is Ecks (Antonio Banderas), a former FBI operative who has been on the skids for seven years, ever since his…
Start with Steinbeck: “They had walked in single file down the path, and even in the open one stayed behind the other…The first man was small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp, strong features…Behind him walked his opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face, with large,…
It’s hard to dislike Julie Speed, the self-taught surrealist whose macabre oil-on-board visions and bizarre collages currently fill the front galleries at Pillsbury and Peters Fine Art. And doubly so for me, for Speed is everything that a good painter should be. She’s talented, and smart, and irreverent, and figurative,…
If you are annoyed with epic films that tax the limits of your bladder, you’ll be, uh, relieved to hear that it will probably take you longer to read this newspaper than to see any of the films featured at D-Studios’ Long on Shorts film festival. All the films are…
You gotta wonder what a pep talk for a dog must sound like to a fly on the wall. “You got it, Rufus, you’re number one! You are the bone, be the bone, go after the bone. Get out there and tell those mutts what for!” Say “dog competition” and…
After several years of taking the baddie roles Dennis Hopper was passing on, not to mention the occasional bizarro gamble (say, as Mr. Roarke in the short-lived Fantasy Island revival), Malcolm McDowell returns to prime form in Gangster No. 1. At long last, this spry and mean little film gives…
For those with any kind of pop cultural memory, it’s more than a little surprising to see Ice Cube in a movie like Barbershop. Not because it’s a light comedy–Friday was, too, and that was certainly in character. What’s odd about Barbershop is its seeming embrace of positions that the…
The much-celebrated Spokane/Coeur d’Alene poet and novelist Sherman Alexie (and writer-producer of Smoke Signals) brings all his ironic intelligence–the great elasticity of his mind–to bear on this striking, semi-autobiographical portrait of a successful Native American writer still struggling to reconcile opposites–his reservation childhood and his urban present, his worldly sophistication…
While it’s no longer the revolutionary tranifesto it may have been, D.A. Pennebaker’s 1973 concert film (first released in 1983) captures David Bowie’s meticulous identity quest with all the frenetic energy (read: slop) of a wildlife documentary on drugs. What this means for you, viewer and/or fan, is that the…
In turn-of-the-century France, a minister (Charles Berling) scandalizes his tiny Protestant community by divorcing his wife (Isabelle Huppert) and falling in love with a newly arrived young woman (Emmanuelle Béart). Their existence is briefly idyllic, until he is called back to run his family’s china factory in Limoges. Between business…
Taking up more or less from where her last concert film I’m the One That I Want (2000) left off, Margaret Cho continues her exploration of the outer limits of raunch with considerable brio. Like every female stand-up since the dawn of time, Cho’s humor is derived from this disparity…
After those first few piano notes sound as the lights come up on the panicked dancers of A Chorus Line, the audience should get hit with a full-on assault on the eardrums. As written, the opening song, “I Hope I Get It,” is a big blast of noise combining music,…
Ah, September. The start of art’s regular season. What with Gallery Walk coming up this weekend and all the local bigwigs rolling out the rug, I figure it’s time to take a gander at some oft-overlooked venues. And what venue is more overlooked than the University of Texas at Arlington’s…
“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.” This is why artist Terry Stone abandoned life as an advertising art director and began to direct her own experiences into three-dimensional sculpture. When one finds his or her voice as an artist, it shouldn’t be avoided, and we’re glad Stone…
There’s a reason we humans have pharynxes, larynxes and great, flopping, flexible, thrusting tongues. We speak. Ditto for our amazing opposable thumbs that fly furiously over a keyboard or grip a pencil with the greatest of ease. We write. With due deference to body language, we’ve evolved into word-dependent communicators,…
Like Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro is one of those guys who can make just about any material inherently enjoyable. Also like Eastwood, he will sometimes make you wish he’d pick roles that are a little more challenging. His recent record of relatively disposable films speaks for itself: tough-yet-sensitive cop…
With Harvard Man, writer-director James Toback returns to his roots…in more ways than one. Not only does he admittedly draw on his own collegiate experiences with acid, but he also reuses plot elements from his first produced script, The Gambler, the 1974 James Caan vehicle directed by Karel Reisz. (Similar…
When a show begins with a funeral, watch out. A Class Act, a musical bio about troubled Broadway composer-lyricist Ed Kleban (now playing at Theatre Three), starts and ends at a fictional memorial service for Kleban at the Shubert Theatre in 1987 (his real memorial that year took place in…
One day long ago–or not, because no one except he and a rare few know the precise date–an actor dove into the ocean to save a drowning boy. He did not want to do it, but he had no choice. They gave him none, those who gathered around and expected…
The lyin’, cheatin’, rat-bastard financial wizards of Wall Street might not think much of our latest investment theory. But, hey, what have they done for you lately? Here it is; short, simple, free-for-nothing, without the slightest hope of a commission: Buy art. Buy original. Buy local. During the next two…
