Comedian Neil Hamburger evokes a sort of sympathy as he slouches about the stage mumbling anti-jokes. Much like Charlie Brown he gives off a sad-sack vibe that makes one root for him, perhaps even want to hug him. That is, of course, unless you are one of those who don’t…
Like a jawbreaker that changes color every few seconds you suck it, MIIB: Men in Black II delivers a quick buzz, lots of stuff to look at and a totally non-nutritious joy that can only be attained with the aid of artificial flavorings and Yellow #5. It’s the perfect summer…
In her recent book, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, journalist Rachel Simmons hits a very topical nail squarely on its very sore head. Coining the term “relational aggression,” she employs several case studies to buttress the obvious but significant theory that modern girls are extremely…
It has been 80 years since the adventurous son of a Michigan iron miner trained a silent-movie camera on the everyday life of an “Eskimo” family in the Canadian Arctic and virtually invented documentary filmmaking. Through the decades, Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North has attracted its share of criticism–Flaherty…
They stream in and out, all day and all night, one after the other: band members, producers, business associates, friends, family, strangers, hangers-on who stare at the familiar face made infamous long ago. The tour bus, this parked sanctuary where he can roll his joints and drink his bottled Starbucks…
Maybe we ought to rethink this outdoor Shakespeare thing. It was 40 years ago this summer that Public Theatre founder Joseph Papp moved his New York Shakespeare Festival into the just-built, open-air Delacorte Theatre in Central Park and made watching the works of the Bard a must-do event for Manhattan…
Ah, summer. The season of intellectual light lifting, of beach reading and crowd-pleasing museum shows, welcome respites from heat and headlines alike. Between WorldCom and Nasdaq and Al Qaeda, these are times that try Norte Americano souls. And so while there is no ideal moment for a show like De…
I never understood the mohawk. As someone who has shaved his head for seven years now, I feel as though I can speak on these matters as an expert. The shaved head makes sense. Male-pattern baldness creeps in, makes a young man appear infinitesimally less sexy, so he conquers his…
While countless American earthlings gaze with wonder at the colorful Fourth of July lights filling the nation’s skies, such behavior is nothing new for the creative creatures of a couple of local theaters. The result: an attention-starved extraterrestrial’s dream come true–two “otherworldly” theatrical productions under way in the Dallas-Fort Worth…
Talk about trading down: Adam Sandler now stands in for Gary Cooper, Winona Ryder for Jean Arthur, screenwriter Tim Herlihy (The Waterboy, Billy Madison) for Robert Riskin (It Happened One Night, Meet John Doe), director Steven Brill (Little Nicky) for the immortal Frank Capra. The mind reels at the possibilities…
There are a few dubious claims affecting the popular perception of the life and death of Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite the legend, he wasn’t, at 5-foot-6, particularly short. He was also more than just the sturdy product of military training at Brienne and Paris, considering that his Corsican mother adamantly disciplined…
Pretend Derek Jacobi is John Cleese, imagine it’s all but a daft and cruel joke, and you will find Paul Cox’s film tolerable; if you can’t, you will find it unbearable. The dancer, a startlingly handsome man who appears in photos like a silent-movie star begging to speak and shout,…
An evil industrialist (voice of Paul Sorvino) intends to knock down the neighborhood in which Arnold (Spencer Klein), the kid with the football-shaped head, and his friends happily reside. Needless to say, Arnold must fight the clock to thwart this catastrophe. In the ’80s, animator Craig Bartlett introduced Arnold in…
Clearly, director Malcolm Clark and writer Sean Kanan (an actor by day, not a writer, and no friggin’ duh) wanted to adapt J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, like thousands of other would-bes and wannabes before them. When they figured out that wasn’t going to happen, they instead…
Naked emotion is a tricky thing to sell, especially in semiautobiographical films about confused mama’s boys gradually learning that life exists beyond the control of their lens. The latter two of this cut’s three hours richly expand upon the romantic longing (for Agnese Nano young, Brigitte Fossey older) and deliver…
Just about everything in The Wizard of Oz at the Dallas Summer Musicals at Fair Park is like it is in the great old MGM movie we know so well. Dorothy skips down the yellow brick road in a blue gingham pinafore. Glinda the Good Witch floats into Munchkinland on…
The last time the McKinney Avenue Contemporary invited an artist to slap black paper cut-outs on its white-walled gallery, controversy ensued. Back in January 1999, Kara Walker waxed the MAC’s walls and posted black-paper silhouettes depicting sexual atrocities and violence which were as dark as her intended commentary on America’s…
It only figures that the best channel on television is one dedicated to showing ancient films, these glorious black-and-white shadows. Turner Classic Movies is an oasis in the satellite-TV wasteland; when there’s nothing else on, and there never is, TCM generously allows the casual fan and fetishistic student to travel…
Celestial Rhythm Celebrations’ Summer SolstiCelebration began as a poet’s roundtable that met regularly at Club Dada in Deep Ellum. One of the nights fell on the same day as the summer solstice–known to most folks as the first day of summer–so Dallas literary fixture and poet Joe Stanco, who passed…
Steven Spielberg just might turn into a great director if only he’d stop sabotaging his movies. For the second time in as many films, he demolishes his product with a third act that renders all that’s come before it void. It’s as though Minority Report, set in a near future…
It’s easy to love Robin Tunney–she’s pretty, and she can act–but it gets harder and harder to understand her choices. The Craft was a good call, and undoubtedly furthered her options, as it did for co-stars Neve Campbell and Fairuza Balk. But many of her parts since that 1996 film…
Iranian director Majid Majidi received a mantelful of awards, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and got some American attention for his 1997 feature Children of Heaven, the simple story of a little boy who loses a pair of shoes and goes to great lengths to keep…
