“Mr. Human Rights,” they once called him, and though his was never the most famous name on the bill–that was Bono or Bruce Springsteen, Sting or Peter Gabriel–as the organizer of the Conspiracy of Hope concerts in 1986 and the Human Rights Now! world tour two years later, Jack Healey…
Emile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin offended French readers in the 19th century. Considered scandalous, even pornographic, it told of a repressed young woman who kills her husband to marry a rogue painter. The author’s tale has inspired New York-born composer Tobias Picker to create a more likable Thérèse for a…
Almost Famous made a meager $32 million during its run in theaters at the end of 2000; having cost more than $60 mil, the movie was deemed a bust–by DreamWorks, which footed the bill, and by more than a handful of writer-director Cameron Crowe’s old rock-crit running buddies, who thought…
There is only one serious flaw with Albert Maysles’ new four-part documentary series for the Independent Film Channel, With the Filmmaker: Each episode is too damned short. Thirty minutes with Martin Scorsese, as the director preps his 20-years-in-the-making Gangs of New York, is but a frustrating wink in time; he’s…
Though Behind Enemy Lines, set in Bosnia, was originally due for release next year, already it feels antiquated; that conflict is already a distant memory, a ghost lost in the shadow of the war on terrorism. The film tested so well 20th Century Fox pushed up its release date, and…
Ever endure a friend stuck in a deep depression who refused to lighten up but delighted in spewing ugliness to bring you down? Such is the method of The American Astronaut, a thematically inventive but woefully crude science-fiction jaunt that’s less engaging entertainment for us than perverse psychotherapy for writer-director-star…
A poem, written by an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, ends thusly: “If the Nazis have my penis–who has my arm?” Another begins, “Who rise to adversity, I shit on you.” Another, titled “The Hopping Poem,” reads, in its entirety, “Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck That Hurt, Fuck Fuck.” And another, called “Is…
This city can be full of wonder for the newcomer or the native, a neon-drenched metropolis offering plenty of eye candies. But once the allure of bright-green downtown skyscrapers wears off, the sights are replaced by the overwhelming smell of the Trinity River. Still, within the towers and other man-made…
As a longtime Thoroughbred racing aficionado, I had always turned up my nose at quarter horse racing. As a sport, I thought, it surely suffered; these were inferior creatures, guided by inferior riders, hurtling down a short track with only the simplest of strategies in mind: Run like hell. At…
This is the true story of seven people (Tommy! Annie! Ashley! Maria! Griffin! Carpo! And Benjamin!) picked to live in a city and have their lives changed. Find out what happens when people stop being polite, and start being real. The Real World–Sidewalks of New York. If you came across…
“From Academy Award-nominated director Griffin Dunne…” Wait a minute. Hold the phone. That guy who co-starred with Madonna in Who’s That Girl? The guy who directed the Sandra Bullock witch movie Practical Magic and the Meg Ryan stalker movie Addicted to Love? That Griffin Dunne? Yep, he’s Oscar-nominated. In the…
The pitch for this one must have seemed sensational: “It’s called Spy Game, right, and it’s about this old spy who recounts, via flashbacks, how he mentored this young spy, only now the young spy is captured and about to be killed, so the old spy spends his last day…
Only a couple of months ago, it looked as though Donald Miller had a publishing home run on his hands–a thoughtful, exhilarating, inclusive book about World War II scheduled to hit stores just as Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ Band of Brothers was finishing its critically lauded run on HBO…
Even the most hardened of humbuggers among us has trouble grumbling at full-Grinch when confronted each holiday TV season with the holy trinity of Christmas fables. By these, I mean It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street and Scrooge as well as their dramatic permutations and progeny. (No way…
By the standards of contemporary photographers, Shelby Lee Adams is a modest man. He dabbles not in the black art of celebrity portraiture, dwells not in the abstract zone, couldn’t care less about the zeitgeist. The label that fits best would be “documentary photojournalist,” though Adams’ work is not quite…
To you, what best epitomizes the beauty of the holiday season? Is it a midnight Mass? A child’s delight on Christmas morning? Serving food to the homeless? Yeah, well, good for you, Norman Rockwell. It’s good to know that people like you exist, to counterbalance people like us, who prefer…
The rubble of the World Trade Center towers had not stopped smoldering before ideas began surfacing about how best to memorialize the destruction of September 11. Should the towers be rebuilt or replaced with some sort of memorial park? One proposal suggests installing a piece of artwork in the interim…
Lovely magic, this. An enchanting family classic. If you believe in magic, you’ll love Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. And if you don’t, you will, and you will. True, the hype has been a bit much. And, yes, a mad, desperate world choked with reproduction and reprobation could hardly…
It takes a nimble mind to mix light and dark, to wed humor with treachery, and in Novocaine newcomer David Atkins is not always up to the task. Neither is Steve Martin, who wants to be taken seriously while reserving the right to produce the occasional sick yuk. If you…
Tape, a film by Richard Linklater, isn’t. It’s high time for some cinematic clarification: If a project is shot on celluloid, with light searing images onto emulsion, then it’s a film. If it’s recorded with magnetic frequencies or digital code (as is the case here), then it’s a video. Of…
Two years ago, a colleague of Michael Cain’s asked the founder and director of the Deep Ellum Film Festival just why the hell he named his fledgling fest after a part of town in which there were, ahem, no movie theaters. “There will be,” Cain insisted, like a W.P. Kinsella…
Let the record reflect that I think malls are normally a swell place to shop. They are climate-controlled and convenient. Husbands can wander off in one direction, in search of cordless drills, while wives are free to venture in another, looking for scented bath oils. At a predetermined time, the…
