His name appears in almost every book written about Groucho Marx, so much so, he has been given the appropriate appellation by members of the Marx family: Wesso. But Paul Wesolowski is of no relation to the famous clan. He’s a man in his 40s who lives outside Philadelphia and,…
Blink–or, more likely, doze–and you will miss it, this tiny, beautiful oasis in the middle of an otherwise barren wasteland. For a moment–a precious, frustrating moment to be treasured in a movie that flaunts its disposability–Cage reminds us of how good an actor he can be, when he attempts to…
Apart from mass cultural annihilation, beatniks, Hee Haw, some dumbass sports, and the freak shows of Brentwood, most pop-culture trends are not homegrown but imported to America after prolonged cultivation overseas. Take that novelty food tofu, for instance, dubbed le curd du soy by uncredited Belgian sailors exploring China centuries…
Could there be any less appealing image than that of an obese, dress-wearing Martin Lawrence scratching his ass, as featured on the poster for Big Momma’s House? The idea of sitting through any movie promoted in such a fashion brings to mind the hideously awful It’s Pat: The Movie or…
Southern Methodist University professor emeritus Margaret Loft directs three prodigiously able and alert actresses through a cataclysmic afternoon and evening in the life of one of Great Britain’s most influential psychoanalysts. Mrs. Klein happens to be Melanie Klein, the Austrian Jewish titan who strode into The British Analytical Society in…
Photographs taken at crime scenes have become big business. Before television cameras rolled on Courtney Love’s running mascara, photographs of Kurt Cobain’s body were showing up on tabloid magazines and for sale in the underground press. Now the market has moved to the Internet, where a quick search will reveal…
Anyone who is a student of the English language should appreciate the importance, the power, and the usefulness of the expletive. Unfortunately, from our overworked linguistic sensibilities anyway, most people are not students of the English language. When properly wielded, foul language is like a spice added to food, enhancing…
There’s a moment in Mrs. Klein where Beverly May attempts to burst through the stone wall of premises and hypotheses to connect to her hurting daughter, played by Susan Sargeant. The two are sharing a bottle of wine but not much else, and May reaches over to pluck a piece…
For a moment or two, David Lowery–frontman for the band Cracker, and before that, beloved college-radio revolutionary sweethearts Camper Van Beethoven–found himself enjoying the book. He laughed in the right places, winced in the appropriate spots, and thought, for a moment, the book wasn’t half bad. And there’s no reason…
It’s hard to imagine a more relentlessly somber basis for a movie than Jane Hamilton’s 1994 novel, A Map of the World. In it, Alice Goodwin is a small-town school nurse whose neighbor’s 2-year-old daughter accidentally drowns in the backyard pond. Alice blames herself–punishes herself, in fact, with guilt. Since…
It is difficult to reconcile American perceptions of Iran–a rigidly authoritarian fundamentalist Islamic society–with the captivating and compassionate films that emanate from the country. Most of these pictures, including the 1995 Cannes Film Festival Camera d’Or winner The White Balloon and the 1998 best foreign-language film Oscar nominee Children of…
The moody, feverish images that fill Running Free are so exquisite, they almost make up for the film’s disastrous auditory misstep: the decision to cast Lukas Haas as the voice of Lucky, the chestnut foal that narrates this unusual adventure story. A cross between Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s…
Rarely have I been to a sold-out performance of a three-hour play where ticket-buyers, during intermission, laughed nervously about whether they had the fortitude to return. Mind you, I’ve been to three-hour shows where people fled during the break because the script or the performances were boring them silly or…
What a curious theatrical creature is Shakespeare for the Modern Man, Lesson 1: Macbeth, currently rattling the boards at Pocket Sandwich Theatre. I can’t count it as altogether successful, because there are so many sonic, thematic, and verbal threads running through it that playwright-adapter Scott A. Eckert couldn’t possibly work…
A lissome teenage girl lies draped across a pool table, crucifixion-style, in the center of an elegant and expensively furnished room. You can’t actually see her until she rises up, hops off the table, and disappears stage right. A shadowy figure of a man appears at the French doors that…
More Whitney hoo-hah Since they’re winding up the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2000 Biennial on June 4, here’s one BLINK’s worth of gauging the local fallout. This Biennial was the first to use six regional curators, you’ll recall, who scoured the countryside in an attempt to expose New York…
Dating habits are not hereditary. If they were, Brett Leveridge’s first novel would be called My Mom Was a Big-Time Playa and So Am I instead of Men My Mom Dated (And Other Mostly True Tales). But maybe genetics isn’t to blame for poor Brett’s lack of dating success. After…
Is there such a thing as an armchair anime fan? It seems that Japanese animation has spawned an exclusive subculture. It’s exclusive in that you can’t crash it unless you really know your anime and unless your fondness for the medium defines you; it’s a subculture because those not into…
Big D Festival of the Unexpected producer Melissa Cooper, who calls the official inclusion of small Dallas theaters this year “an experiment” (a successful one, let’s hope), has asked a pair of the city’s director-performers to do it Doggy-style…er, we mean Kitchen Dog Theater-style. The Dog is again trotting out…
Audiences raised on Freddy flicks and Jason slasher movies won’t be scared by Nosferatu–Symphony of Horrors. They’re callused, desensitized to anything short of a blood bath on screen and an adrenaline rush off. Yet the 1922 film is still oddly disturbing and, unlike some other black-and-white silent films, hasn’t become…
Many of the subjects of Dallas-based photographer Nic Nicosia seem to be funneling all their joy, sorrow, and paranoia into rituals whose significance is unclear but ominous. Nicosia uses friends, family, and professional models to fabricate an American suburbia that spurns the traditional scars of living for a wholly internalized…
Early on in Mission: Impossible 2 (or M:I-2, as the confident Paramount now calls it), hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) complains to his boss about his new assignment: “It’s going to be difficult.” “It’s not mission difficult, Mr. Hunt,” the boss icily replies, “it’s mission impossible. ‘Difficult’ should be a…
