Modern word processing has made life easier for screenwriters. After all, there’s no need to retype some old classic with your own little changes; nowadays, you can just download the screenplay for, let’s say, The Exorcist, search for “adolescent girl,” replace with “twentysomething single woman,” and — voila! — you’ve…
I don’t know if it was apocryphal or not, but the story goes that toward the end of her life, playwright Lillian Hellman was asked after a speaking engagement why, considering that she’d taken up arms against all manner of social injustices throughout her career, she’d never explicitly endorsed the…
I was privileged to spend this past weekend in the company of not three, but five masterful women actors, if you add to Toys in the Attic the Saturday matinee I caught of Grace and Glorie at the Bath House Cultural Center. Everything about advance reviews I’d read of Tom…
He’s the finest pop singer-songwriter of his generation, which, by my count, was two generations ago. Paul Simon has released only three records this decade: 1990’s Rhythm of the Saints (otherwise known as Back to Graceland); a live walk-through in 1991, recorded in the intimate confines of Central Park; and…
We’ve all seen them — the black velvet canvases with garish paint slathered thickly like margarine on sandwich bread, sold from a beat-up truck on a street corner, banished to the back of thrift stores, or stacked in booths at the many festivals this city spawns during the spring and…
Micromanaging The rumor that Fort Worth Star-Telegram art critic Janet Tyson was fired August 23 after making an irreverent comment about senior features editor Julie Heaberlin seemed too ridiculous to be true. The story went that Tyson, with a 10-year track record covering art at the daily paper, popped off…
Whether it’s bad or good commercial luck that the thriller Stir of Echoes follows so closely on the heels of The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan’s wildly successful ghost-story sleeper, it’s bad critical luck. The film has some startling parallels to The Sixth Sense: Both concern psychic communication with the…
Kevin Bacon is talking about his penis. It’s not his fault — not exactly, anyway. Bacon didn’t bring it up, so to speak. He never does, at least not in public. He’s just trying to promote his latest film, the small supernatural thriller Stir of Echoes. But here he is…
If British writer Robert Cedric Sherriff became best known as the co-screenwriter for films like Goodbye Mr. Chips and The Invisible Man, that’s only because his most famous play, Journey’s End, suffers from the same historical neglect as its subject. Plano Repertory Theatre currently offers this drama about life in…
If you happen to be of the opinion that Arthur Penn’s much-praised 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde has not aged well, you will come away from Inside Bonnie Parker, a one-woman show currently playing at Fort Worth’s Circle Theatre, with the joyous feeling that your dissent has been completely justified…
From the looks of things, the Gerald Peters Gallery is as placid as its neighbors, a collection of renovated vintage homes and tasteful commercial buildings lining Dallas’ “gallery row” on Fairmount Street. The gallery’s spacious and quiet rooms offer a soothing experience to patrons, who can enjoy a tranquil stroll…
The West End. That master-planned pit of money-generating quicksand was originally Dallas city planners’ answer to a mid-’80s, shadowy Deep Ellum. Build a nightlife-shopping resort, pave it with snappy red brick, erect a mall as its central attraction, and stock the area with mounted police. Not the most culturally enlightened…
The old vaudeville stripper motto in Gypsy was “you gotta get a gimmick.” It works just as well nowadays, and not just for strippers. It’s also perfect for comedians. Drew Carey talks about his weight, Jeffrey Ross reads poetry, and Bobcat Goldthwait has that voice — the trademark multi-octave, avalanche-of-emotions-at-once…
Good gone bad Money talks, or so says Martin Iles, artist/spokesman for Denton-based Good/Bad Art Collective, of the group’s decision to divert from its usual “one-night-only” format for a monthlong installation at the University of Texas at Dallas’ gallery. Good/Bad’s cadre of conceptualists received $1,500 to create “Sweet Movie,” a…
When last we encountered Peter and Bobby Farrelly, they were pelting movie houses with industrial-strength jokes about retarded kids, lost semen, found excrement, and exploding house pets. Good plan. There’s Something About Mary turned into last summer’s surprise hit and catapulted the brothers to the top of Hollywood’s A-list –…
There is something fairy-tale-like, but also deeply human, about Twin Falls Idaho, a gentle, beautifully realized tale of love and intimacy that marks the feature-film debut of Mark Polish and Michael Polish. Identical twin brothers, Mark Polish wrote the script, Michael Polish directed it, and both brothers star. It is…
It’s bad enough when a major studio — in this case, Warner Bros. — blows $40 million (or more) on a by-the-numbers film. It’s worse when they blow it on a by-the-numbers film made by people who don’t know how to count. We’re not talking literal math here, but rather…
I don’t visit Joe Dickinson’s Pocket Sandwich Theatre very often, but lest the readers think I’m too snobby to lob a handful of popcorn with the Pocket faithful, let me rush to confirm that I’ve desperately wanted to hurl comestibles at a few shows during the just-ended Dallas theater season…
Actor-writer-director John Turturro’s engaging, episodic, occasionally confusing look at the turn-of-the-century theater in New York, Illuminata, has all the sexual shenanigans of farce without the plot structure to give the accidents and assignations lasting impact. One image that will linger with me, however, makes its first appearance within the opening…
“Erotic male flesh. Drinking with criminals and aristocrats. Not cleaning your brushes on anything but the curtains of the Savoy. Screaming Popes in Adolph Eichmann war crimes trial cages.” These are some of the Francis Bacon clichés drolly laid out by British artist and writer Matthew Collings, and while Collings…
Police officers don’t get much respect from adults. No news flash there. After all, cops stop us and issue speeding tickets when we don’t deserve them. (And we never do.) Seriously — 73 in a 70? State trooper, dude, I’m late to school already; going three miles per hour over…
Back in college, I took a hardcore sociology course with a focus on gender. One day the teacher (with barely veiled feminazi leanings) asked the class: “Cats or dogs? Who here is a cat person, who a dog person?” and she tallied the vote. For the most part, the chicks…
