It’s been little remarked-upon in the big national magazines that regularly profile him as a movie star, but as Steve Martin’s movie presence has turned limper and limper, his screenplays (especially L.A. Story) and essays for The New Yorker have grown positively tumescent. These works are not quite like the…
It’s all cyclical. The art scene, the rock scene, the theater scene — as cyclical as the economy, as the real estate market. Every city sees the ebb and flow of its cultural face, the exit of its veteran stars (or the dulling of their edge), the entry of a…
Although it’s not talked about much, one of the reasons that WaterTower Theatre has been using a pricey, multi-functional space essentially to stage community-theater fare (albeit starring professional, often Equity actors) is in reaction to the days when it was Addison Centre Theatre and the ambitious Kelly Cotten poured his…
There are misnomers, and there is false advertising. There seems to be a fine line between the two, and dancing that line is the Summer Arts Explosion, downtown’s daily lunchtime “in progress” arts exhibit. Public relations people just love to use words such as “explosion” and “extravaganza,” even when (especially…
The French often get a bad rap in the United States. Ask Americans to describe a typical Frenchman, and four out of five will paint you a picture of a cheese-eating, beret-wearing, wine-guzzling, Eiffel Tower-gazing, Renault-driving, café-loitering pseudo-intellectual who rambles on about l’amour. It’s the stereotype, of course, the result…
Do you feel snug and secure in your cozy suburban life? Are you happy in your picture-perfect home, with your carefully manicured lawn, your kids and your soccer games and your barbecues? Do you feel safe? Well, the creators of Arlington Road, the ponderous new thriller starring Jeff Bridges and…
It’s about time we had a talk. Yeah, you know, that talk. The one about how uncomfortable and strange it is to be a young human male, how raging and unforgiving the hormones, how fragile the ego, how mysterious the female form. You see, well, how do I say this?…
Twice Upon a Yesterday seems almost too geared for the Sliding Doors crowd. Because this romantic fable relies on the same kind of conceptual sleight of hand as that recent Brit hit (which owed a giant debt of its own to Groundhog Day), its sense of originality and wit is…
London-born novelist-screenwriter Hanif Kureishi doesn’t have Margaret Thatcher to kick around anymore, as he did so incisively and effectively in My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, but his concerns have not wandered too far afield. Rather, the hard edges merely have been softened. Universal issues still inspire…
A recent piece in The New York Times profiled a bit of missionary work by an American playwright: Wendy Wasserstein took a half-dozen kids from the Bronx to different plays in the city, then went for pizza afterward and asked them what they thought. The piece ostensibly had to do…
Salesmen are a strange breed. They’re different from you and me. (Well, from me, anyway — I couldn’t convince a junkie to buy heroin.) They all seem to have the same slickness, the same ability to act as though they’re your buddy, as though they’re willing to give up their…
There are basically two types of Pez dispenser collectors. There are the minor collectors who buy up all the characters they can find at the grocery store. Then there are the big-time collectors willing to pay thousands of dollars for those little plastic stems with goofy flip-up heads. What separates…
The photographs alone tell the story. Not just the faces in them, but the way the pictures fill every bit of free space left in the office of a man who insists he’s seen bigger closets. It’s like walking into someone’s memory and getting the full tour. Maybe the pictures…
Here’s a hint to every artistic director in town on how to get me off your back about creating entertaining and challenging theater: Just do what I say. Pick the plays I want and cast the Dallas actors I like. There’s no need to get ugly about it…but if I…
It won’t take long for anyone familiar with the 1960s Wild, Wild West television series to notice that something isn’t right with Barry Sonnenfeld’s listless big-screen remake. Yes, the film features Will Smith in the role of James West, and Kevin Kline as his cerebral sidekick Artemus Gordon — but…
The animated TV show South Park was the big sensation of the 1997-98 season — or at least as big a hit as a cable channel like Comedy Central can manage. It was almost inevitable that creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone would take their batch of foul-mouthed 8-year-olds to…
To hear Spike Lee tell it, Summer of Sam means to be a panoramic view of the summer of 1977 in New York City — when temperatures shot into the high 90s and power blackouts set nerves on edge, when the party agenda included snorting coke at Studio 54 and…
Run Lola Run is proof that the influence of MTV on feature filmmaking hasn’t been all bad. The jagged stylistic excess that dominates short-form music videos can be exhausting and irritating when drawn out to feature length: Michael Bay (The Rock, Armageddon) may be the worst offender, though far from…
Most people don’t want their art-going experience mixed up with God. To them — to us — the separation of art and church is a modern-day luxury we’ve grown to take for granted, necessary for keeping our high culture clear of any brainwashing effects of organized, God-fearing religion. Artistically inclined…
The list of tyrants and geniuses, critics and playwrights, politicians and serial killers who receive praise and condemnation in Jonathan Reynolds’ scorching comedy about the scrambled cultural circuits connecting American blacks and whites is too long to mention in this column. Suffice to say Stonewall Jackson’s House, given its second…
Americans are going to celebrate the Fourth of July the only way we know how — with a big, gaudy, over-the-top birthday party with titles using lots of alliteration and words such as sensational and extravaganza. See, stuff like that proves we really love our country. This year, with the…
The Freemasons are coming. Twenty thousand will be in town for the annual Shrine of North America Imperial Council Session, where they’ll perform their mysterious degrees and rites, including the Freemasonry initiation ritual that requires candidates to swear to maintain the order’s moral code and secrets. Once, when a former…
