At this time of year, there are few places to hide from the seasonal attack of nonstop Christmas lights, bad lawn ornaments, and the too-cheery carols that stalk us even into the supermarket. Movie theaters are plagued with Disney blockbusters, and we can’t stand the thought of watching another television…
thursday december 24 Depending on your situation, Christmas Eve is either the happiest night of the year or the most depressing, and for some people, it’s both. Sure, you get to be around all of your family, but hey, you also get to be around all of your family. But…
Virtually every Dallas theater company that’s managed to hang in there more than five years has a holiday show that will, hopefully, finance the less commercial excursions of the rest of the season. December is the month when people are willing to drop cash in symbolic recognition of all the…
Something makes me suspicious of these paintings, though at first glance I like them. At last glance I like them also–swoon over them, in fact, for at least a moment. But somewhere in between the initial and parting glances, I feel uneasy, disconcerted by their unquestioning confidence, as though what…
Old-fashioned romantic comedies are an endangered species, and in these generally unromantic days it’s always a pleasant surprise to find a decent one like Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail. Ephron, of course, made her bones five and a half years ago with the huge hit Sleepless in Seattle, but since…
DreamWorks’ grandiose attempt at an animated feature for adults is a flimsy musical about Moses–a Sunday-school filmstrip writ ultra-large and decked out with the spectacle of Hollywood Bible epics. Slender sermons nestle among flashy action sequences and diaphanous fashion statements from the more tasteful pages of the Nefertiti’s Secret catalog…
In The Eel, which won the Palme D’Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, director Shohei Imamura once again demonstrates his empathy for the outsiders and aliens of Japanese society. In this case he muses on the tormented relationship between a paroled wife-murderer who’s struggling with his past after eight…
Back in the day, when a band split up, it stayed that way. Now, the phrase “last show ever” only means it’s the last show until the next one, and you can be sure there will be a next one. Two years ago, the Denton ska band The Grown-Ups went…
thursday december 17 It never feels like Christmas in Texas. The closest we’ll get to a winter wonderland is by turning on the air conditioner and spraying snow all over our windows; white Christmases just don’t happen here. Since we’re desperate, we’ll settle for a wet Christmas, especially since driving…
Nazis, a suicide attempt, a brutal kidnapping, death by heart attack, a villain named Burgermeister Meisterburger. What do these have in common? They’re all elements in some of the best Christmas movies ever. Most of ’em you won’t catch on TV, though. Obvious favorites are just that: too damn obvious…
It’s 7 o’clock on Saturday night, 30 minutes before the scheduled tip-off of a celebrity basketball game featuring out-of-work professional National Basketball Association players, most of whom wouldn’t be celebrities if they were actually picking up paychecks. But the game, such as it is, will not begin until nearly 8:30,…
Beginning in the mid-’80s, the devastation of AIDS opened the floodgates of theatrical imagination, engulfing audiences across the country. The Neptune King of the genre is, of course, Tony Kushner’s two-part epic Angels in America, and although the old boy still has some fire left in him, he is doddering…
Ultra tough guy Jesse “The Body” Ventura says he means business as the new governor of Minnesota. But for now the nasty crime wave in that state continues unchecked–in the movies anyway. Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan, a psychological thriller that shows us how dangerous life can get after three…
The relentless charm of Kirk Jones’ Waking Ned Devine lies in its embrace of two lovable Irish geezers who manage to work beautiful mischief on the world, in the raw beauty of their sun-splashed coastal village, and in the general notion that Ireland is the land of poetic conversations, enduring…
“I just find it all so bizarre,” notes John Maybury, popping a cigarette into his mouth and lighting it in what appears to be one quick flip of the wrist. “All those issues of ‘being out’ and ‘are you in?’ We should have gone beyond that by now. I know…
First of all, if you’re among the benighted who’ve never seen Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 shocker Psycho, stop reading at the end of this paragraph. A movie review, even one as incisive and elegant as this, is no way to be introduced to Hitchcock’s horror masterpiece. Your assignment is to rush…
Many of us fancy that we could earn a handsome living simply by sitting on a stage and talking about our lives in a clever way. After all, we spellbind friends, lovers, and co-workers for free every day, right? But truly, who among us is qualified for such a deceptively…
thursday december 10 If you asked most kids who was born on December 25–in theory at least–most would say Santa Claus. Christmas long ago stopped being solely a religious holiday. Actually, it isn’t even really about Santa Claus anymore either. It’s all about the gifts, baby. If you think we’re…
Thirty-five years have passed since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but people are still talking about it. While everyone is entitled to his own theory, only those who were there in Dealey Plaza on that sunny November day in 1963 actually have memories. Now, the Sixth Floor Museum…
The strained relationship between theater and the Christian church didn’t begin when Terrence McNally held a press conference to announce he was painting a lavender Jesus in Corpus Christi. Way back in seventh-century Europe, church elders declared a culture war against the cross-dressing, bawdy humor, and symbolic wine-pouring that honored…
About the closest most of us will ever come to the backwoods of Appalachia is watching Deliverance, and the harrowing misadventure upon which its plot hinges pretty much ensures that we won’t want to visit the backwoods of Appalachia. That the entire region and its natives have been defined for…
The character Simon Geist (Dan Zukovic) is a black-haired, dead-eyed intellectual who never smiles and never condescends when he talks: He’d never even think of kneeling to address you on your level. The actor Dan Zukovic is a playwright whose screenplay for his debut feature The Last Big Thing doesn’t…
