thursday may 14 As if we needed further proof that American culture revolves around television, the week after a historic peace accord was reached in Northern Ireland, Newsweek ran a cover story on the final episode of Seinfeld. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We know all about lead…
From his perch in the seventh-floor press box at Lone Star Park, Chuck Badone watches through binoculars as the fifth race unfolds with disastrous results. The number-eight horse, with the frighteningly prophetic name Bush Won, crosses the finish line well ahead of the rest of the pack, and Badone, for…
Longtime patrons already know that the Undermain Theatre can mix a mean theatrical drink–comedy and drama shaken together into one potent cocktail, served up on some treacherous rocks. Rarely has the house recipe been more potent when you gulp it–and rarely have the effects felt more disappointing, when the buzz…
There’s this company over on McKinney Avenue, an enterprising outfit that handles post-production for television and radio commercials–editing, sound effects, voice tracks–and the building is overflowing with some of the best artwork in town. Only, the art collection at CharlieUniformTango (that’s the name of the place, though they like to…
Most disaster movies would be a lot better with more disaster and less “human drama.” In Deep Impact, the impending obliteration of much of earth by a pair of comets is merely the sideshow. The main event is all that goopy human-interest stuff–the daughter who reunites with her estranged father,…
One of the few seemingly spontaneous bursts of energy at this year’s Oscar ceremony was provided by motor-mouthing Dutch director Mike van Diem, who seemed genuinely surprised to have won the award for Best Foreign Film for his debut feature, Character. If the commercial popularity and Oscar sweep for Titanic…
It seems strange that the man who is practically synonymous with classical music in the metroplex–pianist Van Cliburn–hasn’t performed a solo recital in the area in more than 20 years. But Cliburn has always been seen as something of an eccentric, at least by classical-music standards. His behavior is not…
The Webb Gallery offers a double-layered excursion. One, it’s about 35 miles south of Dallas, in Waxahachie’s historic district. Nice little drive. Two, the artwork is a departure from all the newfangled contemporary and conceptual stuff you find in urban art spaces. See, Bruce and Julie Webb, the gallery’s youthful…
thursday may 7 It’s a shame that writer Larry L. King is best known for scripting the risque (at the time) musical comedy The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. A surprise hit in both its Broadway and big-screen adaptations, Whorehouse was frustratingly tame, a cliched tease that wasn’t as sharp…
Two weeks ago in this space, while reviewing Our Endeavors’ disappointing production of Albert Camus’ Caligula, or The Meaning of Death, I suggested that a rape that happens offstage in that show should be brought onstage to balance some of the windy philosophical stretches with a little raw emotion. Well,…
Since the ballyhooed independent filmmaking movement birthed an instant sub-genre of movies about hip, angst-filled young people pontificating on some major–or worse, minor–turning point in their lives, it seemed perfectly reasonable to fear Dancer, Texas Pop. 81. Never mind the critical murmuring seeping out of its premiere at the South…
Dancer, Texas Pop. 81 is a nice little movie. That probably sounds like an insult, but it’s not meant to be. It’s a genuine sentiment, one not often given–or even fished for–with movies these days, where if it can’t be bigger, it had best be weirder than anything that’s come…
In the production notes for Spike Lee’s new movie, He Got Game, the filmmaker is quoted as saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever done a film that is just about one thing….” That’s true: usually he’s able to cram in two or three things. In his new He Got Game,…
Chinese Box arrives with one of the weirdest hybrid pedigrees in living memory. The writing credits include–in addition to the film’s director, Wayne Wang–Jean-Claude Carriere, who worked on most of the best films of Luis Bunuel’s late period (Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Phantom of Liberty, Belle de Jour); classy…
Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel Les Miserables, which he began in 1845, runs in most editions to around 1,500 pages. The latest film version–there have been five other adaptations for movies or television–runs a bit under two and a half hours. It’s an expert piece of pruning–entire continents of plot and…
thursday april 30 Wynton Marsalis is a jazzman’s jazzman, a purist with a discography longer than a Charlie Parker solo and the chops to back it up. But he has also found time to indulge his other love–classical music–squelching the notion that jazz players “just make it up as they…
Playwright, essayist, and screenwriter Wendy Wasserstein recently admitted in an Advocate interview that she’s fallen in love with more than one gay man during her lifetime. Of course, this was to promote her deliriously witty screenplay for The Object of My Affection, the story of a straight woman who falls…
Bruiser, a rottweiler-mix pup, was found stumbling through an alley, dragging a heavy chain. He had mange and heart worms. Winston the cattle dog was forsaken as well, running lonely through Oak Cliff. How about a smiley little shih tzu with one eye, or a fuzzy poodle with diabetes? Snoopy…
I learned an important lesson while watching Having Our Say, Emily Mann’s theatrical adaptation of the best-selling memoir from a pair of hundred-year-old black sisters in New York: African-Americans have indeed arrived in the mainstream. This huge Broadway hit celebrates the fact that they can be just as shortsighted and…
The gallery space feels womb-like–dark, humid, warm. Actual mist floats though the air. An old film whirrs on a tiny antique projector, little strobe lights throw images toward an old stuffed chair. Smoke and mirrors, if you will, where the claustrophobic meets the soothing in the strange and ominous microcosm…
Hong Kong director Kirk Wong (credited here as Che-Kirk Wong) is the latest defector from the troubled H.K. film industry. Until now, he has been best known in the United States for his Jackie Chan film Crime Story, which played art houses before being picked up for wider release by…
Gwyneth Paltrow gets another chance to show off her letter-perfect English accent in Sliding Doors, an engaging romantic comedy that employs a rather novel narrative device: After introducing the main characters and setting up the basic story, the film splits into two separate but parallel plot lines. It’s a twist…
