thursday september 5 Utopia Danza-Teatro: Based on a reading of its press information, it would be tempting to describe the Mexican dance troupe Utopia Danza-Teatro as “experimental,” but there is nothing new or uncertain about the themes that underlie its mixed-media work–economic instability in its homeland and the anonymity of…
Has this ever happened to you? You’re watching one of the 347 cable boxing matches of the week. Let’s say it’s a match between Louie “Hammerhead” Santini and Frankie “Frank” Franklin. The announcer says: “Santini is wearing the diamond-checked trunks with gold trim and black piping. Franklin is wearing the…
Jean-Michel Basquiat was a middle-class kid from the suburbs when he first started living in a cardboard box in a New York City park in 1979. Jean wasn’t homeless as a result of financial necessity, nor was he mentally unstable. He was, instead, an artist. Using the signature “Samo,” he…
It’s hard to decide which we hear more often: that there are no good roles for women in commercial American cinema, or that this–fill in current calendar year–is The Year of the Woman in film. Whatever the case, there’s usually a self-serving public-relations motive lurking behind these proclamations. The women…
thursday august 29 Rocket to the Moon: New Theatre Company picks up the Clifford Odets baton handed to it by the Richardson Theatre Centre, which staged a sumptuous Odets script called The Big Knife a couple months back. That one concerned the evils of Hollywood greed and was bedecked in…
Just three months into the gig as Dallas Observer stage critic, I found myself in a peculiar situation: hiding from the performer I was about to review. I wasn’t alone when I arrived at the opening night of performance artist Fred Curchack’s latest one-man symphony, The Comeback of Freddy Chickan:…
Today’s topic is The Phantom Boyfriend. I didn’t wanna talk about this. I really didn’t. But modern feminist propaganda has driven me to defend the male species. What’s the No. 1 complaint of women in the ’90s? “All men are liars.” How many times have we heard this in, like,…
The word “improvisation” is often bandied about when people talk about stand-up comedy; indeed, the most famous comedy club chain in America was named after it. But watching HBO’s Comedy Showcase or Comedy Central’s A-List, you’ll find precious little real improvisation. The reason is simple: Improv comedy by its very…
Several years ago, the Arlington Museum of Art made a decision to be a museum–without a permanent collection. The AMA sent it’s small collection away in what you might call a fire sale. “It wasn’t an important collection,” museum director Joan Davidow recalls, “so what the board opted to do…
As you watch The Spitfire Grill flicker by on the screen, it’s difficult not to ask yourself whether the writer-director, Lee David Zlotoff, honestly thought the movie he was making was a grand tragedy rather than a mere melodrama. Sure enough, as Zlotoff cautiously unfolds his sentimental tale–about a dreamy…
During a summer movie season dominated by a 300-pound celluloid gorilla named Independence Day, The USA Film Festival has offered a smashing August menu of sci-fi classics to remind moviegoers that once, not so long ago, the genre provided greater opportunities for audience involvement than thrills and chills. This is…
thursday august 22 The Comeback of Freddy Chicken: Internationally acclaimed Dallas-based performance artist Fred Curchack is a lamb on the phone, a lion when he steps on stage. Curchack, a hands-on kinda performance artist, is happy to give us a ring and follow up with his own bit of publicity…
This is the time of year when Heifer Women insist on wearing white shorts that look like they were designed for Sumo wrestlers. What’s going on with this? Entire Wal-Marts are filled with human beanbag chairs stuffed into the kind of sportswear that only looks good on Gabriela Sabatini. In…
Although different scenes may hop from century to century, a stage play really must concern itself with the moment. In the theater, real time isn’t a trick the director and producer pull from a toy box full of gimmicks, as in filmmaking. The playwright, the actors, and the director are…
John Carpenter had big-studio backing after the sleeper success of his independent thriller, Halloween, yet his follow-up film, Escape from New York, had the same cheap, low-budget look of some cheesy B-movie made by a film-school geek–which, essentially, it was. The movie was pure silliness: Could any audience in 1981…
Although my father has hidden it well, his greatest parenting disappointment probably has been that a jock like him produced an offspring as indifferent to sports as his only son. Sure, the Olympics are great, rah-rah-rah for the college team and all that, but I must be missing something more…
Here’s a dirty little secret about film critics that won’t make an amusing bon mot at the next National Society of Film Critics dinner, unless you want Pauline Kael to introduce her cane to your head: Critics are herd animals by instinct. There are disagreements, to be sure; the next…
thursday august 15 Seven Underground Films: Press material for the traveling program “Seven Underground Films Tour 13 Cities in 13 Days in One ’65 Chevy” indicates that the short films on this bill are united by “an artful lowlife sensibility.” Co-sponsored by the nationally celebrated Austin Film Society, which recently…
What are the seven most dreaded words in the history of civilization? Of course, you know what I’m talking about. “I need to talk about the relationship.” Wanda Bodine was on me about this last week. She left it on the answering machine. After a three-day drunk in Mexico, I…
Nicky Silver is probably the hottest young playwright lurking in off-Broadway right now, with his last play The Food Chain easily his most critically and financially successful New York production to date. Additionally, since the ’90s began his works have been staged dozens of times by big-city theaters, including three…
The season began unspectacularly, with no sign of questionable new trends. Then slowly but surely, this summer’s insidious onslaught made itself known. First, Eddie Murphy’s Nutty Professor, an obese research scientist, discovers a “secret formula” through which he can re-create himself by transforming his own DNA. Next, in Multiplicity, Michael…
I don’t know what I expected Douglas McGrath to look and sound like after I had been told the writer-director of Miramax’s sterling new version of Emma was born and raised in Midland, Texas. But the last thing I imagined was the polite, dapper, dandyish man with the glittering eyes…
