Do you ever ask yourself what major motion pictures have been produced in your own backyard? Well, so did we and it was pretty surprising what we dug our of this concrete pretzel called Dallas/Fort Worth. Here’s a list of 10 prominent D/FW filmed flicks (in alphabetic order)! A few…
It’s a warm spring evening on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood, and the crowd jostling for hors d’oeuvres in the lobby of the Paramount Theater exudes the anticipatory hum of a gala studio premiere. Only tonight’s feature presentation isn’t a new summer blockbuster or year-end prestige release. Rather, it’s…
Arriving in theaters on the back of a portentous ad campaign, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus assumes the air of something more than a summer movie, a blockbuster-with-brains that links the genesis and the ultimate fate of mankind beyond the stars. It is, incidentally, the story of an ambitious mission gone wrong…
Three generations of fine actresses are squandered in Bruce Beresford’s Peace, Love & Misunderstanding, an incompetently structured film that pits hippies against squares with the usual wearying results. This head-hammering, clash-of-values family-healing dramedy makes sure to literalize all of its uplifting messages; gentle admonitions about “letting go” are immediately followed…
Any event that combines tapas and Spanish cinema shoots to the top of our priorities list, so when we got word that a new monthly film series called Pata Negra was launching at Texas Theatre and doling out tapas, we showed up unattractively hungry, with napkin in hand. For a…
1.’Game of Thrones’ I’d say “Blackwater” was the best episode of G.O.T. to date, unless you can’t get over last season’s dragon-reveal finale. And, really, get over it. The dragons obvi won’t be ready for crazy, fire-breathing attacks any time soon. So we have to be happy with a cinematic…
Now that television has, for the most part, settled into blessed respite for the next three months, the onset of summer designates an ideal moment to step away from that noise and to recharge one’s sluggish mind with some cerebral health food. Making that ambition all the more attainable, The…
If ever there were a perfect example of pure, fresh, classical simplicity unnecessarily trodden under with complications, it is Snow White and the Huntsman. Had it trusted to the native charm of its cast and the sensory seduction of its often-astonishing images to humbly, naively retell its story, this Snow…
It’s 1965, the rainy end of summer on the rocky coast of a fictional New England isle. Twelve-year-old Sam (Jared Gilman), a scrawny, bespectacled outcast with an unusual aptitude for cartography, disappears from the Khaki Scout camp, absconding with a couple of bedrolls and an air rifle, and leaving behind…
In a movie season worshipped for its CGI-boosted, spiritually bankrupt juvenilia, it’s heartening to know that filmmakers still create — and maybe more significantly, that studios still distribute — summer entertainment for grown-ups. Not that those buckets of popcorn are going to empty themselves, but who needs to be reminded…
Can any one of the millions of Americans who saw Men in Black 2 in 2002 describe its plot today? A single scene? I saw both MIB movies upon their original release and have as little memory of the experience as if I’d been mind-wiped with one of those “neuralyzing”…
The early ’90s brought us so many important milestones: fly girls droppin’ mad booty shake beats, the tragic ending to the VHS vs. Beta battle, and a washed-up Erik Estrada, post CHiPs. If only we could remember where we buried all of those time capsules… Oh, hell. What if I…
Any excuse to enjoy an evening outdoors is welcome, but a free movie — be it in a pool or lounging lazily on a patch of grass — will always top the list. Tomorrow night launches AT&T Center’s outdoor film series, and it’s kicking off with a screening of The…
Warning: This editorial is rated NC-17 due to awesomeness and some brief mention of the word _____ (Editor’s Note: Apologies, but this word has been removed to withhold the sanctity of this sinking blog. You may replace it with “poop,” “farty fart pants” or “trouser eel.”) This week, the infamous…
Since this week saw the major networks give their “upfront” presentations of new fall shows, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a break from the recappage and run down what’s to come. GOOD TO GREAT Revolution (NBC) – A world of no electricity is, frankly, terrifying to me…
CentralTrak keeps doing its damndest to educate you chillun, and tonight is the fifth of six Thursday night Texas film screenings in “the Cage” at 800 Exposition Ave. They’re offering popcorn, cult celluloid and some serious nerdery — in addition to a Q&A with John Slate, who portrayed a Kennedy…
In his third collaboration with director Larry Charles, Sacha Baron Cohen plays Admiral General Aladeen, the young, dumb dictator of fictional North African nation Wadiya. Under Aladeen’s rule, oil-producing, uranium-enriching Wadiya is a hostile threat to global peace and capitalism. And yet, Aladeen himself is so attracted to Western culture…
Every once in a while, a movie comes along that’s so utterly shameless that it achieves a certain grandeur. Peter Berg’s Battleship, which I swear to God is described in its Wikipedia entry as an “American science fiction action naval war film,” is one such movie. Over the past few…
“I think that men are having an identity crisis, but they don’t really know it.” So says “biological anthropologist” Helen Fisher, speaking in Mansome, Morgan Spurlock’s anecdotal pop documentary about masculine self-presentation in the 21st century, which allegedly attempts to define that crisis. Mansome is divided into chapters — “The…
To the tired, the weary, the overly-energy-drink-indulged participants of the 24-Hour Video Race: We salute you. The annual competition concluded last week and gave a few parameters: a phrase, a theme, a prop and location for all participants to include in their films. After that, they had 24 fleeting hours…
1. Hollie Cavanagh’s puh-fect Idol dream ends: We were all thinking it. “She’s adorable, but how is our half-British McKinney flower still going strong on American Idol, when so many superior performers have been kicked to the curb before her?” But somehow, some way, our Hollie got by on a…
A significant portion of Tim Burton’s output over the past decade has been concerned with slipping the “Burton treatment” to susceptible texts: Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — and now, Dark Shadows. A supernaturally themed daily daytime soap,…
