Back in December, the stunningly gorgeous trailer for Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life arrived and blew some minds. Somewhere in between the montage of space, rivers and birth was a brief shot stained-glass ceiling of the Chapel of Thanksgiving in Dallas. It got Unfair Park editor Robert Wilonsky wondering:…
We’ve got a government- and corporate-sanctioned holiday today, so we’re taking it. Except we’d have a serious guilt complex if we didn’t give you something entertaining and um, questionably educational for the end of the day. And obviously it should involve cats. So, enjoy…
Since Silkwood was the first major motion production filmed at The Studios at Las Colinas, the Muller Film and Television Education Foundation is hosting a mixer and special screening tonight. And by mixer they mean the 1983 drama will be playing in the background while you sip a drink, nibble…
Kung Fu Panda 2 opened yesterday, just in time for the big box office Memorial Day weekend. The sequel to the charming martial arts cartoon will no doubt do massive ticket sales, but it won’t be the first time an Asianploitation picture cleans up at the movies. Asian culture has…
There is a large spot in my soft heart reserved for the X-Men. Growing up, my Saturday mornings weren’t spent playing in the dirt and being a stereotypical boy, but glued to the TV watching the X-Men cartoon. I collected all the action figures and my favorite was Gambit. You…
This latest blast of unwavering miserablism from Denis Villeneuve, Oscar-nominated and everything, reaches for something deeper than mere stroppy melodrama. Adapted from a 2003 play by Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies (“scorched”) obliquely chronicles the adult life of Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal), an Arab woman living in Canada whose sudden death sends…
Famed martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-ping (The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) melds his trademark wire-work with gonzo CGI fantasy in directing True Legend, a dizzying action-packed tale of familial treachery, sacrifice and loyalty. In countless over-the-top set pieces, Yuen delivers striking combat clarity without sacrificing the visceral editing and…
Most sequels are born of good box office rather than good ideas, but it’s hard to imagine a more calculating, creatively bankrupt piece of real estate than The Hangover Part II. Trade out Las Vegas for Bangkok, a tiger for a monkey, a lactating hooker for a trannie stripper, a…
L’amour fou opens with unbroken footage from designer Yves Saint-Laurent’s 2002 speech announcing his retirement from fashion, after 40-plus years at the helm of the massively important label bearing his name. It’s a stunning performance, flowing from naked confessional (“I have known the false friends of tranquilizers…and emerged dazzled but…
One of the best things about going to film festivals is taking a chance on a movie you know almost nothing about and coming out hours later inspired, broken, or slack-jawed; it’s the indie gems that make the exhaustion well worth your time. Yes, attending the premieres of the big…
In a confluence of events that involved meat helmets, gorilla suits and balls, Dallas Observer’s Mixmaster (hey, that’s us!) made an entry into the 24 Video Race last week. The race, as the name indicates, messed with our circadian rhythm enough to construct a film around not going to the…
A week ago today, Oliver Peck and the gang at Elm St. Tattoo were all in the middle of this year’s Friday the 13th tattoo marathon. Surely by now, Oliver and friends are fully recovered from their 24 hour non-stop inking crusade, and those on the sharp end of the…
Apologies for not updating you sooner, but things (of course) did not work in my favor when I arrived in France. We were expecting to cover the whole festival, but Gordon and the Whale’s sponsor for the festival intended for us to cover only a few films. My associate, Joshua…
While filmmaker Ivana Corsale was growing up in Sicily, the Camorra crime network was slowly transforming a region just north of her home, known as the Campania felix, into a toxic wasteland with decades of illicit dumping.The environmental degradation of the land the Romans named the “happy country” is the…
Late Nights at the DMA satisfies art and night owls on the third Friday of each month year-round, but neighbors at the Nasher Sculpture Center have officially returned with Late Nights’ warm-weather, outdoor counterpart, ’til Midnight at the Nasher. The music and movie series kicks off this Friday, with a…
After sinking into self-important tedium with its prior two overstuffed installments, Pirates of the Caribbean seemed destined for permanent burial at sea. And yet the soggy franchise and Johnny Depp’s foppish rapscallion return again for On Stranger Tides—to search for the fountain of youth, no less, a quest that Chicago…
On the other side is the trailer for Crispin Glover’s What Is It?, Part One of his so-called “It” trilogy and an altogether unpleasant experience — and one entirely unsafe for the workplace. Which I mention only because the Texas Theatre has just announced that on July 15, the man…
Last night’s screening of Restrepo at the Texas Theatre and the accompanying photography exhibit at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center lead the audience through a close examination of poignantly heartbreaking global realities. From the soldiers in combat in Restrepo to the dust-coated survivors of the September 11th attacks in a…
My name is Chase Whale and I’m a movie addict. This is a really special week for me, Chase, movie addict, and there are two reasons for that. On Wednesday I headed out to France to cover the Cannes Film Festival for Stella Artois and film culture website GordonandtheWhale.com. Now,…
Tenacious indie Kelly Reichardt has specialized in quirky, minimalist quasi–road movies in which loners come unmoored in some great American space. Meek’s Cutoff is that and more—one great leap into the 19th-century unknown. The members of a small wagon train crossing the Oregon Trail in 1845 follow their bombastic, wrong-headed…
Bridesmaids is a high-profile test case. Directed by Paul Feig (a sitcom journeyman most lovingly known as the creator of Freaks and Geeks), it’s the first female-fronted comedy produced by Hollywood kingpin Judd Apatow, who has weathered criticism in the past for his brand’s dude-centric point of view. It’s also…
Greatly expanded from a four-page, single-situation story by Raymond Carver, Dan Rush’s first feature, Everything Must Go, is an ambitious if enervated vehicle for Will Ferrell—playing it straight as Nick Halsey, a middle-class drunk fired from his job and locked out of his suburban home by an irate, never-seen spouse…
