OKLAHOMA CITY–There was a time when he was deemed a dissenter, a cancerous growth too talented to biop. That changed quickly, of course, and former managers from Joe Torre to Tony LaRussa cut him out and replaced the prodigious outfielder with the more congenial while publicly branding him a malcontent…
Success is relative in Hollywood, like a third cousin twice-removed who doesn’t recognize you at family reunions, and doesn’t care to. Fame is so fleeting it has a month-by-month lease. Six years ago, Christopher McQuarrie was as famous as any screenwriter on the backlot known as Los Angeles. He had…
Whatever one might believe about the past centuries of English oppression of the Irish, one thing is sure: No matter how raw a deal they’ve gotten in real life, the Irish haven’t been shortchanged on the screen. From the Easter Rising to the more recent Troubles, the conflict has been…
Try to resist the urge to yell “Focus!” during the first five minutes or so of An Affair of Love. It’s been a while since a director has actively utilized such tools as focus and color to hint at deeper truths, but Frederic Fonteyne (Max and Bobo) knows what he’s…
Amanda Peet has extraordinarily large teeth; you’re surprised she can close her mouth. It may be in vogue for hot, young, would-be sex symbols to have a set of brightly polished choppers prominent in neighboring counties (cf. Neve Campbell, Casper Van Dien, or Denise Richards), but Amanda’s impressive ivories belong…
As a tardy replacement for Theatre Quorum’s previously announced second production this season (they ran into casting problems with a Marsha Norman script), Joe Egg is a peculiar selection. Almost everyone has heard of Peter Nichols’ 1967 script–though perhaps not with its original title, A Day in the Death of…
A cast member of How the Other Half Loves, the latest Alan Ayckbourn farce frothing at Theatre Three, reports that they are in a situation similar to the cast of Joe Egg–a bunch of Americans playing with British lilts in the midst of an authentic Brit. “She catches us on…
Hollywood honors our heroes by making them, and those around them, look like buffoons, clowns, cartoon characters. The entertainment industry, which never tires of retelling stories long after they’ve become clichés, never gets it right, because they don’t know or don’t care. In its rush to “tell the truth,” it…
While his teammates prepare for tonight’s game at Cleveland, he is a thousand miles removed, in both locale and mindset. Soon, the Rangers will take batting practice, shag fly balls, look over pitching reports. They’ll ready themselves for the Indians, for another game on another muggy summer evening in a…
“I’m not the celebrity type,” says Vincent D’Onofrio, and he does not lie. His is a household name in very few neighborhoods; it appears in film credits buried just beneath those of actors more famous, or just luckier. Rare is the filmgoer who utters the words, “Dude, let’s go check…
Be cool, get chicks.” While that’s paraphrased and boiled down, it’s nonetheless the essential creed of Dex (Donal Logue), the corpulent connoisseur of carnality who lumbers through this debut feature from Jenniphr Goodman as if he’s Paul Bunyan and every woman in sight is a tree. Overweight and underemployed, Dex…
The Tao of Duncan The Tao that can be followed is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. This is the koan that begins the Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu. This is the fat guy who scores all the hot chicks? Hmph…
Turns out that when goodfellas don’t die–when they don’t get shot or blown up in a car or beaten to death with a baseball bat–they move to Miami’s South Beach. They drive tour buses for the elderly, take orders at Burger Kings, give dime-a-dance lessons to old women in need…
Following in the grand cinematic tradition of cheerleading films– movies such as Gimme an ‘F,’ Revenge of the Cheerleaders, and Debbie Does Dallas (both the original and the why-bother remakes)–Bring It On is about beautiful, young girls in short skirts who have to overcome the fact that they suck. On…
Despite its late-summer release date–usually a sign of studio jitters–The Art of War is a mostly well-constructed action flick with a number of flashy, well-choreographed fight and chase scenes. Wesley Snipes stars as Neil Shaw, a supersecret operative of a supersecret “dirty tricks” agency, whose methods are more than a…
When William Shakespeare wrote King Lear (it appeared at the Royal Court in 1606, among his first tragedies) he was obsessed with sight, what it means to see, and the ways that faculty deceives and reveals. That’s arguably the dominant theme in his tale about an imperious but feeble king…
If Gloria Estefan and Jesus knew how many times their likeness had been immortalized in prison art, they could demand a guest spot on HBO’s prison drama Oz. Paño arte, Spanish for “handkerchief art,” is currently on display at the Bath House Cultural Center in an exhibition titled Art Behind…
All’s faireFor years we’ve harbored an idea for the perfect costume for a Medieval fair (or faire, as many aficionados prefer to call it): The Black Death. Dress in a black faceless cape, carry a wooden staff, and pass out black “X” badges to three-quarters of the people in attendance…
Irish charm and British eccentricity are hot properties on this side of the pond — especially among U.S. moviegoers. Witness the phenomenal success of The Secret of Roan Inish, in which a 10-year-old Irish girl finds her lost brother living among seals off her country’s rugged western coast, or of…
The practice of motion-picture production in China is clearly in flux. While films have long emanated from government studios, political changes in the past decade or so have led to co-productions with other countries — Farewell My Concubine (with Hong Kong — then a British territory), Dr. Bethune (with Canada…
What right do theatergoers have to expect two very different individuals–folks of vastly divergent age, experience, political, and religious sensibilities–to cross the chasm and embrace? Of course, we’ve come not just to expect such a thing to occur on stage, but to view it as a ticketbuyer’s privilege, if only…
I have never read The Odyssey, A Tale of Two Cities, Pride and Prejudice, or, for that matter, the Bible. But I have read, from cover to cover, Occupation: Skateboarder, the just-published autobiography from Tony Hawk. I have never seen most of the films of Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, or…
