I’m stuck in the waiting room of a car-repair shop. My only companions are a humming cola vending machine, a gurgling coffee maker, and a blue iMac that–every few minutes, in a soft, raspy female voice–says “Please…touch me…now.” Though the computer probably is just selling maintenance agreements or car accessories,…
Warning Sign No. 1 that a TV series isn’t going to stick around long: It gets dumped in the summer, when 58 people are watching television shows not named Survivor. Warning Sign No. 2: Said series debut gets shelved at the last minute, meaning every TV critic in the country…
Turns out it’s not as far from Waxahachie to Off-Broadway as we thought–or from the tights-clad bawdy high jinks of the 16th century to 21st-century neo-vaudeville. Those actors who bravely don English peasant attire to stroll through Scarborough Faire and harass sweating patrons can only be doing what in showbiz…
It’s nearing 6 p.m. as the happy-hour crowd shuffles through heavy doors. Making the trek to Addison and this typically trendy suburban pub–Rock Bottom Brewery, a generic Belt Line eatery featuring greasy personal pizzas and cold hot wings, among other good-if-you’re-hammered sustenance–was an adventure for most, considering the Tollway’s ludicrous…
Why is the film called Disney’s The Kid? Is it really possible that the studio was so concerned that someone might actually mistake the film for an update of the Chaplin classic that the brand name had to be formally incorporated in the title? Or was this an attempt to…
Is there a more bankrupt genre than the parody movie? Many movies nowadays are so painfully self-aware and referential that there often isn’t much left to make fun of, which is especially the case for Kevin Williamson-penned films like Scream and its clones, clichéd teen-slasher movies that were regarded as…
Director Alison Maclean, from Canada by way of New Zealand, turns her camera on the American landscape–or, more accurately, the underbelly of the American landscape–in Jesus’ Son, an uneven but often effective adaptation of Denis Johnson’s autobiographical book. Billy Crudup stars as a thoroughly marginalized character known to his friends…
In his discomfiting 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind painted a none-too-flattering portrait of a post-Jaws Steven Spielberg. The author portrayed him as a raging egomaniac who wanted a writing credit on the film, though he contributed very little to the script. Indeed, the film’s most famous monologue,…
How many regular patrons of Dallas Summer Musicals will wander innocently into Parade, the latest imported presentation, with images inside their heads of cheerfully tacky floats, colorful twirling parasols, and the painted round faces of children? This very new musical from playwright Alfred Uhry, director Harold Prince, and composer Jason…
Banter The brilliant arts pundits at The New York Times were profoundly perplexed about why the national ratings for this year’s Tony Awards TV broadcast were not only low (that’s typical), but among the lowest in the show’s history. Talk about confusing your fishbowl for the Atlantic Ocean. Since the…
The kids were playing in three areas–the excavation site, fossil-rubbing station, and dinosaur book-and-toy table–when the adults disappeared around the corner into Texas Dinosaurs: Life and Death in the Big Bend. They had seen the strobe-light lightning bolts and heard the recorded sounds of a thunderstorm rolling from where they…
Had Julian Glover not broken his leg at the beginning of January, it’s quite likely he would be off filming a movie. But, Glover reminds, having a broken leg in the movie business is like being pregnant in the movie business: “It lasts five years,” meaning casting agents don’t phone…
I’m not from ’round here, y’all. Don’t speak with a drawl. Don’t wear a big hat or boots or nut-hugger jeans. Don’t drink Shiner, whatever that is. Definitely–underscore, boldface, italics, capitals–don’t listen to country music. So maybe I just don’t get it. Maybe I’m too dense, too East Coast, too…
The press kit for The Perfect Storm contains the damnedest thing I’ve ever read. Right at the top, there is a “special request to the press” that reads, in full: “Warner Bros. Pictures would appreciate the press’ cooperation in not revealing the ending of this film to their readers, viewers…
Despite what many believe, it doesn’t come down to explosions, star power, or millions of greenbacks thrown at the producers. The true indicator of success for a summer movie is The Moment, that one memorable scene that sticks in your head, the one that Billy Crystal parodies the following spring…
So this is what Robert De Niro’s career has come to, starring in films in which he parodies his most familiar roles until he becomes the master painter urinating on his own beautiful canvases. Last year, it was pleasant and harmless enough: Analyze This was no Sopranos, but at least…
A lot of people love Billy Wilder’s 1957 movie version of Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution, if only for the chance to see Marlene Dietrich hag it up as the mysterious crone who delivers incriminating letters to a murder defendant’s attorney. Her dual role gave away the film’s most…
Ah, Independence Day. It’s the time to ponder our good fortune of living in this great country of ours; the time to give thanks for our freedom; the time to patronize overcrowded lakes and eat potato salad. What a grand day, when we can find some really good bargains on…
In one of the remarkable horse-racing passages in Jane Smiley’s new novel, a first-time jockey named Roberto aboard a workaday thoroughbred named Justa Bob lets the gentle beast do the thinking. The horse, running in perfect tempo like a metronome, avoids the rail and picks his way through various openings…
For most Americans, the social and political issues underlying Jose Luis Cuerda’s ButterflyButterflybBu may seem remote at best. The tensions between republicans and fascists in Spain after the fall of that nation’s monarchy in 1931, and dictator Francisco Franco’s victory in the bloody Spanish Civil War, may have stirred strong…
My philosophy is, if I throw enough words against the wall about how you should get out of the recliner and support your city theater artists, some of ’em have gotta stick. But this week, your second assignment is to head out to the coolest video/DVD store near you and…
In Me, Myself & Irene, Jim Carrey plays a meek Rhode Island state trooper named Charlie whose aggressions are so pent-up they finally erupt in the form of a second personality, “Hank.” Where Charlie silently endures potty-mouthed curses from little girls skipping rope, Hank swipes ice-cream cones from kids at…
