For now, Reed Easterwood is content to give away his music, quite literally. His new record, Absolute Blue, means so much to him that, until now, he has yet to sell a single copy; to profit from the music would, it seems, diminish its rewards. So instead, he has given…
Theater classes generally describe Marxist German playwright-poet Bertolt Brecht as being politically opposed to entertainment for entertainment’s sake. Theater artists should always keep audiences aware that they’re watching a play, he instructed us, and should try to remind audiences as much as possible of social injustices that collect like trails…
One True Thing, directed by Carl Franklin, is trying to be the Terms of Endearment of the ’90s. Scripted by Karen Croner from the 1995 Anna Quindlen novel of the same name, One True Thing pushes the same high-gloss homilies about making peace with your family, and it caps everything…
For better or worse, the confessional memoir has become the most popular literary form of our time, prompting ballplayers, Irish bartenders, prosecuting attorneys, and mothers of quadruplets everywhere to lay bare their deepest thoughts and secrets, all based on the presumption that their miserable lives are more interesting than anyone…
You can’t keep a good ship down. No sooner have a billion or so Titanic videos hit the shelves than a little-known Spanish moviemaker complicates the issue with a French-language film called, in English, The Chambermaid on the Titanic. Cheap profiteering? An attempt to cash in? Absolutely not. In fact…
Jackie Chan’s American fans–and I include myself among them–have suffered through a nervous 1998 so far. The momentum the star earned with the 1996 release of Rumble in the Bronx has seemed to dissipate steadily: An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, the first American production to employ Chan since…
thursday september 17 You may not know who artist Cabe Booth is, but if you’ve been to Deep Ellum more than a few times, you’ve probably seen his work. A few of his murals adorn the walls of the Good-Latimer Tunnel, and his black and white portraits of local bands…
So he’s had a bit part in a movie and starred in Lipton Tea and Gap commercials. Are we losing our beloved Junior to the big time? When Junior Brown first found his regional spotlight earlier this decade with the likes of “Broke Down South of Dallas” and “My Baby…
As waves of turn-of-the-century nostalgia follow in the wake of Titanic, the unsinkable, ever profitable movie, trendees are showing newfound interest in the era by romanticizing it with dinners at Maxim’s, art nouveau, and, well, luxurious voyages on ocean liners. Lucky for us, the Dallas Museum of Art is offering…
On September 5, against the lowly Minnesota Twins, Juan Gonzalez broke the Texas Rangers’ single-season runs-batted-in record by getting hit with a pitch while the bases were loaded. The moment occurred during the third inning of a game the Rangers would eventually win, and it passed as quickly and as…
Joyce Carol Oates, a journeywoman of American letters who has probably been discussed more carefully than she’s been read, has written about rapists, child-killers, and animal mutilators through a poet’s eye. Throughout her career, she’s been accused of having an obsession with violence, which is correct as far as it…
Leave it to a 26-year-old eccentric to make it snow in Dallas in August. Yet filling an art space in Exposition Park with cheerfully whirling snow is the least of Erick Swenson’s magic show. Visions of those sad, creepy animals he’s got traipsing around in the dramatic white stuff are…
Matt Damon, the blond matinee idol, has apparently become Hollywood’s idea of a deep thinker. After playing a math whiz in last year’s Good Will Hunting, he’s now been reinvented as a poker genius in John Dahl’s Rounders. So anybody who had doubts about the second coming of Albert Einstein…
The opening credits of Simon Birch assert that it was “suggested” by John Irving’s popular 1989 novel A Prayer for Owen Meany. Actually, it’s a thin but relatively faithful adaptation of the first few chapters of Irving’s comic ramble through the nature of religious faith, predestination, and heroism. Screenwriter Mark…
Men don’t get it. Moms don’t get it. Sometimes, even your roommate or best friend doesn’t get it. But if you bray and carp and vent long enough, someone will listen; someone will begin to understand the precious particulars of a young woman’s sexuality–whether they’re interested or not. That’s the…
Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once described the U.S.-Mexico border as a 2,000-mile-long scar. The frontier, drawn at the end of the U.S-Mexico war, is a permanent reminder to Mexicans of their country’s humiliating defeat in a war that resulted in America’s claiming half of Mexico’s territory as its “manifest destiny.”…
thursday september 10 Paul Rudnick’s critically acclaimed play Jeffrey had an incredibly successful run earlier this year in Fort Worth, playing to packed houses and capturing several awards from the Fort Worth Theatre Guild, including Best Studio Production and Best Actor. The original cast has assembled once again for a…
The horror. It’s like a Ray Bradbury short story–little kids know way more about technology than you do, and God only knows where that could lead. Face it, buddy, the world of computers and the Internet has left you eating dust, but you’re too scared to log on. “But I’m…
The early plays of Anton Chekhov were given such a cool reception by late-19th-century Russian theatergoers that the poor bastard almost quit the biz to devote all his energies to family doctoring, the profession for which he was trained. Russian theatergoers were accustomed to watching actors paint their faces with…
Shane, the teenage hero of Mark Christopher’s 54, wears the petulant expression of a Raphaelite cherub, and he comes complete with a halo of curly blond hair. He’s played by a pretty newcomer with the exotic name of Ryan Phillippe, but there’s nothing exotic about the voice that comes out…
In the pecking order of tragic black musicians, Frankie Lymon can’t hold a votive candle to, say, Charlie Parker or Billie Holiday. But now, like that pair, the late doo-wopper has his own movie–or, rather, he has his own space in a movie that, for better or worse, is really…
How vulnerable children are! And how wounding life can be. The Thief, a Russian film set in the post-World War II Stalinist era, was one of five nominees vying for last year’s Academy Award as the Best Foreign Language Film. (It lost to Character.) Written and directed by Pavel Chukhrai…
