thursday april 18 The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Get a jump on the sure-to-be-insipid animated Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which will be released this June, with a surefire unpredictable evening. This 1923 film version was the first cinematic take on the classic and remains (Charles Laughton’s…
There are certain names on a video box that just cry out: “Rent me! Rent me! Rent me!” I guess for some people it’s Mira “Thank You, Daddy” Sorvino, but for me there’s nothing like a good Brigitte Nielsen video. Will she have hair? What color will it be? Will…
Congratulate artistic director Gretchen Swen and her Extra Virgin Performance Cooperative, which turns 3 years old this month. Toast her not only for surviving this long in a local theater scene paralyzed by crushing audience indifference, but also for refusing to trade her integrity in the bargain. Case in point:…
When a Los Angeles publicist for a major Hollywood studio asks, “Which Kid do you want to interview?” the choice is tough. Two days apart, two different staffers in Paramount’s L.A. publicity office called with offers to chat with any of the five Kids in the Hall about the feature…
The original screen version of Jane Eyre, released in 1944–with Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles, both at the height of their powers–is one of the minor masterpieces of the studio system’s Golden Age. Like all the best Victorian pictures of the time (The Heiress, Gaslight, and others) the entire production…
thursday april 11 Guarded Territories: The author of the new play Guarded Territories, which is being presented by the Beardsley Living Theatre in its North Texas premiere, was born in Canada, educated in the United Kingdom (where he studied scriptwriting), and currently lives in Fort Worth. Yet it’s not a…
Have you noticed how there’s been a backlash against the use of stunt breasts? Guys are deciding that they’re not that crazy about artificial breastskis anymore. There are only so many Silicone Sacs you can look at before you go: “You know what? I knew this girl who had breasts…
thursday april 4 Ray Wylie Hubbard, Darden Smith, Chuck Pyle: This three-headliner event at Sons of Hermann Hall is called “Writers in the Round,” which in this open-mic crazy town suggests yet another convergence of literary muses. Actually, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Darden Smith, and Chuck Pyle all work firmly within…
The realists of this world have the romantics by the balls, but the romantics refuse to cry uncle. Instead, they produce epics like War and Peace, Moby Dick, or Angels in America–works which suggest there is some kind of overarching moral or spiritual purpose to the universe, even though the…
On an uncharacteristically chilly morning in March, writer-director David O. Russell looks every bit the brooding auteur: uncombed black hair stands up in patches all over his head; flinty brown eyes manage to penetrate and deflect every bold question. Russell doesn’t take his image seriously, but he’s earned it in…
Most domestic dramas fall into two types: The profound kind tends to be confrontational and even loud, where the true characters of the participants are forged in an intense furnace of conflict, and big emotions get played out for everyone to see. The gentle kind has conflict, too, but the…
First came topless dancing. Then came table dancing. (This doesn’t mean the tables dance, it means the girls dance on your table or at your table, even though sometimes the table is more attractive than the girl.) Then came couch dancing. And couch dancing begat lap dancing. I think the…
Leather dildos, oral sex, untamable erections.These are the kinds of objectionable subjects that right-thinking Americans want to bar from their homes via the mighty V-chip. The rest of us, however, couldn’t imagine life without them. Neither could the ancient Greeks, those pioneers of such dangerous concepts as democracy and self-expression…
Diabolique, the black-and-white 1955 French classic from director Henri Georges Clouzot, seems like a murder thriller, but it’s much closer in tone to a ghost story. The callous headmaster of a boys’ school cheats on his prim wife Mia (played by the director’s own wife, Vera Clouzot) with the more…
As Antonia’s Line begins, Antonia (Willeke van Ammelrooy) is 88, and fully aware that she will be dead by the end of the day. As a kind of final purification, she fondly recounts the events of her life, beginning with her return 40 years ago to the village in the…
thursday march 28 Soup’s On: The media information for “Soup’s On,” the performance showcase sponsored by The Writer’s Garret and Stone Soup Workshop, is titled “BYOA–Bring Your Own Art.” That pretty much sums up the collegial attitude of “Soup’s On,” which is scheduled the last Thursday of every month. The…
What is this deal with three people in bed? I’ve reviewed at least 10 movies in the last two years in which people are aardvarking around in weird combinations, making the sign of the triple-snouted octopus with so many arms and legs flopping around on the bed covers that you…
Try this for an impressive balancing act: Tony Kushner, 39, the most acclaimed American playwright of his generation, can wash dishes, grind coffee beans, and sling blade-sharp observations about Marx, Brecht, and the Christian Coalition with little apparent strain. He does all three at the same time during an hour-long…
When is a kid’s film not for kids? When it uses child characters to portray universal adult dilemmas, when one simple but philosophically profound problem propels all the action, and when a witty script attempts to capture the foibles of grownups in all their childish (or, more accurately, unchildlike) guile…
Among my most cherished television memories are the outrageous movie parodies shown almost weekly on the old Carol Burnett Show. Burnett’s staff had a genius for writing those bits–distilling a two-hour movie down to its essential characters, events, and motivations, then extracting from what was left 15 minutes worth of…
friday march 22 Sorrow and Solace: Every American military action since the mid-’70s–Kuwait, Panama, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia–is examined up, down, and sideways by the press and politicians for any sign of infection by that most dreaded of American viruses–Vietnamitis. Everyone wants to know if the latest deployment of troops…
Movies hold a special, sentimental place in Giuseppe Tornatore’s heart. His second feature, 1988’s Cinema Paradiso, was the loving counterpoint to more somber films like The Last Picture Show. By providing escape from the dangers and despair of rural living in post-war Italy, moviegoing served two functions: one as entertainment,…
