Love ‘im or hate ‘im, Hal Hartley has invaded the ranks of lauded indie filmmakers with quiet determination. His material–intentionally flat, talky, and existentially “hip”–usually involves urban anti-heroes and -heroines stumbling through modern emotional war zones, most often those of love and commitment. And boy, do they talk. Not Whit…
Searching for Carrie Fisher may be the best little gem in the festival. Too bad it’s buried in the otherwise unremarkable “Love and Obsession” compilation. You may have to sit through some pretty bad selections to get to it, but it’s definitely worth the wait. Then again, you already may…
“What is a suffete?” Chava Ruderman asks. The 8-year-old has come across the curious word in an ancient book she now lugs from the desk in her bedroom to a sewing room next door, where her mother plucks stray pins from the floor. Chava’s mom, Chana Ruderman, an English teacher…
Bart Weiss, artistic director of the Dallas Video Festival, loves every single entry in his international video showcase’s 12th year, again hosted by the Dallas Theater Center in its Kalita Humphreys Theater. He has watched each of them from beginning to end, and a helluva lot more that didn’t make…
“Free My Pee-wee!” That clarion call from outraged fans rose up in the form of buttons, T-shirts, and bumper stickers just a few days after July 26, 1991, when Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman, was arrested for masturbating in a Florida adult theater while watching the film Nancy Nurse. It…
Al’s pals Anonymous sources within U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins’ office say he is angry at how The Dallas Morning News is covering the federal bribery indictment against city council member Al Lipscomb. Those close to the case call the reporting “just bullshit.” “They’re doing ‘[a] day in the life of…
In an unexpected move, last week a divided Dallas County Commissioners Court voted to raise the salaries of independent court translators. “I was pleased to see it,” says Lana McDaniel, presiding felony judge at the Frank Crowley courts building. “Frankly, I was kind of surprised.” As the Dallas Observer reported…
Lying to taxpayers about their taxes is a basic political skill some politicians grasp sooner than others. Veteran members of the Dallas City Council are trying now to get new member Laura Miller to wise up and stop behaving as if they really meant it when they promised not to…
Schoolhouse putsch Jim Schutze’s “Gutless coup” [March 11] catalogs the complete lack of educational ideas in the public discussion surrounding DISD. Because the superintendent search has been prolonged and controversial, whoever ends up with the job will be faced with ridiculously inflated expectations in addition, no doubt, to a divided…
The longer you sit there, the creepier things get. Goose-bumps creepy. As you perch in a metal folding chair at one of three “discussion tables” in the all-purpose room of the Jaycee Zaragoza Rec Center, the evening’s events somehow seem the opposite of deja vu: A familiar event slowly begins…
In 1997, a trio of consumer groups with an agenda to embarrass legislators set out to prove what everyone around the Capitol had long suspected: The business interests that lobby state legislators are also the chief contributors to their campaigns. The groups deployed teams of college students to sift through…
On New Year’s Day, when A.H. Belo Corp. launched its 24-hour, all-news cable television station, it touted the enterprise as a statewide effort, hoping to cover the news of Texas for every Texan with a cable box on his set. But there is a hole in that claim that stretches…
The political hush over the Ross Avenue headquarters of the Dallas Independent School District in the last week is no harbinger of peace. Things are quiet only because various business and political leaders are trying to make up their minds whether to do a bombing run. The good thing, or…
Ahem. We don’t mean to brag (big lie), but if you take a close look at the federal corruption indictment against city council member Al Lipscomb and cab company owner Floyd Richards, you may notice that the Dallas Observer receives a little credit. On page 15, the indictment notes that…
Language gap I had just finished reading a Web page release concerning the state of Idaho’s recent certification of six Spanish-language interpreters after their having passed a test given by the national Consortium for State Court Interpreter Certification when a friend e-mailed me about Ms. Christine Biederman’s thought-provoking article [“Lost…
Things hadn’t been right in the Kastler household for quite some time. Building a new life in suburban Los Angeles, raising a family, growing a business–none of this seemed to matter to Samantha Kastler anymore. During her and her husband’s years in the Dallas Police Department, she was the one…
Ralph Mendez stood before a dozen or so low-ranking politicos with his arms spread wide, his thin mustache unable to contain his toothy grin. “Good morning, and welcome to Old MacDonald’s Farm.”XX X XFor many members of the city park board, it was their first visit to this sizable chunk…
To county clerks around Texas who are tracking legislation in Austin, the show is turning into a sort of campy horror flick. Call it Courthouse Dracula Returns or The Bill That Wouldn’t Die. What’s troubling the clerks is the re-emergence of a proposal that would increase filing fees for public…
Waiting for George-o How long can George W. Bush run for president without running for president? By forming an exploratory committee, Bush can start raising money for his inevitable presidential run yet continue to avoid those annoying tasks that a presidential candidate must perform–campaigning, for instance. Bush, the Mario Cuomo…
Some people have been known to sniff that when it comes to culture, Dallas ain’t New York or Washington, D.C., or Chicago. But a new traffic study undertaken by the city suggests that may soon change–for better and for worse. The good news is that if a city-proposed deal to…
Well embarrassed John MacCormack’s piece on Danny Fry [“The case of the headless, handless corpse,” February 18] began by describing a “handless” body in the first paragraph. The second paragraph described the corpse as that of “…a man…well manicured.” If MacCormack were saying, tongue in cheek, that handless is the…
Liquor led to argument, argument to guns, and guns to murder. It began in the wee hours of October 9, 1997, at El Que Paso on South Lamar Street, one of the dozens of bars that draw lonely Hispanic men to the shadows of southern Dallas’ freeway underpasses. Angel Santiago…
