When you're right, you're right As the old saying goes, "Two out of three ain't bad." Ann Zimmerman's article in the August 3-9 issue is headlined "Angry Right Men." I agree that from the perspective furnished by the Observer, I am to the political right and I am a man...
Paul Rudnick's Jeffrey, directed by award-winning New York stage director Christopher Ashley in his feature film debut, is something of a mess. Ashley has no sense of how to build momentum within the camera's frame, so he relies on stock TV effects--slow motion, crane shots, first-person addresses by the lead...
Upon greeting the photographer assigned to take his portrait for a newspaper profile, Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Arau immediately turns his Crescent Court hotel suite into a set. "Do you like this light?" he asks, gesturing toward delicate sun rays that shimmer through a window and rest upon a fawn-colored chair...
I love it when a movie leaves me feeling wrung out and exhausted--as if I've been on a tortuous journey I didn't expect to take, but one that showed me things I never would have dreamed I'd see. Belle de Jour, surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel's 1967 film about a repressed...
BeloWatch and Tatum The most recent BeloWatch, which reported the public lewdness arrest of Henry Tatum, associate editor of The Dallas Morning News editorial page, drew a number of angry letters--and at least one threatening phone call. Several letters came from people who know and respect Tatum, who has worked...
Only in California. People keep getting kicked off the O.J. jury for "planning to write a book." First of all, what difference does it make? Nine million people a day decide their life is so danged fascinating they'll write a book about it, but none of them ever actually do...
Although he doesn't claim to know everything about the Denton music scene, Wanz Dover likes to say he's trying. Clad in a well-worn My Bloody Valentine shirt and dark jeans, the tousle-haired leader of newly formed band Mazinga Phaser talks eagerly about the Denton underground and its emerging space-rock trend...
At first, adults might not see the delightful kid-flick Babe as an intelligent, even brave film. The film's clever combination of stunts by live animals and incredibly expressive animatronic puppets makes you suspicious, a little fearful it might become an ordeal of gimmicks. The story unleashes a barnyard full of...
"I think it proves there is a God," said one Texas liberal of Senator Phil Gramm's presidential campaign, which is going nowhere fast. Gloating is in violation of the liberal creed, which calls for compassion at all times, especially for those who are getting kicked around. On the other hand,...
It is one of the stranger sights in South Dallas: each day, when the weather is fair, 125 teenage girls stream out of the Ambassador hotel and cross the street into Old City Park. The girls are dressed almost identically, in navy blue smocks and skirts and crisp, lace-collared blouses,...
Discussing 1993's year in movies, veteran Hollywood scriptwriter William Goldman--who wrote the screenplays for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and Marathon Man and authored the classic how-to book Adventures in the Screen Trade-- singled out Free Willy as a story he wished he'd written. He...
At Dallas City Hall, it can take a long time to find the truth. That's because this city manager and city council don't like the public to know what they're doing. So they play games. They have a lot of closed-door meetings. They discuss things they're not supposed to discuss...
Ray Audette amuses his Far North Dallas neighbors. They laugh when they see Audette, a diet book author, tramp across the manicured lawns lugging fresh roadkill, usually squirrels. They know their neighbor is toting the furry accident victims back to his yard to feed his young red-tailed hawk. The hawk,...
Ryan Amacher, the former University of Texas at Arlington president who, with help from an interior designer imported from Arizona, spent more than $157,000 last year to remodel a presidential suite for himself, has fallen a long way. In March, Amacher moved from a spacious office in College Hall, noted...
Spilled ink: New book offers insights into life at Dallas' Only Daily Can't get enough of the Dallas Morning News from BeloWatch? Well, now there's an entire book about the operations of Dallas' Only Daily. It's called Fresh Ink--Behind the Scenes at a Major Metropolitan Newspaper. As the cover illustration,...
His ship might be damaged beyond repair and his longtime ambition to walk on the moon dashed forever, but Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, still can't help dreaming. As he and his fellow crewmembers float in a damaged tin can miles above the world,...
It was the dawn of a new day at Dallas City Hall. The city's freshly minted, first African-American mayor--Ron "the-blame-game-is-over" Kirk--had finally slipped into the lead chair in the city's council chambers. It was his first day actually running a council meeting--his first real opportunity to seize his electoral mandate...
I'm worried about the fate of Pocahontas, Disney's 33rd animated feature. Of all the big-budget, feature-length cartoons released by Disney in the past six years, this one--about a romance between a Native American woman and a white man who arrived in the New World seeking to conquer the land and...
Last February, Rick Finlan--taxpayer, voter, idealist--tried to go to a meeting about the proposed new sports arena. The early morning get-together was between select city officials and Dallas Mavericks owner Don Carter. It was being held in a conference room in Reunion Arena, and when Finlan walked in about 8:30...
The Hon. Thomas G. Jones was angry, though nicely dressed. It was 9:45 a.m. last Friday morning, and I was standing at the service counter of his court in a nondescript strip shopping center in South Oak Cliff, wanting to see some court files; it is the sort of mundane...
It was a beautiful afternoon, one week before the Dallas mayor's race, and Ron Kirk was in the unusual position of having 45 minutes to kill. Political candidates in the home stretch of the fight do not have lives, let alone free time. But Kirk had just emerged from a...
Forget Hollywood's crop of summer action flicks and their puny explosions; for demolition beyond compare, turn to the wonderfully ludicrous Japanese import Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. Yes, indeed, giant monster fans, this 1995 production--which makes its stateside premiere May 19 as part of the 24-screen AMC Grand theater's "Gourmet...
