There’s something to be said for a movie that’s honest enough to transcribe dialogue from the director’s mouth and incorporate it into the script. “Everybody start shooting at somebody!” yells Detective Mike Lowery (Will Smith) in the midst of a particular situation. Earlier, he gives the command to “drive that…
The heist-film genre, especially in recent years, practices the most blatant brand of cinematic swindle. It’s built on little more than pilfered plots and purloined characters, and the closer we inspect the goods the more we discover that the diamonds are phony, the bills counterfeit, the treasure utterly worthless. Who…
So much for those crackpot theories about flighty teen-agers and their short attention spans. For four long years now the bland pop star Mandy Moore has stuck in the brainpan of white adolescent America like a wad of bubblegum, and there’s no sign she will loosen her grip anytime soon…
Just opened at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas is a play called Close Ties. The title is misleading, for the truth is, the connections among the members of the Frye family in Elizabeth Diggs’ two-act New England drama are terribly frayed. In CDT’s heart-tugging if sometimes too sentimental production, Bess and…
Our problem with Romeo and Juliet has never been muddling through the now-obsolete Elizabethan dialect. Nor is it the overacting that usually accompanies it. It’s not even the men in tights. Our problem is more fundamental. It’s plot. We just want to scream: Hello, you’re teen-agers. You’re not in love…
Thursday, July 17 Dancing, drumming warriors. Literally, that’s what “Kobushi” (or at least, its three syllables) means. The Kobushi Taiko Drummers are a band of men and women from various backgrounds who all have a passion for performance and for the traditional Japanese drum. Using taiko drums as well as…
We love free stuff: nail files, key chains, those squishy little stress balls. So what if they’re completely useless and advertise companies for which we’ll never be patrons? They’re free. We’ll happily wander the endless rows of kiosks at our local home shows and, when offered a squeegee promoting the…
7/18 The West End gets a bad rap. People say its a bland, white-bread corner of downtown Dallas that offers clueless tourists and timid suburbanites the high parking fees of a real downtown but little else that one could classify as urban. And thats just not fair. That characterization completely…
7/18 Whether you enjoy water-skiing at Lake Lewisville, bass fishing at Joe Pool Lake or skinny-dipping in your local watering hole, the Dallas Summer Boat Show has something for you. Even if you can barely afford the mortgage on your house, it’s still fun to check out the cavernous giant…
7/17 It’s their birthday, but they’re giving out the gifts. When Eisenbergs Skatepark in Plano turns 6 this week, the folks in charge are celebrating with a whole day of free skating plus 20 percent off all items at the pro shop. Also, for the month of July, the park…
7/18 Fresh-faced and, let’s face it, full of themselves, three University of North Texas art students and two recent grads have taken over Photographs Do Not Bend gallery for a trend-setting summer show of their recent work. UNT alum Ben Hancock has curated the works of Baseera Kahn, Marc Montoya,…
7/17 We forgive our celebrities almost anything, just as long as they continue to make us laugh or cry or feel. Just look at fugitive-from-justice Roman Polanski winning an Academy Award for Best Director for The Pianist or O.J. Simpson’s uncanny ability to get a tee time at any country…
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemenor LXG, as Fox refers to it, as though its the latest Lexus all-terrain vehiclewould have you think its the summer action movie with a brain; certainly, its literary allusions would have you believe it has visited more libraries than video-rental outlets. But the movie cant…
To prepare for reviewing Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, I did the obvious research: I watched Yellowbeard again. Yes, yes indeed–can’t do without Fairbanks as The Black Pirate and Flynn as Captain Blood. But when appraising a new comedic pirate adventure, it’s important to consider…
French director Francois Ozon doesn’t like to repeat himself. His last film, 8 Women, was a theatrical, rather campy piece of fluff starring la crème de la crème of contemporary Gallic actresses. Before that came Under the Sand, an unsettling drama about a woman (Charlotte Rampling, giving perhaps her finest…
If, in keeping with current fads, you seek movies featuring females kicking a bunch of ass, your appetite will be tended (and cultivated) at the multiplex all summer long. Wander into your local art-house, however, and you may find a fine, if somewhat challenging, import called The Legend of Suriyothai–billed…
One thing about watching Hamlet, Shakespeare’s longest play: By the time the drama drags its boots into the fifth and final act, we groundlings are more than ready to see yon moody Dane die young. The sooner the better, too, because by the time this one ends, it feels as…
Locals who lament the loss of the late, great Dallas Fantasy Fair have been teased of late with word of a WizardWorld convention coming to Arlington in November. But the gathering, run by Wizard magazine, is more rumor than fact at this point: The Web site lists no guests or…
Thursday, July 10 Bela Lugosi will always be Count Dracula. He was even buried in the cape he wore in the movie. But some critics say there is a better vampire film than the one Lugosi starred in, and the story behind it is worthy of a movie itself. While…
Surfing. Candy. Mayhem. One would imagine that after all the scientific discoveries made over time, you’d know that large amounts of sugar pumping its way through the bloodstreams of 100-plus children in the middle of July is a recipe for disaster on the scale of Woodstock ’99. You should learn…
7/11 Frivolous, imprudent and prodigal, with an inclination for extravagant court expenditures: That’s how history remembers Marie Antoinette, queen consort of King Louis XVI of France (1774-’93). She was vilified by her subjects and plotted against by her enemies, many of whom circulated juicy details of alleged extramarital affairs that…
7/12 How come anything interesting that comes out of Australia fails to grab our attention for more than a year at a time? Think about it: Yahoo Serious, Paul Hogan, Silverchair and the Crocodile Hunter are a fraction of the 15-minute flashes that have used the convicts’ island as a…
