French putz Xavier (Romain Duris) is depressed. The poor guy lives in Paris, has Amélie’s Audrey Tautou as a girlfriend, eats gourmet vegan dinners prepared for him by his free-spirited mother and is being set up for a graduate degree in economics by a friend of his father’s. “I don’t…
Shortly after saying “I do,” Jane, the main character in Ground Zero Theater Company’s strange, sexy, wonderful new one-act play 10:10, decides she won’t after all. At her wedding reception, Jane locks eyes with Randy, the humpy half-brother of her shlumpy new husband, Gregger. In an impulsive move she will…
The only time we’ve paddled across a body of water in a canoe was in Girl Scout camp one summer in elementary school. We were terrified to wiggle or exert too much force, convinced after watching weeks and weeks of summer camp movies that we’d rock the boat and be…
Thursday, May 22 Casting a Spell: Winslow Homer, Artist and Angler has caused a whirlwind of traffic from both art lovers and fishing enthusiasts alike. In conjunction, Fort Worth’s Amon Carter Museum offers a special gallery talk today from 12:15 p.m. to 12:45 p.m. led by docent Alan Laureyns and…
Was a time when Hong Kong cinema was considered exotica by the mainstream, as wow as the most spaced-out sci-fi and as now as the most indie cinema. But with the co-opting of John Woo, who traded bullets for boredom; and Jackie Chan, the Harold Lloyd of HK who’s quickly…
5/22 We are impressed with all the good things people had to say about comic hypnotist Flip Orley. Things like, “I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard in my life.” “But wait a minute,” we thought. “This guy’s a hypnotist. He tricks people into believing things.” Once we realized that,…
5/22 Her daily workout includes two dozen chin-ups with a 25-pound weight fixed to her waist, three sets of 300-pound leg squats and something called “the woodchop.” Out where they park the courtesy Buicks, we bet Swedish golf sensation Annika Sorenstam could kick the butts of at least half the…
5/24 Still embarrassed, but still laughing, about the old Saturday Night Live bit with Tim Meadows as a camp counselor, herding the little black kids onto the bus? “Noxema, Chlamydia, Trojan, let’s go!” he said, launching into a memorable and controversial roster that ridiculed so-called “ethnic” names. Don’t let your…
5/22 We don’t practice Santeria. We ain’t got no crystal ball. (Though we do keep a couple of Magic 8 Balls around.) Yet, in your future we see a journey. You will be driving down Hall Street and feel a strange urge to turn onto Lee Parkway. Obey your instincts…
5/24 “Dance is just like life,” Ann Williams once told me. “It’s an educational process.” The founder/artistic director of Dallas Black Dance Theatre put her toe shoes where her mouth was three years ago and created a second string of young, talented dancers and emerging choreographers who could learn, side…
Talk about tough acts to follow: The original 1999 Matrix, a critical and commercial smash, came almost as a revelation out of nowhere–if the combination of Joel Silver, Warner Bros. and roughly 60 million bucks qualifies as “nowhere.” After more than four years, The Matrix Reloaded–the first of two sequels…
Ross Hunter, dead seven years, hasn’t been this alive at the movies since the 1950s and ’60s, when he produced some of the weepiest melodramas and cheeriest romantic comedies ever to barely stick to the screen. His ghost has been wandering up and down the aisles ever since Don Simpson…
Forthcoming is an impressive collection of expensive junk amassed for a movie The New York Times predicted four years ago had “big prospects as a cult classic,” most notably a video game (Enter the Matrix, its very title a command to reach into your back pocket) and a DVD collection…
Nobody can convey more, doing nothing, than Billy Bob Thornton. His minimalist style is appropriate for the ironically named Levity, but what is conveyed never quite generates the emotional charge of Sling Blade or Monster’s Ball. Writer-director Ed Solomon is best known as the screenwriter of the two Bill &…
Perhaps only a fanatical Russian filmmaker, steeped in a history as ruthless and magnificent as the nation’s harsh winters and endless landscapes, could have dreamed up and executed such an audacious plan: an 87-minute, dreamlike journey through 300 years of Russian/Soviet history, told in a single, uncut Steadicam shot that…
I didn’t lose $100 playing poker last night. I paid $100 for poker lessons–a Hold ‘Em tutorial, to be straight with you, though if I’d actually seen a straight during four hours of play, the instructional rates might have been slightly less steep. Last night, I became, more or less,…
The plot thickens. In any decent stage play, that’s what usually occurs around the 20-minute point in Act 1. We get some conflict, some trouble. Stuff starts to happen between protagonist and antagonist. Blanche DuBois moves into the Kowalskis’ place, cramping Stanley’s style. Felix and Oscar have a tiff over…
Marble shooting is so satisfying it’s easy to become passionate or even obsessive about it. There’s care taken to arrange the targets in a perfect formation after choosing the perfect ledge upon which to set them. There’s the weightiness of the rifle, a .22 perhaps, and the cold feel of…
Thursday, May 15 A lunar eclipse may be less end-of-the-world-ish and happen more frequently than its solar counterpart, but it’s still pretty cool. For one, you don’t need those dorky eye protectors to watch as Earth’s shadow eats the moon. And, secondly, the moon is made of cheese (which is…
“The Beam Walk,” “Bed of Nails” and “Ball of Danger” all sound like they should be episodes of Buck Rogers. In fact, they are the situations that make up Risk! at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. The interactive exhibit offers insight into risk and risk assessment. For…
5/19 The last time we saw Mary Tyler Moore give a speech, she was in front of a club for divorced people telling them that she wasn’t actually divorced, that she had joined the group under false pretense in order to qualify for a group rate for a trip to…
5/16 This is a story about a boat race, so let’s talk about baseball. First off, an admission for all you baseball fans: We’re stupid. All those subtleties and chess-like strategies, the Zen-like purity of the game? Don’t see it, never did. On our fun-o-meter, watching a baseball game ranks…
