The John Grisham industry has claimed another heavyweight. A few months back, Francis Ford Coppola delivered up John Grisham’s The Rainmaker, and now Robert Altman sails into view with The Gingerbread Man, based on an “original” Grisham screen story–although it’s basically a recycling of other Grisham recyclings. Who would have…
On the surface, Chairman of the Board, the film debut of comedian Carrot Top, seems perfectly aimed at young, creative, slacker types. It’s about a bumbler who accidentally makes it big in business, and its plot can be summed up as “Technicolor Gen-X freak conquers the business world without really…
thursday march 12 Raymond Nasher: You may know him as the filthy-rich Dallas bigwig who owns more than 250 artworks by Rodin, Picasso, and de Kooning. But businessman-art lover Raymond Nasher is a key player in the revitalization of the downtown Dallas Arts District, which means his expertise in the…
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla.–The voice is loud and off-key, and it can be heard above the stereo blasting bad rock and roll through the locker room. “SHE TALKS TO FUCKIN’ ANGELS!” The man singing along with the Black Crowes’ awful anthem looks around and grins, like a kid trying to rustle…
We’re living in a world where Dilbert creator Scott Adams, supposed hero of the corporate grunt and Office Depot shill, has gone on the record with a major national newsmagazine with the comment that, ya know, downsizing may not be such a bad thing after all. Actually, you could argue…
Jeff Bridges is so euphorically wacked as a social dropout in The Big Lebowski that you get a secondhand high just looking at him. Padding around Venice, California, in a T-shirt that barely covers his midriff bulge, he’s like a beach bum who bowls instead of surfs. His nickname is…
A movie starring Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, James Garner, and Stockard Channing ought to be a whole lot better than Robert Benton’s Twilight. It’s one of those “autumnal” movies about a private detective who is too old for the game but still goes through the motions. Benton, in…
thursday march 5 The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me: Forget all those straight actors reviving their careers playing “the good gay neighbor.” The real revolution is an openly gay man playing a chick-hungry hetero: Dan “Bulldog” Butler does it every couple of episodes on NBC’s priceless sitcom…
Dennis Green, the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, does not need statistics to tell him that the National Football League is a whites-only club when it comes to hiring head coaches. Green is one of only three black head coaches in the entire 30-team league, even though more than…
If you’re Anglo, you might approach a night of theater titled Latin American Evening with the smug assumption of someone who knows what’s inside the tamale before you even unroll the corn husk. It’s a mindset whites would never have when confronting a show called “Anglo-Saxon Evening,” but then again,…
Dangerous Beauty presents a 16th-century Venice filled with statesmen who hop from bed to bed without fear of “bimbo eruptions.” That’s because the courtesans aren’t bimbos, and they aren’t hidden: Everyone from the admiralty to the bishopric patronizes them. Having developed their minds along with their erotic skills, they’re boon…
His eye trained on the manic collision of Catholicism and consumerism, Pedro Almodovar has made some of the most lively, genre-bending films of the last two decades. The commander of a visual style that emphasizes bright primary colors and bold geometry, he’s in love with the glittering surfaces of pop-culture…
The science-fiction works of the late, great Philip K. Dick haven’t been served particularly well on screen. The most recent adaptation, Screamers, was junk; Total Recall had its moments, but was less ingenious by half than the short story it was based upon. Blade Runner, of course, was brilliant, but…
Back in the ’60s and ’70s, when its animation unit was in the doldrums, the Disney studio made a number of live-action “family” comedies (No Deposit, No Return and Freaky Friday, for instance) that were, within their limited ambitions, genuinely funny. The studio’s latest film, Krippendorf’s Tribe, is very much…
thursday february 26 Carol Shields: For much of her 22-year career as a novelist, Illinois native Carol Shields has distinguished herself in the genre of what a colleague affectionately calls “chick fiction”–women telling the stories of their lives with a minimum of sentimentality and a maximum of emotional yearning. She…
In taking five of author Willa Cather’s early short stories and distilling them into a brand-new musical he calls Cather County, composer-librettist Ed Dixon would seem to have located one of the great themes of a great American writer: how the land transforms us even as we transform the land…
Bruno Barreto is the heir apparent of Brazilian cinema; he’s known on these shores for the lush romanticism of the Sonia Braga travel brochures Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (1977) and Gabriela (’83), and in his own country for teen fluff like ’81’s The Boy from Rio. With the…
Palmetto is a film noir set in a torpid seaside Florida town. It’s based on the James Hadley Chase novel Just Another Sucker, and when we first see Harry Barber (Woody Harrelson), he fits that moniker exactly. He looks dazed and confused–a sucker incarnate. Suckers are, of course, integral to…
The Only Thrill, directed by Houston native Peter Masterson, is a conventional, sentimental movie that nonetheless hits where it aims. The film, which otherwise would be competent but unremarkable, is distinguished by two memorable actors–Sam Shepard and Diane Keaton–and by the chemistry that grows between these two principals as the…
thursday february 19 Elmo’s Coloring Book: Some people think Elmo’s wide-eyed enthusiasm is really a cover for a seriously pushy personality, but compared with passive-aggressive Big Bird, he’s far more honest about his feelings. He just wants to color the world with his particular shade of joie de vivre. Case…
Since Barry Switzer’s, uh, resignation, the world has hardly stopped. We discovered that President Clinton probably screwed a 21-year-old intern. Sonny Bono died in a skiing accident, and former SMU football great Doak Walker was paralyzed in a similar mishap. More than 4,000 people died in an earthquake in Afghanistan…
If you’re looking for a tax write-off that also fortifies the First Amendment, not to mention the cause of artistic richness and innovation in our city, a wealthy Dallas businessperson could do worse than to drop a big wad of money into the lap of the Undermain Theatre. It prides…
