On January 6, the Dallas Mavericks ended a 15-game losing streak in front of a crowd team officials said hovered around the 9,000 mark–though, in truth, no more than half that number bothered to show up at Reunion Arena for this clash of last-place titans, the Mavs versus the Denver…
When you hear theater snobs hold forth on the civilized, specialized virtues of live performance, they often invoke that art form’s timelessness. Live performance, or at least some form of oratory before an attentive crowd, probably predates the advent of recorded history. Some form of it has appeared in virtually…
Martin Scorsese’s Kundun is a deeply ceremonial experience. It’s like watching a serene pageant of colors, rituals, and costumes. It’s about the Dalai Lama–recognized as the 14th reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion and the spiritual and political leader of Tibet–from his childhood in 1937 through the Chinese invasion in…
After Santa’s overstuffed sack of Oscar qualifiers is disgorged onto screens in December, the studios have little left in their pipelines for January. With all the brutal competition from the big-ticket films, Hollywood has established a tradition in recent years of dumping lost-cause features during the first few weeks of…
thursday january 15 Carl Gottlieb: Producer-director-screenwriter Carl Gottlieb has a wheelbarrow full of TV and film credits, but movie buffs will be forever grateful to him for writing the screenplay to Jaws, one of the greatest suspense movies ever made. That was when Steven Spielberg was a hungry, 27-year-old filmmaker,…
According to playwright Lee Marans, Old Wicked Songs, his searingly funny Pulitzer Prize nominee from 1996, will be the second most produced play in regional American theater this season. Theatre Three snagged the script for its Southwestern premiere and has blessed us all with a magnificently paced, poetically performed production–and…
In 1997, both the big studios and the independents got stuck in their respective sewers of cliche–conflagrations, computer graphics, and crazy comedies on the one hand; on the other, dysfunctional families, kooky proles, and drop-outs. Some of the most highly promoted and lauded films from either the big-studio or indie…
In his 1993 book Sarajevo: A War Journal, Bosnian journalist Zlatko Dizdarevic reported on an 11-year-old boy who was waiting in line for water when snipers killed his mother and father: “After the shooting, this boy started to fetch and pour water over the bodies of his dead parents. He…
Where would Irish filmmakers these days be without The Troubles? In just the past couple of years, we’ve seen The Crying Game, In the Name of the Father, Michael Collins, Some Mother’s Son, and now The Boxer, the latest collaboration between director Jim Sheridan, screenwriter Terry George, and Daniel Day-Lewis…
thursday january 8 Elvis’ 63rd Birthday: Why has “Calendar” included a mention of the late Elvis Presley’s birthday celebrations every year for the past several, only to use the opportunity to wipe our shoes on his revered but rather pungent hide? It’s easy to kick a man when he’s been…
Even over a cellular phone, even with the driving rain battering the roof of his car, you can still hear it in Mark Aguirre’s voice–the frustration, the resignation, the utter sadness. The tone in his voice is as damp as the weather. These recent days have not been easy ones…
It’s a tad early, not to mention uncouth, to name a Dallas stage award after myself. But since I procrastinate in all other areas of my life, I might as well be early naming, in my honor, a citation for excellence. Flouting Mark Twain’s aphorism that good breeding is merely…
In Hollywood, writer-director Garson Kanin’s wonderful book of film-biz reminiscences, Kanin tells of a mortifying incident in the career of John Forsythe. In the early ’50s, the young actor, while working on a film, entertained his colleagues with a Bogart impression. When the great star visited Forsythe’s set one day,…
When was the last time the audience applauded a trailer and the movie lived up to it? Independence Day enticed millions with its preview shot of the White House blown to smithereens, but that film was a dumb, elephantine sci-fi pastiche. The trailer for Wag the Dog, a far more…
While not a movie year to go down in infamy, 1997 was still mostly full of hype and holler. If the annual yield is judged by how many great films came out, 1997 was a loser. If you factor in the number of films that brought fresh talents and fresh…
thursday january 1 New Year’s Day Psychic Fair: Forget New Year’s resolutions, those cynical promises we make to ourselves that are usually based on whom we think we should be, not on whom we really are. Why not find out what’s going to happen in 1998 and arrange your life…
With 1994’s Exotica, Egyptian-born Atom Egoyan clinched his claim to being Canada’s leading director. His new film, The Sweet Hereafter, a Cannes hit based on Russell Banks’ celebrated novel, should solidify his hold on that problematic title. Egoyan’s work, in general, is small-scale enough to seem arty and plain enough…
thursday december 25 All-Star Christmas Invitational: We dedicate this Christmas edition of “Calendar” to you, the friendless orphan who’s faced with wandering the cold streets alone instead of being cooped up with family and friends you stopped liking long ago. In our minds, Christmas, more than any other holiday, is…
Sitting in the cavernous, “temporary” Arts District Theater to watch Dallas Theater Center’s energetic but passionless A Christmas Carol, I couldn’t help looking around and noticing how much better dressed everyone else was than me. Of course, my friends would be quick to point out that even if I could…
The new Gus Van Sant film Good Will Hunting is like an adolescent’s fantasy of being tougher and smarter and more misunderstood than anybody else. It’s also touchy-feely with a vengeance. Is this the same director who made Mala Noche and Drugstore Cowboy? Those films had a fresh way of…
If Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown didn’t arrive weighted with post-Pulp Fiction expectations, it might be easier to see it for what it is: an overlong, occasionally funky caper movie directed with some feeling. It’s derived from Elmore Leonard’s 1992 bestseller Rum Punch, with the location shifted from Palm Beach, Florida,…
The ad line for As Good As It Gets is “A comedy from the heart that goes for the throat.” Isn’t this simply another way of saying, “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll gag”? Jack Nicholson plays, of all things, a prolific romance novelist who’s a virulent xenophobe and a hopeless…
