Sitting on the stage of the McKinney Avenue Contemporary recently, playwright Erik Ehn evoked the presence of a visiting spiritual dignitary–calm, understated, full of humility. “I’m as perplexed by the script as you are–so there,” he said during the recent question-and-answer session for the MAC’s Playwrights Project. “If my plays…
Paul Schrader, thank God. On the occasion of the USA Film Festival’s 25th anniversary, there could not be a more inspired and appropriate choice to receive the organization’s Great Director award than this bookish, bespectacled, 48-year-old auteur. With the possible exception of Martin Scorsese, no working American director in his…
Note: The 25th Annual USA Film Festival runs Thursday, April 20 through Thursday, April 27 at the AMC Glen Lakes theater, 9450 North Central Expressway (except for The Stars Fell on Henrietta and Panther, which will be screened at the General Cinema NorthPark III-IV, North Central Expressway at Park Lane)…
Filmmakers Andrew Behar, Sara Sackner, and their collaborators sure had their work cut out for them when they decided to follow the Grateful Dead and their fans around the country last year and make a film about that particular subculture. The shoot itself yielded some interesting material, including details about…
For those of you unfamiliar with the daily doings of big-league spring training, this players’ camp at Homestead, Florida, is much like any other. First, you may call it “camp” or “spring training,” but never “training camp.” That would be like calling a manager “coach.” Also, at this camp, originally…
Panther is a film that many powerful inhabitants of black Hollywood dreamed of making for years–a biography of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, which started in San Francisco and spread steadily out across the United States, breeding black pride and fostering white rage wherever its members reared their…
Filmmaker Gregory Nava’s My Family (Mi Familia), a multigenerational epic about a Chicano family in East Los Angeles, is one of the most satisfying dramas I’ve ever seen. The narrative follows the changing fortunes of the Sanchez family from the early part of the century through the late 1970s. It…
Maybe you’ve been in a bookstore or a cappuccino shoppe lately and heard a Catholic religious service going on through the Muzak. This is not a mistake. They’re playing this stuff in singles bars. It’s weird. You got these monks in black hoods, chanting like automatons, as part of the…
The biggest controversy at this year’s Academy Awards was the omission of Hoop Dreams from the Best Documentary category. That film dealt with two families struggling to survive economic hardship, framed by the saga of two teenage boys pressured to make the NBA and rescue their households. But also snubbed…
There’s only one dud among the seven somber short films featured in Short Stuff. It’s a pretentious fantasy flight called “Goddess” in which a Mary Kay-shellacked female icon becomes human in order to avenge the death of a man by his twin brother. Yawn. But two films punch you in…
Film lovers can be divided into two categories. There are those who approach the cinema with a Wildean belief that art exists to improve the human condition, or at the very least idealize it. They watch movies using a kind of aesthetic white glove test, always on the lookout for…
thursday april 20 Ampersand Dance: Creating a new dance company is always a risky business, but in a city like Dallas, where culture too often means you choose an imported beer while watching TV football, it’s downright courageous. But dancer-choreographers Eric Salisbury and Shannon Slaton are forging ahead with Ampersand…
Baseball’s annual Hall of Fame game was hours over. All the other reporters had left the little press room in the back of the Hall. But this one, after computer problems, was trudging through to the exit in partial darkness, with only a bunch of guys like Ty Cobb and…
I guess it should come as no surprise that Pump Boys and Dinettes, the current feel-good musical offering at Theatre Three, was a box-office hit in New York. But I’m perplexed about why it’s gotten the critical attention it has. I am not an elitist. I like to be entertained,…
Your hooey detector will probably start beeping about 10 minutes into British filmmaker Antonia Bird’s controversial melodrama Priest when Father Greg (Linus Roach), a young man of the cloth newly transferred to a blue-collar Liverpool parish, rises to address his congregation. These days, he complains from the pulpit, we are…
The latest issue of the Dallas-based bimonthly fanzine Hong Kong Film Connection (which only recently went national) is on sale now at an independent or Asian-owned video store near you, and it includes plenty of thoughtful, well-researched articles worth mentioning here. They include a wrapup of 1994 Hong Kong box-office…
Flashbulbs and teen squeals announce Pauly Shore’s arrival at Planet Hollywood in the West End. Amid a journalistic sea of TV and still cameras and a small cluster of mostly young fans, the 27-year-old former MTV VJ and star of numerous slapstick movies–the latest of which, Jury Duty, opens April…
This week I’m wondering why those fat, cow-faced husbands on “Oprah” never defend themselves. You know the guys I’m talking about? They bring out some chunky, ticked-off Jenny Craig dropout with a lab experiment on her head resulting in Blonde Meltdown, and she says, “Oprah, I found out he was…
In a terrifying barroom sequence about 15 minutes into Once Were Warriors, a stark melodrama about the lives of Maori tribesman living in the urban slums of New Zealand, Jake Heke (Temeura Owen)–a pumped-up, alcoholic patriarch of a troubled Maori clan who looks like Robert DeNiro on steroids–watches as a…
thursday april 13 Alan Dershowitz: Being a civil libertarian in America at a time when politicians and talk-radio morons are demanding a quick emotional fix for our national malaise can be a thankless job…unless, of course, you’re a civil libertarian who also happens to be one of the highest-paid defense…
Nick Nolte’s craggily handsome face, steely eyes, and whiskey-and-cigarettes voice are the epitome of ravaged old-movie grandeur. But in his heart, he’s always been a character actor, not an icon. Although resourceful directors have managed to use him that way–notably Walter Hill in 48 HRS. and Extreme Prejudice and Karel…
Last Thursday, there were guys in tears, literally kneeling to kiss the infield dirt at the Ballpark. On Friday, those same guys hit singles and almost beat the Astros in an exhibition–their only exhibition–on this field. And by Sunday, their replacement butts were out the door quicker than a drunk…
