Juno marks the second film for director Jason Reitman and the first for screenwriter Diablo Cody, author of the Pussy Ranch blog, which, surprisingly, has very little to do with baby kittens. Reitman, having made his debut with a swaggering adaptation of Christopher Buckley’s Thank You for Smoking, is said…
There are two momentous performances in the Darwinian horror fable I Am Legend. One is by the movie’s star, Will Smith—but more about him in a minute. The other is by the movie’s visual effects—not the ones that bring to life a nocturnal army of shrieking, carnivorous beasties (though those…
Two new productions—Driving Miss Daisy at the Bath House Cultural Center and The Santaland Diaries at WaterTower’s Studio Theatre—affirm all the best reasons to go out to a play. Another, Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, also at the Bath House, serves as a 105-minute argument for renting…
Jonathan Demme, who directed Tom Hanks to an Oscar as the AIDS-afflicted lawyer in Philadelphia, may be the most well-meaning filmmaker in Hollywood; Jimmy Carter, winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human…
Paul Schrader’s cinema is largely defined by the pathology of his male protagonists, and with The Walker, he’s added a striking new character to his gallery of loners. Carter Page III (Woody Harrelson) is the degenerate scion of a political family. Openly gay and eminently presentable, this American aristo makes…
Kites fly high over the San Francisco Bay and Kabul (OK, China), but not much else soars in Marc Forster’s flaccid adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s vivid 2002 novel, which covers three decades of Afghanistan’s misery under serial totalitarian rule. Arriving on the heels of Atonement, The Kite Runner tells a…
WARNING! There’s a spoiler in here. If you like to fling yourself off the curb of life, ignorant of the bus headed your way, read no further, ’cause I’m describing the bus here. It’s a big red and green bus full of boxy-toed satin shoes and sharp collarbones—nothing says Christmas…
In case you haven’t noticed, Exposition Park is the last part of town that actually has any real character. Deep Ellum, on the other hand, is a creepy ghost town, and the West Village looks like it was squeezed out of some developer’s Play-Doh instant neighborhood machine. Expo Park resident…
Zach Galifianakis is an enigma. His onstage persona is shuffling and silly one minute and bold and clever the next. His jokes are well thought out, exquisitely crafted one-liners followed by off-the-cuff self-deprecating remarks, all strung together with soothing piano music and random character impressions. His stand-up is like performance…
How did Wesley Clark not get elected in 2004? He was valedictorian of his class at West Point, he’s a Rhodes Scholar, and at this point, if the rest of his résumé just says, “Poop! Poop! Poop!” it’s still better than yours. He commanded forces in Kosovo (obviously the best…
For Valentine’s Day, you probably get roses. Roses are a lovely gift; they’re traditional, beautiful, fragrant…the list goes on. So don’t get me wrong—I love roses. They are in no way an Oscar-nominated screenplay, though. That’s what Marsha Mason got from her husband, Neil Simon, for Valentine’s Day. He even…
Goodfellas is a great gangster movie on steroids. It features all the glorious staples of the tireless genre, amplified to the 10th degree, including mass executions, shocking betrayals, scenes of men cooking pasta in wife beaters and, my personal favorite, Robert De Niro saying, “What’s the matter with you?” Adding…
This weekend, a trip to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth could take you much farther, when the Modern presents In the Shadow of the Moon (2007) as part of the Magnolia at the Modern film series. The surviving crew members from NASA’s nine Apollo missions, which went to…
Battlestar Galactica: Razor (Universal) The Best of Crank Yankers (Paramount) Bob Hope: MGM Movie Legends Collection (MGM) Erik the Viking: The Director’s Cut (MGM) Exiled (Magnolia) The Flash Gordon Collection (Passport) Tyler Perry’s House of Payne: Volume One (Lionsgate) Ingmar Bergman: Four Masterworks (Criterion) Lady Chatterley (Kino) Law & Order:…
For a game that’s considered Microsoft’s premier 360 title this holiday season, it’s amazing how sloppy Mass Effect is. Graphical glitches distract from otherwise fascinating character designs and alien vistas, constant stops and stutters lengthen load times, and the inventory system must be the worst in history. And just as…
The Girl Next Door (Anchor Bay) If the horror of Saw was a poblano pepper, this here is the habañero. Derived from Jack Ketchum’s infamous novel, sometimes word-for-word, The Girl Next Door — based on a true story — is a sort of Hostel meets Stand By Me: A group…
There are comedies of discomfort, and then there’s Margot at the Wedding, Noah Baumbach’s scalding follow-up to The Squid and the Whale. An immersion in sibling malice and simmering resentment, with one of the most infuriating characters in recent movies holding us under, Margot tramples the commandment that only the…
Casting Nicole Kidman as The Golden Compass’ glacial, intractably smooth megalomaniac Mrs. Coulter is no less inspired for being obvious. Indeed, she was the first and only choice for director Chris Weitz, who adapted this first installment of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. Despite the book’s description of the…
One ghost is missing from this year’s production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol at Dallas Theater Center. It is not the Ghost of Jacob Marley or of Christmases Past, Present or Yet to Come. They’re there in all their clinking, clanking glory. It is the ghost of former DTC…
Remember that movie Groove that came out about eight years ago? We try not to judge a book by its cover, but we’ll judge the hell out of a movie by its poster, and the poster for Groove depicted a dippy-looking jackass with a gigantic disco ball in his lap…
You read the Observer to cut through the politically correct fat and get to the lean meat—or non-encrusted tofu—of those weighty issues that feed your intellect. Then you pull up the World Affairs Council of Dallas-Fort Worth event calendar to see when the leading global know-it-all is headed to town…
Oh, the college gallery with the semester’s obligatory student group show. There are usually a few gems, but mostly there’s work by artists just starting to get a clear vision…oh, and there will be turds. Hell, I’ve been a part of those shows and know full well that depending on…
