Whoever made up that old wives’ tale about the kid who made a funny face and had it freeze that way was obviously no fun. Besides, we all make funny faces on a daily basis anyway, whether we mean to or not. You’re probably making a funny face right now,…
The next time you’re strolling through NorthPark Center, check out the society ladies scooping up the $300 jeans and $700 sandals. What are they wearing? Probably a pair of Juicy Couture sweats. Maybe their “crappy” pair of $300 jeans from last year. The privileged folk seem to be the ones…
I wasn’t a fan of the portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 2005 rendition of Pride and Prejudice starring Matthew Macfadyen and Keira Knightley–Darcy is supposed to be dashing, not just socially awkward, more along the lines of Colin Firth’s performance in the BBC miniseries. Maybe the cast of Garland…
Here’s a stumper for ya: Why the hell would anyone want to drive from El Paso to Beaumont? An unyielding desire to trace the path of confused conquistadors? A certain need to travel the most boring road in America? A terrible urge to get the f*&# out of El Paso?…
If you’re a film buff, you’d be wise to check out the UNT Multicultural Center’s Each One Teach One film series, where students and teachers brown bag and convene for films that enlighten, as well as philosophical discussion on the state of diversification within the world community. They’ll be doing…
Maurice Russell, a septuagenarian actor facing the end of his career and life, gazes raptly at the present that fate has given him: the company of a sullen but strangely desirable teenage girl. At first, his appraising looks give her the creeps, but something about his courtliness piques her curiosity—not…
New-school genre junk food: Take a Tarantino wannabe with Sundance credentials, add a large, famous-enough cast and a show-biz backdrop, season the violence with references to Sergio Leone and Takeshi Kitano, serve cool and garnish with a cynicism beyond irony. Smokin’ Aces is writer-director Joe Carnahan’s third and most elaborate…
We know Shakepeare’s Hamlet for its famous brace of be’s, as in the title character’s existential wondering re: “to” or “not to.” Charlotte Jones’ gentle, witty and enthralling play Humble Boy takes the bare bones of Hamlet, updates the location to a pretty cottage in the Cotswolds, makes the troubled…
Cocaine Cowboys (Magnolia) Slam! Bang! Pow! Snort! This tawdry and giddy documentary tells the story of Miami’s transformation from a place where old people go to die to a place with so much drug money that the Mercedes dealers were constantly out of stock, where the hit men would rather…
For most of us, the closest we get to practicing medicine is telling a depressed co-worker, “Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays.” But that doesn’t stop us from living vicariously through TV doctors. Now, with Trauma Center: Second Opinion, you can take your surgical dreams one step further. Thanks…
Park City, UTAH–On the first Saturday of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, I rolled out of bed and hustled up Main Street for the 8:30 a.m. screening of Tamara Jenkins’s The Savages, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as adult siblings caring for an irascible elderly parent. Only, I…
PARK CITY, Utah — Ten days of terse texting among professional narcissists working on little or no sleep in one of the last cold spots left on Al Gore’s inconvenient Earth: Welcome to Sundance ’07, where wounding homefront melodrama Grace Is Gone sells and it hardly pays to be nice…
Brokeback Mountain: 2-Disc Collector’s Edition (Universal) Cowboy del Amor (Genius) Crooks (Lightyear) Fiddler on the Roof (MGM) The 2006 FIFA World Cup Film: The Grand Finale (Sony) Ghost Encounters: The Queen Mary (Anthem) The Guardian (Buena Vista) Hopeless Pictures: Season One (Genius) Jesus Camp (Magnolia) John Pinette: I’m Starvin’ (Image)…
Max Fischer has found the secret to happiness: “I guess you’ve just gotta find something you love to do and then do it for the rest of your life. For me, it’s going to Rushmore.” And go to Rushmore he does. In the appropriately titled Rushmore, Fischer attends the hell…
People love big stuff. It’s true. It doesn’t matter how unexciting a normal-sized item is; when it’s presented as a giant replica, it’s awesome. Take, for instance, Big Tex: If he weren’t nine times the size of most men we know, the state icon would be just another slow-talkin’ cowpoke…
You know when you’re on a train and find yourself pondering humanity and the social condition? No? Well, lucky for us, artist Max Kazemzadeh did just that, so we don’t have to. He’s turned his findings into Express & Local, an interactive art installation that sheds light (and sound and…
Roughly eight years ago a group of 15 longhorns from ranches all over Texas was herded by modern cowboys through Fort Worth, from Sundance Square all the way to the northside Stockyards. Photographers documented the event—The Last Great Cattle Drive of the 20th Century—and the result is a portfolio of…
A Bachelor of Fine Arts may not ensure the same amount of financial security or job opportunities as an MBA or some fancy law degree. Plus, going for a Masters in Humanities, Aesthetic Studies instead of just an BFA does allow you to get full course credit for suspending 100…
It takes a British playwright to tackle an American icon. Ron Hutchison’s farce, Moonlight and Magnolias, locks movie mogul David O. Selznick, rewrite man Ben Hecht and director Victor Fleming in one room to rework the script for Gone With the Wind. But Hecht hasn’t read the book, and Fleming,…
Part of me misses those Saturday nights as a kid when my parents and I would settle in for an evening with World Class Championship Wrestling. Chris Adams, King Kong Bundy and Iceman Parsons were my weekend guest stars, whom I would then talk about on Monday mornings with friends…
Called the “Gypsy Jazz King,” guitarist Django Reinhardt was not only a lyrical, tasteful and sprightly soloist; he could be a very supportive and complementary accompanist as well. His playing was amazing on its own and almost unbelievable considering the setback that occurred early in his playing career. When he…
Before America Ferrera was Ugly Betty, she played Ana in the HBO film Real Women Have Curves. And in fact they do. Salma Hayek, I’m sure you would agree, is a real woman, and she has curves. Former supermodel Tyra Banks, another real woman, has major curves now that she’s…
