The unwritten rule in Dallas is that you don’t complain about the heat. You can be dressed in a suit and stuck in a one-sided conversation on a rental car lot while the glare of a 105-degree sun batters you like Farrah Fawcett’s husband in The Burning Bed, and you…
Like the shambling VW van its hapless characters steer from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach, Little Miss Sunshine is a rickety vehicle that travels mostly downhill. How this antic extended sitcom from first-time feature makers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris left Sundance with an eight-figure deal and reams of enthralled press…
Bart Weiss figures that the Dallas Video Festival, of which he’s founder and director, has screened close to 3,000 offerings during the past 18 years, among them everything from giddy compendiums of global TV advertisements to conventional narratives to avant-garde animation to agit-prop docs. It is the veritable hodgepodge, a…
So you know how Parker Posey nearly always plays sarcastic, uptight smokers? In The Oh in Ohio, she finally stretches a bit: Here, she’s a sarcastic, uptight career woman…who doesn’t smoke! Also, she wears her hair down, whereas it’s usually pulled back into some kind of tightly wound style more…
Perhaps the saddest aspect of The Normal Heart, Larry Kramer’s autobiographical 1985 play about the first wave of AIDS deaths, is that it doesn’t feel like a museum piece. If only it did. Two and a half decades into the epidemic that has claimed millions of lives worldwide, Acquired Immune…
Brick (Universal) Rian Johnson’s feature debut as writer-director will wind up as one of the year’s best films. A film noir set in a modern-day high school, it’s Sam Spade roaming Ridgemont High; kids get doped up and knocked up and even rubbed out while speaking pulp-novel slang, but the…
In 2004, Jason Hall, the head of Warner Bros.’ new videogame division, did something remarkable: He promised to end bad movie tie-ins. By then, gamers had become well acquainted with the suckiness of movie-based games. Ever since Atari’s E.T. –a game so bad, tons of unsold copies were buried in…
Adam and Steve (TLA) Back Woods (Terror Vision) Beautiful People: The Complete Series (Sony) Clone (Image) Damon Wayans’ Last Stand (Fox) Frat Boy Collection (Fox) Gilles’ Wife (Koch Lorber) Ghost in a Teeny Bikini (Image) Grounded for Life: Season 3 (Anchor Bay) The Hidden Blade (Tartan) Inside Man (Universal) Jayne…
Over the years, public relations firms and political consultants have become more daring in their methods and shrewder with their strategies; selling their candidate’s policies and platforms to the Great Unwashed Masses with such flippant ease you’d think they were marketing a new flavor of tartar-control mouthwash. (Wow, this tax…
A lot of people think little girls are just interested in frilly toys and the like. But really, they’re pretty deep. Take Barbie Live! In Fairytopia for example. The play stars an actress playing Barbie starring as a fairy named Elina. How meta is that? Little girls clearly love peeling…
People spend a lot of time trying to be the best at things. People also spend a lot of time failing at that and end up making mediocre drivel. Take Freebirds vs. Chipotle burritos. Freebirds is awesome, and Chipotle a distant runner-up. Or The Baby-sitter’s Club vs. Sweet Valley High…
A world-traveled photographer of street scenes and people, Paul Greenberg has prints in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth and other institutions. Greenberg shoots black and white pictures with a Widelux panoramic, a camera used on NASA…
The moral of the Daedalus and Icarus myth seems uninspiring at best: “Aim too high, you’ll get burned. Too low, you’ll get dragged down. Shoot for that nice, middle-of-the-road averageness.” Then again, maybe it’s supposed to be something about hubris or disobedience; who knows, it’s all Greek to us. Icarus,…
I’m always jealous of people with alliterated names: Tina Turner, Katie Couric, Lindsey Lohan. With a name like that you’re destined for either an anchor chair or stardom. And Highland Park mystery writer Harry Hunsicker is no exception. His debut novel, Still River, tells the story of a Dallas private…
With the Internet came the online review, and with Amazon.com came the revenge of unsatisfied readers everywhere. Authors beware. In researching Linda Berdoll’s Darcy & Elizabeth (a self-published fan-fiction sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice), I discovered that “the book would have benefited from a good proof reading or…
With the Internet came the online review, and with Amazon.com came the revenge of unsatisfied readers everywhere. Authors beware. In researching Linda Berdoll’s Darcy & Elizabeth (a self-published fan-fiction sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice) I discovered that “the book would have benefited from a good proof reading or…
As little girls, we loved our toy ponies. We loved to make them gallop across the carpet and leap impossible hurdles, like Matchbox cars. Old habits are hard to break, so we’re stoked to hear about some upcoming equine antics. If “horsing around” was that fun in miniature, we can’t…
Rottweilers have a nasty reputation. When the most famous dog in the breed is Snot from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, there is probably a publicity problem, but they aren’t as bad as their stereotype may lead you to believe. The dogs were originally bred as faithful World War I police…
Inspirational art doesn’t get a lot of rave reviews these days. Somehow, cool points go to artists that use dark, creepy and lurid topics, not the hope-filled ones. But that’s so not fair. Take into consideration Snapshots of Survival. This is an art exhibition presented by Gilda’s Club Worldwide and…
Like many children who spend time with grandma, I spent my formative years watching hours upon hours of soaps, Nana’s favorites being the CBS roster of The Young and the Restless, As the World Turns, Guiding Light and The Bold and the Beautiful. I seriously doubt Bad and Beautiful, now…
Living in Texas, it’s hard not to be amused by Southern-slanted comedies such as Steel Magnolias and Daddy’s Dyin’…Who’s Got the Will?, both of which got their start on the stage before making the leap to the big screen. (In related news, we eagerly await the George Lucas/Peter Jackson rehash…
Oh cruel joke of irony, how you have cut me to the quick. In some odd fashion, I find myself at a loss for words about a literary festival. Literary! Festival! Do you see the twist of fate in all of this? But I must trudge on for the sake…
