When a playwright writes a loaded gun into the first act, Anton Chekhov noted, it had better be fired by the fourth. Topdog/Underdog, Suzan-Lori Parks’ 2002 Pulitzer-winning drama now onstage at the Dallas Theater Center, has two acts, two characters and one gun. Fewer than five minutes of act one…
Waiting tables and parenting: two of the least appreciated jobs. So Debra Ginsberg deserves twice the sympathy. And gets twice the fodder for her new career, writing. For more than 20 years, she dealt with shoddy tips, adulterous chefs, malicious hostesses and even Yellowstone (yes, the park). She worked those…
Thursday, March 4 We’ve often wondered if video artist Bill Viola found inspiration for his work The Crossing from watching football games in which a coach is doused in Gatorade after a winning game. We loved the way Jimmy Johnson’s stiff hair pasted onto his forehead when all that gel…
Kevin Bouchard crawls on his belly like a reptile, struggling to get his flashlight hand up in front and squinting in the darkness. With decades-old dampness seeping into his shirt, he coughs from musty air and cobwebs and looks for some sign of damage–dry rot, termites, water marks–from this unique…
FRI 3/5 Far be it from us to put a political spin on the giddy whoop-de-do surrounding St. Paddy’s Day; but, hey, there are probably more terrorists and people hell-bent on religious war in Ireland than there are in the Middle East. Since 20 percent of Americans claim Celtic ancestry,…
SAT 3/6 When Jean Van de Velde, victory in sight, blew the last hole of the 1999 British Open, even non-golfers gasped in horror. The poor guy ricocheted one shot off the grandstand, another into the creek and another into a bunker. We’ll spare you the other details of the…
TUE 3/9 Remember back in elementary school when you used to propagate a foul stew of cafeteria castoffs in the hopes of bribing or pressuring some unfortunate soul to dine on it? That nauseating mélange of pizza crust, corn, chocolate milk and (ideally) mashed potatoes became an unholy course fit…
MON 3/8 Sarah Vowell may see herself as just a recluse who gets to sit at home, read all day and write stories when inspiration (or a deadline) strikes and is sometimes forced to be brave, do book readings and talk to strangers. But to us, she’s a superhero. She…
This Jew has spent several hours in the past week reading all four Gospels, as well as various supplementary (and often inflammatory) texts, upon which Mel Gibson based his The Passion of the Christ. I’ve read the interpretations of scholars, the apologias of popes and the damnations of zealots. I’ve…
This is not a good movie. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights is, in fact, a bad movie. The script bleeds one cliché after another; the female lead can’t fire up the heat necessary for her role; and the plot resolves nearly every conflict it introduces within minutes. Worse, even as the…
This spring, Lions Gate Entertainment will release writer-director Lars von Trier’s Dogville, a brutal, audacious, brilliant and occasionally interminable variation of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. The film stars Nicole Kidman as a stranger who wanders into a small town with gangsters on her tail; also among the cast members are…
In many productions of Shanghai Moon, the Charles Busch comedy now playing at Pocket Sandwich Theatre, the leading character, Lady Sylvia Allington, is played by a man. Busch played the part himself in a successful off-Broadway revival not long ago. At the Pocket, a lady, Trista Wyly, plays the Lady,…
We were an expert in brainwashing long before our English class watched The Manchurian Candidate in high school. We had nearly perfected our technique by age 3, having nightly whined, “Mommy, read me Inside, Outside, Upside Down” and “Daddy, read me Green Eggs and Ham.” Eventually, we moved beyond those…
Thursday, February 26 A cinematic formula perfected by John Sayles in 1980 (in the form of The Secaucus 7): A group of old friends/time-sharers/students retreats to a house/hideaway/mansion, and mayhem/sexual catastrophe/murder inevitably ensues. Sayles kicked off the trend, which now has feelers extended into horror (Evil Dead–yeah, it’s a stretch,…
You’d hardly notice the tiny drops of blood–long-dried and resembling sticky dregs of sloshed espresso–along the sidewalks from 3200 Main St., deep in Deep Ellum, all the way to Trammell Crow’s “Design District” west of Stemmons Freeway, south of Oak Lawn. Last May, Nancy Whitenack ripped part of the heart…
2/29 I am all about the Oscar party–the cooking, the heavy drinking, the laughing at insincere acceptance speeches, the heavy drinking, the shrieking when the unworthy are awarded, the unchallenged claims that So-and-So Famous Person mentioned in an insincere acceptance speech “is a good, good friend of mine,” the heavy…
2/28 When the chewing began, only insignificant things were destroyed–pencils, plastic hangers, gimme cups (sort of like a gimme cap). We even encouraged our dog to chew, tossing her empty pop bottles to play with. This is probably a habit we should’ve nipped in the bud, but we didn’t realize…
2/26 People call John Leguizamo quirky and versatile, spastic and incisive. But no one ever points out his good looks. Why is that? He’s got the cheekbones, the swiveling Latin hips, the penetrating…eyes. Remember that scene in Summer of Sam, in which the camera luxuriated over his dance moves with…
2/28 You bought a bingo card, cheered at O-69, had a lot of fun and helped out the Resource Center of Dallas. Maybe you even won a few bucks. But now it’s time to make the center the big winner. For nearly 20 years, it has assisted North Texas residents…
Seldom over the course of a relatively storied career has Gene Hackman garnered sustained laughter in films billed as comedies. He’s wondrous at playing virtuous or wicked, paternal or pissed-off, but never quite comfortable in the role of comedian; he may be an actor of uncommon range, able to communicate…
It’s clear by now that Meg Ryan, the bubbling sweetheart of half a dozen romantic comedies, means to bring new substance and seriousness to the latest phase of her career. Witness the lonely New York English teacher she played in last year’s brainy slasher flick In the Cut. In no…
So this grown man walks into another teen girl movie. He is not stunned to learn that it concerns clothes, fun, clothes, peer pressure and clothes. The world outside can be ugly as hell, though, so he commences with the cynicism on low. This particular teen girl movie is not…
