After endless failed relationships, a middle-aged exterminator and jazz musician (Jeffrey Tambor) begins to think that maybe he’s gay. On his first attempt to pick someone up at a gay bar, however, he meets a beautiful divorcee (Jill Clayburgh), whose recent love life has been equally unsatisfying. The two leap…
A press pass, reporter-turned-novelist Gregory McDonald once said, is good for one thing: It allows the journalist to ask very smart people very stupid questions. Certainly, that’s how it feels after this 45-minute drive from downtown Dallas to the Allen home of Stan Liebowitz, professor of economics at the University…
The danger in writing a witty contemporary play filled with topical references and satirical jabs at public figures is that, over time, the references grow whiskers and the public figures fade into obscurity. That’s what’s happened with George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s 1939 comedy The Man Who Came to…
Good morning, agent. Your mission–should you choose to accept it–is to infiltrate the ranks of the Sacred Order of Brides. It is your task to learn what drives a frugal woman–a woman who clips coupons and only shops sales–to purchase a $7,000 dress that she will wear for three hours…
When Light Crust Doughboys bassist Art Greenhaw curses today’s commercial radio broadcasting industry as “a marketing scheme, a revenue-driven format, a way around payola,” why, as a member of the world’s longest-running Western swing band, doesn’t he craftily refer to an inspiring tale of better airwave days to sharpen his…
This time around, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan puts the surprise at the beginning of his film, and it’s a subtle, shimmering clue–one easily missed and, frankly, one that might not even be there at all. Such are the temptations offered by the maker of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable: Even…
Like George Clooney says in Ocean’s Eleven, do the math: four Canon XL1 digital cameras, one dual 800 MHz Power Mac G4, a copy of editing software Final Cut Pro 3, 18 shooting days, a 2-million-buck budget, one Oscar-winning Best Director and nine high-profile actors (among them: Julia Roberts, Brad…
If nothing else, give French actor Yvan Attal credit for his faith in domestic bliss. At a time when matrimony has a shorter life span than mayonnaise, Attal has sought to mingle the joys and traumas of his own marriage (to actress Charlotte Gainsbourg) with his piquant views on the…
It’s not exactly a good sign when a movie starring Tim Allen, Christian Slater and Richard Dreyfuss gets dumped into one or two art-house theaters after a couple of years on the shelf. Even if none of them is a guaranteed box-office draw, you’d think all three should be enough…
Done wrong, a tribute show like Always…Patsy Cline could come off like one of those hokey “legends” revues packing ’em in on the main drag in Branson, Missouri. But done right, as Addison’s WaterTower Theatre is doing it now, this oversimplified country-music bio can become a classy homage to one…
Those constantly disenchanted with the simplicity and apparent meaninglessness of modern art need not read any further. The following will just give you more reason to scoff. Everyone else, feel free to proceed. Earlier this year, Houston resident Brad Tucker took his brand of weirdo art up to New York…
Admit it. You’ve done it, and your silence is part of your shame. Statistics say you’re still doing it, perhaps more than the once-a-week average; and statistics don’t lie. We imagine you think you’re doing it when no one is around, where no one will see you or catch you…
The advent of digital filmmaking has been essentially a good thing, allowing cameras to go places their larger, celluloid-spooling cousins cannot, generally requiring less specialized lighting and, above all, making it affordable to put together a film while maxing out only one credit card. Sure, for every The Celebration you…
Read My Lips (Sur Mes Lévres) puts forth the fascinating and heretofore unexamined theory that being deaf offers its estimable rewards. It allows one the chance to tune out the world, to ignore everything and everyone. To the deaf, chaos can feel like the soothing calm, and madness comes with…
Not much has changed in the 11 years since Mike Myers used the first Wayne’s World movies as a personal launchpad, only tipping his James Bond-spoofing Austin Powers hand when he was strong enough at the box office to reap the rewards of his licensed characters. Now those spy-movie send-ups–the…
A film that posits a world in which giant fake-looking anthropomorphic bears walk among us without people noticing that they look any different from other humans, and a select group of them have been the biggest country-rock band in this alternate-reality world for many years (songs actually penned by John…
After endless failed relationships, a middle-aged exterminator and jazz musician (Jeffrey Tambor) begins to think that maybe he’s gay. On his very first attempt to pick someone up at a gay bar, however, he meets a beautiful divorcee (Jill Clayburgh) whose recent love life has been equally unsatisfying. The two…
During the last weeks before the fall of Saigon, tens of thousands of South Vietnamese, fearful of NVA recriminations, fled the country for the United States, where they were held in relocation camps until American sponsors could be found. First-time director Timothy Linh Bui–who co-wrote and co-produced his brother Tony’s…
If bad acting were a federal crime, Tony Curtis would be locked up in Leavenworth. In the much-ballyhooed, hooey-filled Some Like It Hot, now finishing its run at the Dallas Summer Musicals at Fair Park, Curtis does it all. Which is to say, he can’t do any of it. Can’t…
The relationship between pop culture and Andy Warhol had an element that any couple would envy. The two actively inspired one another. In effect, they created icons that are each in their own way unmistakably American. Most have seen a Warhol in a book or on television (whether Campbell’s soup…
Clearly, I should have thought ahead. On a recent swing dance night, I mustered the nerve to sever myself from the wallflowers and ask for a dance, and I truly held my own during a middle-of-the-road version of “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen.” Confident, I remained on the dance floor…
Think of it as Todd Solondz light–loads of dysfunction but, thankfully, none of the perversion. In fact, despite deep-seated neuroses, occasionally inappropriate behavior and a propensity for unhealthy relationships, the four females who are the Marks family are a fairly benevolent lot. As observed by writer-director Nicole Holofcener, the characters…
