It’s no fun to beat up on the Dallas Museum of Art. Oh, sure, there’s a certain impish glee to be had in countering the pols’ and the flaks’ and the hacks’ (read: Janet Kutner’s and Mike Daniel’s) insistence on pretending it’s anything other than the most mediocre of flyover…
Here’s the easy version: Buddy Holly influenced the Beatles, who influenced pretty much everyone else who’s ever picked up a guitar. Here’s the longer version: Besides the Beatles, Holly was an icon to the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, a favorite of artists as disparate as the Grateful Dead and…
The other day, a few close friends (or maybe they were complete strangers, which is just about the same thing these days) were discussing the current phenomenon of the Gen-X memoir, in which people in their early 30s put to paper their lives’ great adventures, which usually amount to little…
The eternal beauty and constant surprise of baseball are always getting sabotaged by Hollywood’s urge to reduce the grand old game to a set of clichés as tedious as spring training drills. The ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson elevated Field of Dreams, the Wild Thing’s errant fastball gave momentary charm…
There’s allegory and there’s excess, and in his latest, longest feature to date, Czech animator-cum-director Jan Svankmajer seems to have lost sight of the line between making his point and gouging us with it. Our story focuses on a loving couple in Prague (Veronika Zilková and Jan Hartl), whose hopeful…
Looking at the original Blade now, it’s not as impressive as it seemed at the time; its hugely positive reception among the comic-book crowd may have been the result of it simply not sucking. It came out before The Matrix brought Hong Kong-style wires and trenchcoats to the world’s attention,…
Kissing Jessica Stein ends several times–which likely explains how a film with so short a running time, 94 minutes, feels as though it lasts much longer–and each conclusion satisfies; each feels real, natural and, best of all, inevitable. That is, except for the actual finale, which so betrays what’s come…
Since his debut with 1992’s Rebels of the Neon God, which made the rounds of U.S. festivals the following year, Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang has continued to make movies that offer variations on themes of isolation and human loneliness. This is not nearly as dreary as it may sound; indeed,…
The work of Henry Jaglom is an acquired taste that for many of us remains unacquired. While his new film, Festival in Cannes, is not a huge departure from usual, it may be his most accessible work for non-fans since 1991’s Eating. Not surprisingly, the movie is set at the…
Lie back and think of England. That’s the advice Victorian-era mothers used to whisper to just-married daughters for coping with their wifely duties in the bedroom. It’s also a good tip for anyone burdened with a ticket to The Countess, the new production at Fort Worth’s Circle Theatre. This turgid…
There’s only one cheerleader for the Republican Party who travels the country with her own troupe of male exotic dancers to warm up her crowds. And it’s not Elizabeth Dole or Christine Todd Whitman. Her name is Sheryl Underwood, and she’s a study in contradictions. Whereas other comedians attempt to…
During the one karate class I took a couple of years back, one of the first things the teacher said was, “We’d like to think that after practicing a punch a few times we know what to do. Try practicing the same movement a thousand times and perhaps then you…
Ice Age posits a heretofore unfathomable question: Is it possible for computer-generated characters to go through the motions? Everything about this endeavor–from 20th Century Fox, playing cartoon catch-up after 2000’s Titan A.E., which smelled like something stolen from Saturday-morning television–feels pilfered and stitched-together. There’s not an original fossil in its…
To say that Showtime is the year’s best glossy studio entertainment film thus far may be the ultimate in faint praise. The first quarter is always pretty bad–following the majors’ traditional end-of-the-year marketing/release orgies–but 2002 has been several degrees worse than usual. From the dual Pearce-ings of The Count of…
In the original Resident Evil video game–named Biohazard in its Japanese incarnation–a brash young American infiltrates a large manor house in the country, only to find it inhabited by terrifying, soulless zombies. But since Gosford Park already came out, the makers of the Resident Evil movie had to go with…
Precious and cloying, Harrison’s Flowers sets out to prove itself a story of hope and human endurance, but swiftly deteriorates into a terribly obvious melodrama and rough-hewn vanity project for lead actress Andie MacDowell. (One can almost hear her shouting to her agent: “Hey, Meg Ryan landed a search-and-rescue picture,…
Given the latest outbreaks of Middle East violence–not to mention the continuing traumas of September 11–it is timely, if unsettling, that a new Israeli film about religious fervor and extremist political commitment in that embattled nation is being released in the United States. Written and directed by 33-year-old Joseph Cedar,…
While the governments of the two Koreas plan symbolic gestures that could lead to a long-dreamed-of peaceful reunification, Ryu (Han Suk-Gyu) and Lee (Song Kang-Ho)–two special agents in South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, which handles threats from the North–must track down a female North Korean super-assassin named Hee, whose recent…
Richard O’Brien’s 1975 drag show/sci-fi-gothic parody carries on at weekly midnight screenings, attended by its devoted audience-participation following. Even these cultists have often underrated it as a film–it’s a pretty good rock musical, with a witty ensemble cast led by Tim Curry in a hilariously swaggering, drolly macho performance as…
One day, years ago, Gregory Mcdonald was playing tennis with a man he’d known since they were both 12 years old. It was hot, the middle of summer, and Mcdonald was playing a good game–doing that tricky shit, making with the kind of moves that get under an opponent’s skin…
Under the harsh glare of an overhead lamp, actress Amanda Denton leans forward over a small table, peers up at an unseen interrogator and asks, “Should I just speak? Is that OK? ‘Cause I got to sort of ease into it, you know?” With dull, stringy hair and eyes as…
The Kimbell Art Museum’s new Murillo exhibition is the kind of show the Kimbell does best: the meat-and-potatoes old masters monograph. This time, the Kimbell has set out to resuscitate a rep that has spent the better part of 150 years in decline, marshaling its own resources and borrowing from…
