This is a little-told tale, perhaps because those who know it have signed confidentiality agreements — or, in at least two cases, they have died of “mysterious circumstances,” as the police reports read. Occasionally, a whisper will leak out or a rumor will be overheard in some Sunset Boulevard bar…
The Dallas Museum of Art has been enveloping Dallas with flowers and bones for a month now to promote its exhibit Georgia O’Keeffe: The Poetry of Things. There have been lectures, gallery talks, and symposiums discussing every aspect of her art and her life; O’Keeffe’s giant red poppies even adorn…
It’s not really unusual for gay men 35 and under never to have owned a single Bette Midler album. All joking aside, she really is a generational benchmark, beloved as much for her rise at a time when gay sex was healthy and plentiful as for her innocent bawdiness. I…
My slightly freaked-out attitude toward puppet shows (the more fluid and effective the puppeteers, the bigger the freak-out) is perhaps best explained by historical example. The Roman Catholic Church once relied heavily on puppets as evangelical devices used to illustrate Biblical stories about the birth and death of Christ and…
Call it insecurity, or the kind of intense inadequacy that makes the school bully lash out at the class Einstein. Call it some irresistible urge all humans have to topple the mighty, or even some perverse fantasy fueled by a very basic instinct — envy. Call it what you will,…
Potts bust Dr. Timothy Potts’ first try at a new acquisition for the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth since becoming its director a little more than a year ago has failed — to which, of course, Potts reportedly says, “You’ve got to be gracious in defeat.” Potts had his…
“A Joel Schumacher film.” Among a certain breed of filmgoer — say, anyone for whom theaters provide something other than shelter — there may no more frightening four words in the English language. Ever since he killed Batman, Schumacher’s name has become the equivalent of a swear word on many…
Being called “brave” all the time must be almost as annoying for a disabled person as living in a world designed for the abled. Sure enough, peruse reviews of Firdaus Kanga’s “autobiographical novel” Trying to Grow or the astringently unsentimental film version of it, Sixth Happiness, and you’ll find critics…
It’s not surprising to discover that Perfect Blue was originally supposed to be filmed using humans. After all, the debut of director Satoshi Kon, who has worked on other Japanese animated films, is the very antithesis of most anime. Meaning, there are no sci-fi action sequences, no lavish fantasy settings,…
The first time I saw the Turtle Creek Chorale, about five years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. My mom and her friends had an extra ticket, and they cornered me because I didn’t have anything better to do that night. “It’ll be good for you,”…
Bunny Lake is Missing is missing. The 1965 film by Otto Preminger isn’t available on video or DVD; it can’t be found at rental stores. The film has practically vanished, and Preminger himself has become fodder for film history books and Turner Classic Movie marathons during which his better-known films…
Toy Story, the 1995 hit from Disney and Pixar, was not only the first fully computer-animated feature; it was also as brilliantly written and directed a film as any of the classic Disney releases. Pixar did nearly everything right — from story, dialogue, and voice casting to the impossibly complex…
A tangible sense of sadness and longing hangs over The Legend of 1900, the mesmerizingly beautiful and poetic new film from Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore, best known in the United States for his Academy Award-winning Cinema Paradiso. Based on a dramatic monologue by contemporary Italian novelist Alessadro Baricco but filmed…
The last half-decade has been very good to Jane Austen: Besides Ang Lee’s estimable 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility, we’ve been given film or TV adaptations of Emma, Persuasion, and Pride and Prejudice, not to mention Clueless, Amy Heckerling’s remarkably apt updating of Emma. Now Miramax and the BBC…
With all the accolades showered on a young Joe Orton (the very acclaim that, in part, caused lover Kenneth Halliwell’s silver hammer to come down upon the 34-year-old playwright-novelist’s head) during the mid-’60s, more than 30 years passed after his murder before the wicked farceur received his most fitting tribute…
I heard my first excerpt from David Sedaris’ SantaLand Diaries last Christmas break. I was working at the University of North Texas library, hoping to earn enough money to make rent and buy a few presents before the next financial aid check arrived in January. The library was empty: Most…
My original plan was to be writing my book on England by Thanksgiving. I thought that by launching the novel off the emotional strain of being alone during the holidays, I’d really have something — some angsty independence I’d never experienced this time of year, as I’m usually warm in…
Eight years have passed since Terminator 2, otherwise known as the last Arnold Schwarzenegger movie worth a damn. Since then, he has appeared in one half-decent actioner (James Cameron’s wink-wink True Lies), one pale imitation of a pale imitation (Eraser, which is what its script was written with), and a…
When Broken Glass, Arthur Miller’s glimpse at the intersection of marriage and world community responsibility, opened in New York in 1994, it closed quickly after receiving mixed to horrible reviews. London audiences and critics, a few years later, bruised their palms in riotous ovations. I’m not sure what this reaction…
Somewhere along the timeline, among those frenetic years between Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism, the popularity of landscape painting took a nose dive. Traditional landscape’s unceremonious dumping was most noticeable before heavy Cubism but after early Fauvism — right around 1900 — and it’s not that the general population suddenly stopped…
Art in the right place? When Ken Kahn announced in September he was resigning as president of the Arts Council of Fort Worth and Tarrant County — which oversees funding and professional assistance to 60 Tarrant County arts organizations — he agreed to help find his own replacement. After all,…
More often than not, I think Harold Bloom’s a pompous ass — except when it comes to his complaints about live Shakespeare, and then, he’s spot on. In his book The Invention of the Human, Bloom insists — as I do, which, of course, makes him right this one time…
