You ever get advice like this? “Gee, that’s a horrible story, Joe Bob. You should prob’ly just swear off women entirely.” That makes you feel great, doesn’t it? It’s sort of like hearing, “You seem to be a toxic individual. Everything you touch turns to dog doo-doo.” I mean, you…
The program for Kitchen Dog Theatre’s latest production, the racial-sexual drama Porcelain, contains some astute notes by director David Irving, who is the newest member of Kitchen Dog. His essay reads: “‘Shocking plays’ always seem to raise a question of validity in people’s minds, as though the plays want to…
Ticket buyers should know there is a controversial presumption behind Trainspotting, the remarkable new feature by director Danny Boyle and writer John Hodge–that drugs are fun. Specifically, heroin. The synthetic morphine substitute that keeps creeping back into ’90s headlines–most recently, with the overdose death of Smashing Pumpkins keyboardist Danny Melvoin…
A Time to Kill, like just about everything seeping from John Grisham’s popular pen, points up the author’s two weaknesses as storyteller: plotting, and everything else. In this fairly routine courtroom drama, a cocky young Mississippi attorney named Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey), craving success and adulation, agrees to represent Carl…
The Scottish accents are so thick in Trainspotting that for the first few minutes you’re not sure the characters are really saying what you’re hearing. Could it be–in the politically correct ’90s–that the central characters of a film are extolling the virtues of heroin addiction? Can these smart, interesting, vigorous…
thursday july 25 Deborah Henson-Conant: Critically adored harpist-singer Deborah Henson-Conant has become famous in jazz and classical circles because she treats her instrument of choice like everything but a harp. She pounds it, plucks it, caresses it, massages it, and does everything short of establishing onstage carnal knowledge with it…
Why is it that the people on airplanes who look like they have no jobs are always the ones who have to get off the plane immediately to get somewhere? Check out the guy with the six-day growth of beard carrying a paper sack full of greasy buffalo wings. As…
Watching the latest production by Theatre Three, a pair of one-acts from reigning theatrical neurotic Christopher Durang aptly dubbed Disgraceful Acts, the viewer is intrigued. In one evening, Dallas’ 35-year-old theater company offers the simultaneous experience of watching a skillful satirist at his prime and said writer floundering for inspiration…
Peter Jackson’s brief resume as a writer-director is about as impressive as any independent filmmaker. Three genre films–Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, and Dead-Alive–preceded his art-house breakthrough Heavenly Creatures, but they all bespoke a peculiar, highly individualized voice. Whether you like his movies or not, you have to acknowledge how…
A month into its much-heralded summer release, Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame has begun a slow limp down the box-office ladder. Everybody who harbors ill will toward this film–and there are a surprising number who do–want to take credit for its (relatively) poor performance with the public. Southern Baptists…
thursday july 18 First-Annual Texas Film and Video Awards: The Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics’ Association, which boasts 30 highly opinionated men and women (and one purehearted calendar editor), has decided that all this talk about the expanding Texas film-production scene deserves its own seal of approval–something that only folks who…
Here it is, the review you’ve all been waiting for, the one in which Joe Bob compares Striptease (estimated budget, 40 million bucks) to Stripteaser (estimated budget, 40 bucks). Guess which one’s better. You already know, don’t ya? Striptease stars Demi Moore, who received $12.5 million for her performance and…
Legendary New York theatrical producer Joseph Papp and his New York Shakespeare Festival are generally credited with the idea of “restaging” Billy the Shake’s comedies and tragedies. This was a decision both commercial and artistic from a man and a company for whom those considerations were rarely in conflict. Papp…
For me, there is no movie moment that has ever approximated the satisfaction I felt when, on my 12th birthday, I saw Death Star blown apart for the first time. In my mind, I was witnessing something that could only be called cataclysmic–tempered by the pure-adrenaline joy of seeing the…
thursday july 11 Porcelain: Two years ago the Dallas Theater Center staged Chay Yew’s Porcelain as a reading for its “Big D Festival of the Unexpected.” You could’ve heard a pin drop in that basement space as an Asian-Anglo hustler meets his Anglo lover during sex in a public rest…
There’s good news and bad news from the Great White Way. The good news is that, after years of premature closings, skyrocketing ticket prices, and dismal press, Broadway is enjoying its best season in years. The massive crossover success of Bring In Da Noise, Bring In Da Funk and the…
Once again, the Hollywood Foreign Press Corps has forced us into a crisis situation, so I am announcing the winners of the 1996 Drive-In Academy Awards one week early. The late announcement this year was believed to be hampering peace efforts in both Bosnia and the Golan Heights, as otherwise…
Because some of my friends have gotten married, I’ve had–on rare occasion–the opportunity to attend a few bachelor parties. Mostly, that means cheap beer and even cheaper nude dancers. I’ve seen a variety of sexual come-ons at these events, designed to titillate the hoi polloi: pole-licking, role-playing, hip-grinding of all…
For the past five years, Eddie Murphy’s career has been one of the lingering reminders of how the hollow successes of the ’80s didn’t quite translate into the ’90s. His two biggest hits financially–the first two Beverly Hills Cop movies–were part of the slick, shallow style of movie-making pioneered by…
thursday july 4 Old-Fashioned Fourth: The venerable downtown Dallas historical site known as Old City Park advertises its Fourth of July celebration as “first on the Fourth for families.” This constellation of consonants is correct only insofar as the city of Dallas goes (see Arlington Parade below). Should you be…
I have a question about Twister. You know those little plastic thingies with whirlybirds on ’em that they throw up inside the tornado funnel at the end–the things that look like they’re prizes out of a gumball machine? We’re all supposed to feel great, right, because Bill Paxton and Helen…
Don’t ask why, but about two years ago I found myself on a tour of a hospital located at the base of the Appalachian mountains. The hospital’s administrator, a Catholic nun, was explaining some of the unique pathologies seen at the facility, most of them derived from the effects of…
