Octavio Solis was Dallas’ homecoming king last week. Most of the people in the packed house at the Arts District Theater for his play Santos & Santos knew him when he lived here, pretended to know him, or were friends with someone who knew him. Teachers from the Arts Magnet…
When Major Theatre cofounder Bryce Gonzalez’ brother, who lives in California, fell ill with AIDS last month and needed a caretaker, Gonzalez made the trip west. That left the East Dallas theater operating with a one-man staff–cofounder Rob Clements–who, of course, couldn’t run the projector, sell popcorn, and tear tickets…
Ginger Rogers, who died April 25 at the age of 83, embodied star power with unsurpassed subtlety. Born Virginia McMath in Independence, Missouri (a location with a name so symbolically right it sounds invented), she was primed for stardom at age six when her ambitious mother took her on the…
For nearly three decades, some of Hollywood’s most powerful African-American players have labored unsuccessfully to bring the story of the Black Panther Party to the big screen. The father-son filmmaking duo of Melvin and Mario Van Peebles has managed to make the dream come true, and “dreamlike” is certainly the…
Why do people on the witness stand lie about stuff that doesn’t even matter? “Isn’t it true, Mr. Mossfelt, that before you identified this man as the thief, you were complaining that your contact lenses were dirty?” And all Mr. Mossfelt has to do is say, “Yeah, they were dirty.”…
The Perez Family and My Family (Mi Familia) are full of hardship, deprivation, bitterness, and death, yet they’re ultimately optimistic. They remind us that no matter how terrible our daily lives might seem, for our immigrant predecessors, life was almost certainly worse. These movies don’t glance off of you the…
thursday may 11 Male Figurative Show: Why is it that everyone’s afraid of the penis? From popular entertainment to classic visual art, any Western medium that deals in images over the last few hundred years has treated the male genitalia as verboten–while women’s bodies can be viewed from any and…
About 20 minutes into the French-Italian melodrama Farinelli, a spoiled courtesan summons the greatest castrato singer of 18th century Europe, Farinelli (Stefano Dionisi), to a private meeting with her and dozens of tittering ladies fair. All of them are astounded by the three-octave range of this slender, incendiary beauty who…
In the past two decades, filmmaker John Carpenter has directed 17 movies, and has established himself as a towering figure in modern horror. In technical terms, he’s some kind of lowbrow genius: he has a better idea of how to build unease through freaky camera movements, dissonant sound effects, and…
Will Clark, the slugging first baseman, made some predictions before the start of the Home Opener at The Ballpark in Arlington last Thursday. Then again, a lot of guys have put on their Kreskin panties lately. A few should have stuck to jocks. But more on them in a minute…
You have to give Gaitley Mathews credit. The indefatigable artistic director of Deep Ellum Opera Theatre nurtures ambitious new operas in his hole-in-the-wall, neo-warehouse setting. And Mathews’ current offering, Mata Hari, is his third world premiere. It is based on a true tale that has all the elements of an…
As Jim Carroll, the teenage prep-school junkie hero of The Basketball Diaries, Leonardo DiCaprio is so brilliant he’s scary. He’s only 20, but he has the expressiveness and assurance of someone who’s been starring in films for decades. He gives you everything he has to give, yet at the same…
Whether Oscar-nominated actor Leonardo DiCaprio chooses to identify himself as “gay” is entirely his business. Where once the issue of outing celebrities sharply divided the gay and lesbian community, there has been a growing consensus that the reluctance of the mainstream press to discuss such “personal” issues is hypocritical, since…
How come all the people who defend porno act like they hate porno? You ever notice this? There’s always some guy in a corduroy coat, the professor of institutional mediocrity at Wyoming State Technical Institute, and he’s being interviewed by Dick Cavett or William F. Buckley or somebody. He says,…
thursday may 4 Contemporary Hollywood Portraits: Pick up movie magazines, watch syndicated entertainment news programs, listen to cinephiles sit around the table for drinks and discussion–everyone’s lamenting the dearth of genuine movie star appeal in American cinema. This is not a new complaint, of course–folks back in the ’20s bemoaned…
The name Kenneth Anger conjures different associations, depending on who you’re talking to–and assuming, of course, that the person has heard of him to begin with. Anger, who will visit Dallas April 28 and 29 in conjunction with Las Colinas’ Mandalay Festival of Arts, is a multifaceted legend. He’s a…
It is Thursday morning, and Roy Tarpley is walking away from what will likely prove his last home practice in a place where he has never really felt at home. He sees that the sun is shining and says the weather is crazy and that he will not talk to…
In the long run, Richard Hamburger’s success with the Dallas Theater Center will be measured by plays such as Santos & Santos. Written by Texas-born playwright Octavio Solis, Santos is a dark work that explores the underbelly of the American dream through an immigrant crime family. Hamburger has described the…
The past couple of months have already seen an ongoing, gay-themed series of midnight movies cosponsored by the Inwood Theater and The Met, and a Silver Anniversary USA Film Festival schedule rich in gay and lesbian-themed features. Which means that the organizers of the 1995 Gay & Lesbian Festival, which…
I’ve tried credit cards. I can’t do it. I get a little surprise in the mail every month, and when I open it, I go, “I did not spend 700 bucks on phone sex. I know it wasn’t a penny over 650.” I’ve tried checking accounts. After one week, I…
The Cahiers du Cinema-era French film critics coined a name for the American crime drama of the ’40s and ’50s, in which every technical effort was extended to forge a mood of sordidness and epic struggle. They called it film noir–a genre in which ticket-buyers were carried roller coaster-style through…
thursday april 27 Joel-Peter Witkin: If, as someone once observed, humans are animals cursed with the ability to think like gods, then legendary photographer-montagist Joel Peter-Witkin is the documentarian of that dilemma. His pictures are ecstatic nightmares about mortality, images of twisted and deformed bodies trapped in tableaux of pain…
