Michael Haneke’s Amour opens with an invasion, the kind of dramatic event we almost expect at the start of a movie. A locked door is broken-in by a group of police officers who bust into the quite Parisian apartment. A detective flings opens doors to empty rooms, while an officer wrenches open a window to let out a bad smell. The smell, our gut tells us, is the stench of death, and what we have in these opening scenes is ..read more
DMA Goes Free Monday
This is the last weekend you can pay to get into the Dallas Museum of Art. As of Monday, general admission is free (you still have to pay for the special exhibitions). The museum offered a preview of the DMA Friends program, which I discuss in detail over here.
Meadows Prize Announced
Among the artists heading to Dallas as part of the Meadows Prize residency is Tania Bruguera. I wasn’t surprised to see Bruguera’s name among the honorees. Her work ..read more
Seven filmmakers from Dallas are bringing films to this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which kicks-off on January 17. We caught up with them, and over the next week, we’ll share their thoughts on their movies, filmmaking, and Dallas. Click here for all the profiles in the series.
Actor and filmmaker Frank Mosley is set to have a great 2013. After completing his 2009 feature, Hold, he is finishing up his second feature film, Her Wilderness, an “elliptical” narrative about a child’s wanderings in ..read more
Seven filmmakers from Dallas are bringing films to this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which kicks-off on January 17. We caught up with them, and over the next week, we’ll share their thoughts on their movies, filmmaking, and Dallas. Click here for all the profiles in the series.
David Lowery is the rising star in Dallas filmmaking. He landed a spot on Filmmaker Magazine‘s list of “25 New Faces” thanks to his 2009 feature St. Nick and his acclaimed short, Pioneer, which ..read more
In early December, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott wrote a response to a number of recent “obituaries” written about the state of the movies. In the piece, entitled “Film Culture Isn’t Dead After All,” the critic argues that those who pine for some lost Golden Era of cinema are guilty of some sentimentality and nostalgia for a past that never quite existed in the way it exists in the fanciful memories of some film writers. Last year, he ..read more
Gangster Squad, an Untouchables-Dick Tracy (that is, without either of those movies’ vivacity), finally gets its belated release this Friday. The cast of the new movie is enough to make you take notice; it features Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, and Emma Stone. But it is the story of the film’s delayed release that is undoubtedly more fascinating than the movie itself. Back in July 2012, in the wake of the Aurora, CO theater shootings, skittish producers pushed-back the ..read more
Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut, Quartet, is an ensemble piece set in a retirement home for musicians. Based on a play by Ronald Harwood, the conceit is a little stretched: Britain’s greatest musicians wallowing away their late years in a stately old manor house, playing croquet and sneaking nips of scotch behind their young and blond doctor’s back.
Driving the film ahead is a sit-com-y situation: the house is running out of money and in order to save the home, the musicians ..read more
If anything can thwart the terror incited by yet another found-footage horror film, maybe Marlon Wayans is it. Or not. The funnyman stars in (and co-wrote) the toss-away comedy, A Haunted House, which runs like an over long sketch on a genre that has beaten to death by serious and spoof takes.
Wayans plays Malcolm, who invites his girlfriend Kisha (Essence Atkins) to move in with him, but after she has invaded the bachelor pad, strange things begin to happen. So, Malcolm ..read more
As we mentioned in this week’s spring art preview, the new art season kicks-off this weekend with a load of new openings, many centering in and around the Design District. Here are a few highlights:
“C 4″ by Christine Bisetto, Colette Copeland, Clayton Hurt and Chancellor Page at 500x Gallery – January 12: 7-10 p.m. 500 Exposition Avenue, Dallas, Tx 75226.
We mentioned Colette Copeland’s video project, a six-part narrative installation piece that explores historical hangings of women, in the spring preview. This ..read more
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for the 85th Annual Academy Awards. Among the surprises, no best director nod for Quentin Tarantino for Django Unchained, even though the film did receive nominations in the best picture and best supporting actor category. Beasts of the Southern Wild and Silver Linings Playbook both took home arm-fuls of nominations, and Quvenzhané Wallis became the youngest best actress nominee ever, at the age of nine.
Here is the list of nominees in the ..read more