Month: January 2003

These days, girls kick ass all the time. Buffy, Michelle Yeoh, the Power Puffs—it’s not even remarkable anymore. Which makes it hard to believe that’s it’s been a mere 12 years since Thelma & Louise, Ridley Scott’s feminist buddy movie. But in those ancient days of 1991, the damsel in distress wasn’t expected to stand…

We’re not sure why PBS has let Mystery! go to hell, and if their idea of customer service is another Hetty Wainthrop sequel, we’d rather have another hole in our head. Time was, they ran the good stuff, like Morse—a virtual institution on the other side of the Atlantic. Granted, the series has been uneven…

The marketing behind DVDs has been clever. Videotapes are disposable, and after about 25 viewings, utterly worthless. DVDs have acquired the “preciousness” of keepsakes—heirlooms to pass down from generation to generation. (“That was your grandfather’s Godfather trilogy—and now it’s yours!”) Combine that with our post-9/11 anxiety and need for the comforts of our youth, most…

Here comes the second of a projected trilogy about a sweeping, epic battle for the future of a civilization; instead of orcs, this one has Kentuckians. Gods and Generals takes us back two years from the action of the first film, Gettysburg, to chronicle the most destructive war ever fought on American soil from its…

Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy helped jumpstart the late-80s wave of new indie film voices, and Van Sant’s work remains compelling thanks to his willingness to experiment rather than stay safe. That also breeds maddening inconsistency, and so his career is peppered with misfires and outright failures which are still some of his most interesting…

For four years now, this installment of one-person shows has orbited August’s Fringe Festival at six months’ distance around the calendar, like a minor planet of local theater. Like the Fringe, the guiding philosophy here is “anything goes,” something not likely to change much as longtime curator Dean Seal hands over the controls to Joshua…