Usually I cringe when I hear a movie referred to as part of a “franchise.” I love film as an art-form too much to ever want to debase it by acknowledging the (admittedly large) segment of the industry that’s devoted to churning out pre-packaged, pre-sold commoditized entertainment products. Even as something as horrid as Transformers doesn’t deserve to be talked about as if it’s as fungible as the entire McDonald’s product line. Even if it is.

But, as I watched Fast Five with a theater full of fans who eagerly and joyously lapped up this cinematic equivalent of a Big Mac, it became clear that my anti-franchise stance is a silly hang-up. To hear the crowd around me cheer and laugh as each familiar character entered the picture, you’d think The Fast and the Furious (the 2001 film that kicked off the saga) is the most beloved movie franchise in history. (more…)

“Prom is like the Olympics,” one of the characters in the new teen romance, Disney’s PROM says towards the movie’s beginning. “You wait four years for it, and at the end, only three people have a good time.”

It’s a legitimately funny line, one a handful of actually clever pieces of dialogue in the new super-sweetened emotion machine, PROM, lines that feel as welcomed as graffiti in Disneyland. After all, this is, as the title boldly professes, a Disney movie, so put aside all your hope for a Heathers-inspired skewering of the brooding underside of teenage life. Here, life is softened-up for the pre-teen set, and PROM is no less a movie involved in mythmaking than any of the entertainment company’s summer animated fairy tales. Prom, in PROM, is a very significant moment in a young person’s life, both a celebration and a culmination of everything high school stands for.

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One thing that’s undeniable is that documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) is a funny guy. He is funny in the way a class clown is funny. He mines laughs by breaking rules and pushing buttons. He has an innate charisma that is likable in a sloppy, jestery kind of way. And Spurlock makes documentaries that feel like highbrow Jackass stunts. Rather than simply mortifying his body for dropped-jawed amusement, Spurlock wraps his stunts into the complicated web of consummeristic American culture, playing sacrificial victim to a world that values product over people. The results are undeniably compelling.

In Super Size Me, Spurlock subjected himself to a month of McDonald’s — much to the detriment of his physical health. Now, in The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Spurlock completely sells out to make a point, subjecting his movie to a glut of sponsorships, advertisements, product placements, and corporate promotion. The result is an intriguing, entertaining, and troubling movie-product that dances on a delicate line between satire and cynical prank. The question at hand: can an inside joke about the forthrightness of commercialized art withstand the undermining erosion that product promotion can have on the integrity of an artistic statement?

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Here are this weekend’s gallery openings.

Image: Robert The – “a tribute to JFK” ( mixed media) From The Gun & Knife Show at Centraltrak

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Sunset High School grad Terry Southern penned some little movies that had no real cultural impact on America – films like Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Easy Rider, The Cincinnati Kid, and, let we forget, Barbarella.

On Sunday, Oak Cliff’s Texas Theatre will screen Dr. Stangelove as part of Terry Southern Day, the first in a series of programs being produced under the title “The Soul of Oak Cliff.”

“Oak Cliff has produced more creative and famous people than any other part of Dallas, and maybe all of Texas,” says Kirby Warnock, who heads up Slim Pickens Fan Club, which is behind “The Soul of Oak Cliff Series. “It’s time the rest of the world learned more about us.”

“We’re like Austin without the self righteousness,” Warnock continues. “I’m elated by all of the positive changes here, but I want to honor those folks who produced some incredible works back when this place wasn’t as trendy.”

The full release is below.

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This evening, author Ben Westhoff will read from his new book about Southern hip-hop, Dirty South, at Cliff Notes, the bookstore adjacent to the Kessler Theater on Davis St. in Oak Cliff. Westhoff tells the DMN’s Chris Vognar that many fans of East Coast rap disagree with the book’s subtitle, “The Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop.” “Reinvented,” they say, should be “ruined.” Westhoff doesn’t apologize:

“I’ve always had very democratic taste in music, which is to say I like stuff that’s popular more than stuff that’s necessarily critically acclaimed,” he says. “That’s what a lot of Southern rap is about. While my peers might have thought Southern rap was corny, this is the kind of music I like.”

Tom Maurstad has a good write-up of last night’s bizarre non-show delivered by actor Charlie Sheen at the American Airlines Center, asking the important question: “Is there any point observing that there really is no show to the Charlie Sheen show?”

The answer, of course, is no. In fact, the “Sheenius” of the whole Charlie Sheen spectacular seems to be his ability to ride nothing so far. To fill the nothingness, Sheen read from his t-shirt, a Houston Chronicle review, and showed YouTube videos. Even the comedian Jeffrey Ross, who threatened to add something to the nothing, didn’t show. The substitute sounds just perfect:

By the time his head of security, actor-bodyguard Chuck Zito , came out instead of comedian Jeffrey Ross, the show’s surreal disintegration into shapeless chaos was complete. Turns out Ross couldn’t make it, so Zito read his “roast” of Charlie as the “Sheenius” sat, smoked and smirked. Tellingly, when the sound went out midway through Zito’s recitation, no one seemed to notice.

Lyric Stage has announced the nominations for the first Schmidt and Jones Awards, which will honor the best area high school musical productions. The finalists for the award are:

• Curtains!, Boswell High School (Fort Worth)
• Into the Woods, Coppell High School
• 42nd Street, Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts
• Grease, Woodrow Wilson High School (Dallas)

As Mark Lowry reports, the awards are the second of their kind in North Texas (Casa Mañana announced its nominations for the Betty Lynn Buckley Awards last week), and they are part of growing national trend to recognize high school productions. I wonder if that trend has anything to do with this.

This Thursday’s giveaway has an European flare. British conductor Douglas Boyd is conducting a program of work by German composer Richard Strauss this weekend at the DSO, and we’ve got a pair of tickets to giveaway. The program includes Haydn’s Symphony No. 103, Drum Roll, Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, the Entr’acte after Act I from Intermezzo, and the DSO’s own Erin Hannigan making her classical series debut as a soloist in Strauss’ Oboe Concerto. To win your tickets, answer the question in the form below: What was the name of the American solider who originally asked Strauss to compose an oboe concerto? We’ll pick a winner from the submissions at 3pm.

Photo: Douglas Boyd (J. Keenan)

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Whatever Wednesdays with Gavin Guthrie/Oleg B. (Rubber Gloves): Rick Simpson of Down Low Music will be guest DJ tonight. Simpson was featured under his DJ name (R9) on that Tommyboy “Texas Love Triangle mix for Vice almost a year ago, which has been the gift that keeps on giving for Texas artists that are actually worth a damn.  Simpson is influenced by everyone from Industrial icons Front 242 to the late Detroit techno artist James Stinson and you can hear more of his music here.

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