The Longhorn Lights have moved to the South Mall for 2025.
Photo courtesy of the University of Texas at Austin
Students don't have to put up their own lights to get in the holiday spirit this season, as the University of Texas at Austin prepares for its 3rd annual Longhorn Lights installation. Visitors to the South Mall — or "the six-pack" — will see it decked out in lights starting Thursday, November 18.
The lights in UT's classic colors, orange and white, will be on every night from 5-10 pm. This year, they're "framing" UT's famous Tower, which is under construction as the masonry, windows, and other features are restored. The university announced the renovations in 2024; they also include new gilding, updated lighting, and refurbishing the clockface and carillon bells.
“Longhorn Lights brings the spirit of the holidays right to the Forty Acres,” said UT President Jim Davis in a press release. “The South Mall — the heart of campus — is the perfect setting for this beautiful display.”
That's not all for holiday happenings at UT and its affiliated organizations. Texas Performing Arts will screen holiday movies at Bass Concert Hall, including a showing of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation on December 16 with a Q&A with the film's star, Chevy Chase. Plus, the lights will be synchronized with music by the Longhorn Band after football games with Arkansas on November 22 and November 29.
The Longhorn Lights are free to see and open to the public. Visitors who are driving in to see them can park for free on some streets, in nearby metered spaces, or at the nearby Brazos Garage.
The story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster is now over 200 years old, with Mary Shelley’s book having been adapted or referenced in close to 500 films. Less common is the character of The Bride of Frankenstein, which existed in the original text but has more often than not been excised in adaptations. Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal has tried to rectify that by giving the character a big showcase in her new film, The Bride!.
Gyllenhaal has reimagined the story as one in which a woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley) becomes possessed by the spirit of Shelley (also Buckley). At the same time, the already-existing Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) approaches Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), who specializes in reanimation, with the request to make him a wife. When Ida falls to her death in an “accident” involving her boyfriend (John Magaro), the ideal corpse becomes available.
After Ida’s resurrection, she and the monster become restless being studied by Dr. Euphronius and decide to break out to experience the world. The world, naturally, is not exactly welcoming to them, and soon the couple are on the run for causing mayhem, including a few murders. In hot pursuit are detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant, Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), as well as other authorities.
It’s clear that Gyllenhaal wanted to merge the Frankenstein story with Bonnie & Clyde, especially since she sets the film in the mid-1930s. And that wouldn’t have been a bad idea if having the monster and The Bride going on a crime spree was truly the focus of the movie. But most of the time there’s less intentionality in their misdeeds and more confusion, leading to a muddled plot with no clear direction or end goal in mind.
One of the biggest problems is that Gyllenhaal starts the energy of the film at an 11, giving her and everyone else nowhere to go but down. She dabbles in multiple different tones, at times going the straight drama route and other times making what seems like full-on camp. At one point, she even has the monster and the Bride in a dance sequence set to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which would be hilarious as an homage to Young Frankenstein if the film weren’t so disjointed.
Most baffling of all is what Gyllenhaal wants from The Bride character. She morphs multiple times over the course of the film, from close to unintelligible at the beginning to rough-and-tumble at the end. There are hints at the lack of control she has over her autonomy, including Shelley’s possession of her and the monster lying to her about her past, but any commentary that Gyllenhaal might be trying to make gets lost amid the oddity of the film as a whole.
Both Buckley and Bale are all-in for their performances, which definitely fall in the “love it or hate it” dichotomy. Each scene is pitched so high that there’s little nuance to either of them, and neither is on par with their previous Oscar-caliber roles. The high-powered supporting cast of Bening, Sarsgaard, Cruz, and Jake Gyllenhaal is watchable based on previous roles, but none of them elevate this particular movie.
Whatever intentions Maggie Gyllenhaal had in making The Bride! are only halfway legible in a film that can never find its tonal footing. There has rarely been subtlety in movies featuring Frankenstein’s monster and related characters, but this one makes all the others seem like stuffy dramas in comparison.
