South by Southwest has a way of turning Dallas into a fleetingly improved rock town. That’s Dallas, not Austin. Austin during SXSW is a roiling cesspool of drunken industry types and frustrated musicians. It’s Dallas, an easy stopover between the rest of the country and the music festival, that showcases…
Bart Weiss, artistic director of the Dallas Video Festival, loves every single entry in his international video showcase’s 12th year, again hosted by the Dallas Theater Center in its Kalita Humphreys Theater. He has watched each of them from beginning to end, and a helluva lot more that didn’t make…
Searching for Carrie Fisher may be the best little gem in the festival. Too bad it’s buried in the otherwise unremarkable “Love and Obsession” compilation. You may have to sit through some pretty bad selections to get to it, but it’s definitely worth the wait. Then again, you already may…
Love ‘im or hate ‘im, Hal Hartley has invaded the ranks of lauded indie filmmakers with quiet determination. His material–intentionally flat, talky, and existentially “hip”–usually involves urban anti-heroes and -heroines stumbling through modern emotional war zones, most often those of love and commitment. And boy, do they talk. Not Whit…
What follows are brief reviews of some highlights from the Dallas Video Festival, arranged chronologically. The festival runs from Thursday, March 25, through Sunday, March 28, in four different areas–the Electronic Theater, Video Cabaret, Video Lounge, and Video Box–at the Kalita Humphreys Theater, 3636 Turtle Creek Boulevard. Installations of video…
So the amateur–I mean avid–art fans are swarming the Kimbell to see this year’s Big Show, and sure enough, Matisse and Picasso are worth the drive to Fort Worth and the elbow-digging crowds. But in the process of obsessing over these two masters’ obsessions with each other, you may miss…
This is odd. After the years I’ve spent perusing museum exhibitions–studying objects as varied as giant taxidermy bears in Minneapolis, motorcycles in New York, opera sets in London, and excavated gold jewelry in Key West (this, of course, in the Mel Fisher museum)–I’d say that the big new show at…
While the hubbub over the American Film Institute’s list of top 100 films of all time has died down, the bright power of the films among its ranks has not. These celluloid masterpieces prove their visceral and technical impact with every viewing, and the bigger the screen, the better. No…
A few weeks ago, word circulated through the Denton-rock grapevine that Brunswick was hit by a car–jarring news indeed about the mascot of the cozy indie scene. But there he is nonetheless, sitting in the cab of his owner’s pickup truck, alert at the window, swinging his tail like the…
Art-scenester folklore has it that Brice Marden and Julian Schnabel came to blows in a New York bar back in the 1970s. The story pits the established abstract minimalist and the emerging young painter against each other at Max’s Kansas City, the dark and smoke-choked stomping grounds of glam rockers,…
So the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza isn’t exclusively obsessed with the assassination. That’s probably a good thing. We wouldn’t want such a fine establishment to take on the creepy, narrow compulsion of its chief subject: November 22, 1963. For 10 years, the Sixth Floor Museum has offered far…
The average American is exposed to more than 1,500 ads a day. Billboards, T-shirt logos, the sides of buses, drink coasters, matchbooks–advertisements have invaded every nook and cranny of our daily lives. Still we insist we’re not influenced by their messages. Not much, anyway. Talk about ego. Philadelphia filmmakers Harold…
Basement tape Excretio: The Difficult Years Poor Bastard Sons Hot Links Records Chris Flemmons, the main Poor Bastard Son, is only in his 20s, and God knows if he’s ever been to Appalachia. Perhaps in a past life, this Denton boy was a union organizer–or, better yet, a deep-and-dusty coal…
Not really what you’d expect in a sushi bar. The otherwise cool, modest clamor of dishes clinking and Kirin bottles toasting and waiters explaining the fishy menu gave way to the scooting about of chairs and tables to make way for…a very loud rock band. The four guys filling the…
When Steven Holt’s dream came true, no one else was there to see it. There he was, living the musician’s fantasy, signed to a big-time record label–what every boy longs for from the moment he straps on his first guitar and plays his first clumsy chords. There he was, a…
The coming plague…yes, yes, that same one that’ll wipe out a third of our planet’s human population like ick in an over-crowded fish tank. The experts say it’s coming, that this earth is just too damn choked with people not to breed some kind of Yber-infection, one that’ll kill every…
The title of the mondo exclusive show at the Kimbell is disconcerting: Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry. “Gentle” isn’t the best word to pair with “rivalry,” and even less of a match for the temperament of these artists, but how else can the Kimbell get the point across? These…
What would a week be without a mention in this paper of at least one of the following local wonders: The Dooms U.K., Centro-matic, Peter Schmidt, Corn Mo, or the Good/Bad Art Collective? None of these agencies is paying us under the table. We swear. This Friday, the Good/Bad Art…
Rockin’ bones Greatest Grooves “Groovey” Joe Poovey Dragon Street Records Joe Poovey died last October, just months before this gem of a retrospective hit stores, promising the comeback Poovey used to dream of. He proofread the liner notes, and then, that very night, checked out for good. Maybe he knew…
The place has been closed for seven months. While the great unwashed didn’t notice, the rest of the art freaks sure did. Dallas can’t afford to lose a gallery–especially a great alternative space–like Gray Matters. We’d drive by the closed doors on North Haskell every once in a while and…
An old soul exudes a wisdom and clarity it couldn’t possibly have come by in a single lifetime. An old soul, a rare individual to stumble upon, isn’t one who speaks impulsively; his words surface carefully, from an amalgam of other times and worlds. There’s a peace, a thoughtfulness about…
This is perfect. Velvet Goldmine was destined for midnight-movie status before it even hit screens earlier this fall, packing all the elements of a great cult film–big rock music, subversive sex, a rambling narrative, pretty boys and girls (and more boys), and its focus on a pop subculture. In this…
