There’s only one cheerleader for the Republican Party who travels the country with her own troupe of male exotic dancers to warm up her crowds. And it’s not Elizabeth Dole or Christine Todd Whitman. Her name is Sheryl Underwood, and she’s a study in contradictions. Whereas other comedians attempt to…
Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Pablo Picasso didn’t have to worry about love-struck teen-agers carving their initials alongside wobbly hearts or “4-ever” on the wooden frames of their paintings. Auguste Rodin didn’t fret that “The Thinker” would become a urinal for dogs and man alike. Nor did Constantin Brancusi imagine that the…
If the stereotypical country-and-western song sounds like “My wife left, my dog ran away and my truck broke down,” then the hackneyed blues song would go something like: “My wife ran off with my best friend, who stole my truck, knocked over my mailbox and hit my dog, then the…
The Dallas Museum of Art and Friends of the Dallas Public Library’s annual Arts and Letters Live literary festival is like the bibliophile’s version of the conventions held for comic-book collectors and sci-fi fanatics. Arts and Letters Live must get a fancier name than “convention” or “expo” because its books…
The title of Lucy Loves Schroeder’s album says it all: Lucy is a Band. Lucy is not the name of the woman who sings and plays guitar on the majority of the songs. Schroeder is not the bass player, the drummer, Lucy’s boyfriend or, like the Peanuts characters they’re named…
When Ellen DeGeneres hosted the Emmys this past fall, she asked in her introduction, “What would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews?” We’ve got a hunch: a single day featuring hundreds of performances of Eve Ensler’s Obie Award-winning play The Vagina…
Most people don’t watch Jennifer Lopez to check out how accurate her flamenco dance steps are. We doubt they even notice her feet. Still, Dallas flamenco dancer and promoter Julia Alcántara believes anything–even a scantily clad pop singer–that draws attention to the ancient and constantly maturing Spanish gypsy art is…
When the SamulNori comes, it brings rain, lightning, clouds and wind. But it’s not a weather condition. It’s a Korean percussion ensemble whose name means “to play four parts” or “mastery of four things,” which is exactly what these four guys do. One each covers the four traditional instruments: a…
Author and radio host Sarah Vowell has been accused of being smart and a smart-ass, a curmudgeon hiding behind a pen, a radio mike and a sweet face. But, despite her often-sarcastic tone, people who hear or read her work don’t just like it. They like her. She’s the friend…
Julia Roberts has been called the most powerful woman in Hollywood, one of the greatest actors of our time and America’s Sweetheart. Her power is evident: She can make mediocre movies like The Mexican have good openings, she can give a silly speech at the Oscars and look “sincere” and…
The Dallas Museum of Art’s new exhibit, European Masterworks, The Foundation for the Arts Collection at the Dallas Museum of Art, contains more than 100 works produced between 1700 and 1950 by Europe’s great masters. These paintings, sculptures and works on paper by artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Renoir, Rodin…
Centro-matic, Distance and Clime (Idol): A year with only one album release from Centro-matic may not sound like a good year at all, unless that album is Distance and Clime. And it’s more than enough to tide us over until someone can find a way to keep up Will Johnson…
The photographs that some theater companies send to promote their plays are dreadful enough to send anyone not dedicated to supporting local stage arts screaming for the hills like hammy actors from a high school production of The Sound of Music. At worst, there’s an exit sign, a hanging mike…
It’s become a cliché: A stand-up comedian, after years of living out of a suitcase, performing to rooms full (or not) of pleased spectators and merciless hecklers, happens to be in the right club on the right night and gets his Big Break. A sitcom deal follows. Jerry Seinfeld, Kevin…
String together the words “modern” and “virginity,” and likely the resulting image is of Britney Spears getting friendly with a boa constrictor on MTV. But the same kids who watch Total Request Live are also taking their parents’ and grandparents’ lead and becoming more interested in a 470-year-old virgin, the…
There’s a notion that, for theater companies, holiday stage productions are cash cows. They can throw together any old show related to the season–A Christmas Carol, The Nutcracker, Scrooge, A Christmas Story, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever–with a few costumes (usually passed along year to year) and they’ve got a…
The album isn’t quite finished. A few tracks are still being recorded; the whole thing needs to be mastered. Then there’s artwork, CD pressing, booklet printing and the video files that might be included. Nevertheless, The Adventures of Jet are ready to move on, anxious to hit the road, play…
The wearying practice of cranking out local-band compilations has been left to local labels, often working with a theme (cf. Electric Ornaments, Idol Records’ excellent Christmas comp from last year) or with an agenda (promoting their own segment of the “scene” or their own stable of bands). To accuse Summer…
Two years ago, a colleague of Michael Cain’s asked the founder and director of the Deep Ellum Film Festival just why the hell he named his fledgling fest after a part of town in which there were, ahem, no movie theaters. “There will be,” Cain insisted, like a W.P. Kinsella…
Indiana Jones–whether he was searching for the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail or a swell dame–always had exceptional luck, which movies, books and TV programs have made us believe is an essential part of being an archaeologist. The odd thing is they’re not wrong. Dr. Zahi Hawass, the…
Unlike most 2-year-olds, The Texas International Fine Art Fair is steady on its feet. And, instead of “terrible twos,” the exhibition of fine art, antique and luxury item dealers suffers from the terribly expensive twos. While the catalog of exhibiting galleries doesn’t list prices, with names such as Picasso, Rousseau,…
Plenty has been said about the effect of the September 11 attacks on the entertainment industry. Movies have been re-edited to omit scenes of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Others have been shelved indefinitely because of plots about terrorism, collapsing buildings or hijacked airliners. There have been quickly produced…
