I’ve always been fascinated by people’s fear of clowns. I can see why they bring on the heebie-jeebies. Ronald McDonald will clog your arteries. John Wayne Gacy throws you under his house. Tammy Faye will open her mouth. It is a rational fear. Who knows what person is really lurking…
Sydney Pollack was in town the other day to pimp the first documentary in his decades-long career that spans from early TV to latter-day Nicole Kidman-Sean Penn duds, and I asked him whether he’d ever want to be the subject of a movie like his own that probes the personal…
“Attention! You thought the trip down the humid, bloody birth canal was hell? You ain’t even felt terror yet! While at boot camp, your sorry, diapered butt will report promptly to the latrine every hour, on the hour. What’s that, recruit? No, I DON’T care if you have to go…
In 1896, when Dallas icon Sarah T. Hughes was born, women didn’t even have the vote. When she graduated from a girls’ college, the only profession open to women was schoolteacher. Hughes did that two years and said phooey. In 1919, she enrolled in George Washington University, studying law at…
Oh, it’s not enough for Alain Gerard Clement to draw cool stuff and hang it on the wall. No, he’s got to show everyone up–smoke the proverbial asses of artists near and far by employing a time-consuming extra step–the photogenic technique/process of W.H.F. Talbot straight outta the 1800s. Clement turns…
Thirty kajillion people can’t be wrong, so there must be something good about American Idol. Looks like a saccharine, overlong version of the old Gong Show to me, but I’m obviously missing something. And contemporary dance? That’s the one with the hippies flailing around in bare feet, right? Not my…
Figaro! Figaro, figaro, figaro! Figaro! Figaro, figaro, figaro, figaro! Figaro! And that, friends, is all I know about opera. But if Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) is anywhere near as intriguing as the Living Opera’s Web site (which features a desperado flashing a hand of cards and…
Luckily, the production of When I Was a Child at the Dallas Children’s Theater, 5938 Skillman St., isn’t focused on our younger years. Good thing–stagings of homework done on time and standing out in right field would bore you to tears, though occasional whining fits at Chili’s might’ve been entertaining…
In the closest that the state of Texas will ever come to enthusiastically proclaiming the name of its northern bordering state, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! will gallivant its pastel-clad cowboys and boisterously Western tunes to Bass Performance Hall Tuesday through July 2. A love story at heart, Oklahoma! follows a…
Anything called Confessions of a Couch Potato sounds like it might be a Steve Blow column about the decline of our society due to that “new-fangled contraption” called a “television.” Or, it could be a play about a broken home. The family members no longer know how to communicate, sitting…
Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story is not a musical about a heart-pounding relationship between Dallas songstress Lisa Loeb and Leopold Alexis Elijah Walker Gareth Thomas Mountbatten, the time-traveling character played by Hugh Jackman in the 2001 romantic comedy Kate and Leopold. It’s actually a musical recounting the true…
From the knock-offs of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s style found in shopping malls, you may think that the stained-glass artist unleashed the inspiration for stained-glass turtle lamps into the world and nothing more. You would be wrong. His exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art showcases his famous stained-glass mosaics but…
There is no movie more overrated in recent history than Napoleon Dynamite; it’s to cinema what the Doors are to rock and roll, a thing blindly and inexplicably championed as though it were a religion above being blasphemed by nonbelievers. And every time someone tries to explain its appeal–the deadpan…
Remember what a fun couple Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves were in Speed? Well, forget that. In The Lake House, Warner Bros.’ slow and heavy kickoff to the summer romance season, Bullock and Reeves play the mopiest lovers to hit the big screen since Tony and Maria channeled Romeo and…
There’s a fine line between artistic genius and pretentious wankery, and most cineastes will tell you that the films of Matthew Barney exist right around that line. Those who like his work usually admit that it’s almost too insufferably pretentious to bear; those with no patience for it generally acknowledge…
The day after seeing Stanton’s Garage at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, I visited an aunt and uncle who are up in years. They’d just been out in 100-degree heat to have their 1994 Toyota Camry inspected, and it had been an ordeal. The car has only 38,000 miles on it…
Valley of the Dolls Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Fox) Behold The Godfather and Godfather Part II of drag-queen cinema — two movies that provide the gateway to a lifetime of wig addiction. The films couldn’t be more different in temperament — the 1967 original is mile-high Hollywood kitsch,…
Gamers are so used to Mario that the fundamental weirdness of his exploits no longer raises an eyebrow: A dumpy Italian plumber journeys through a fairy-tale land, where turtles throw hammers, mushrooms bestow magic powers, and a kingly turtlebeast holds a princess captive. Where other videogame plots might have been…
All Aboard! Rosie’s Family Cruise (HBO) Aquamarine (Fox) Beavis and Butt-head: The Mike Judge Collection, Volume 2 (Paramount) Before the Fall (Picture This) The Betty Grable Collection: Volume 1 (Fox) Cemetery Man (Anchor Bay) End of the Spear (Fox) Fatwa (Ventura) A Good Woman (Lions Gate) Green Street Hooligans (Warner…
Juneteenth celebrations have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, but apparently unless you’re African-American and from Texas, there’s a good chance you may not know exactly what Juneteenth is, in spite of it being an official state holiday. OK, here’s your quick Texas…
Sometimes, great ideas for children’s entertainment don’t just go bad—they get awkward. Remember Xuxa, the Brazilian children’s show host who delighted kids with flying spaceships and fun songs? Probably not—the show tanked in the States once parents found out Xuxa was a former nightclub dancer and erotic movie actress. And…
Many people may not be pleased with the current administration, but that doesn’t make them any less “American.” In fact, the desire to speak out and speak up is just about as American as it gets. And speaking up doesn’t necessarily require vocalization. Take it from artists like Michael Miller,…
