Embarrassment of Riches

Tennessee Williams Film Collection (Warner Bros.) All that’s missing from this boxed set — six movies, one doc, eight discs — is a jar of sweat; even Williams is here, in a 1973 documentary. Then there’s Brando, Beatty, Newman, Taylor, Burton, Gardner, Leigh, Malden, Huston, Kazan — the last of…

Hero With a Thousand Faces

The biggest innovation videogaming saw in the past decade or so was the invention of the “sandbox”: Programmers create settings and consequences, but give you, the user, free license to do with them what you want. Grand Theft Auto is certainly the best-known of these games. The carjackings, the hookers,…

Our top DVD picks for the week of May 2.

BTK Killer (Lions Gate) Chubby Hubby Workout (On Air Video) Dinosaurs: The Complete First and Second Seasons (Disney) The Family Stone (Fox) Flight 93: The Movie (UAV) Jargo (Picture This!) King of Thieves (Picture This!) Last Holiday (Paramount) Lie With Me (Lance) Life in the Undergrowth (BBC) Misaki Chronicles: Volume…

Three Times the Pain

Chances are, if you’re the sort of person who enjoys enduring pain, fatigue and shin splints to the point of vomiting—that is, you’re a triathlete—you already know that the 15th Annual Tom Landry Triathlon begins at 7 a.m. Sunday at the Baylor Tom Landry Fitness Center, 411 N. Washington. You’ve…

Spells and Binding

So I tried to read a little Harry Potter fan fiction. It got a little racy, and I felt a little…OK, I felt really wrong. So, I thought, maybe if the witches and wizards were “of age,” you know? Perhaps I picked the wrong book, but it still didn’t work…

…We Salute You

These kids today. Back in the day, when a child wanted to learn about sex, there was the street corner, maybe a copy of Dad’s Penthouse. Now they teach sex in school, dadgummit. Drugs? You can get anything you want…in school. We had to go to skeezy guys at bowling…

Purple Reign

Scary thought—before long, the Barney generation will be running things in America. The Dallas-born show’s target audience has grown up since debuting in 1992; those purple dinosaur-lovers are teenagers now, and some are even old enough for college. Lord knows how long until fraternity and sorority hazing rituals mix their…

Bagged, Not Bored

With comic books and graphic novels making the leap from the page to the screen so often now, you’re just going to have to admit it. You like the damn things, even if you don’t show the kind of fervent respect for them that some people think you should. Maybe…

Star Power

Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight…you know the drill. Stars are usually for wishing. But is your wish less valid if it’s on a satellite or more valid if it’s on a planet? There is more to the night sky than meets the eye. Put this fluffy…

Powerful Samples

Photographer Hal Samples just wishes everyone would take off their blinders. You know, those devices we all have that “protect” us from seeing a homeless man on the street and additional “unpleasantries”…like, say, 6,000 other homeless struggling to factor into someone’s line of sight in this city. Samples has, for…

Hello Lisa

Being the Generation X-er that I am, Ben Stiller’s 1994 hit, Reality Bites, still holds a special place in my heart. There was Winona Ryder (pre-shoplifting conviction), Janeane Garofalo at the apex of her career and all the others who portrayed the lives of us so-called slackers. And don’t forget…

Get Reel

It wasn’t that long ago when I discovered the gems that are bad movies. I mean, so-bad-they-are-good flicks where the production team probably didn’t know what a grip was or how to use a director of photography. Good, earnest filmmaking with kung fu and car explosions immediately upon impact (thank…

While Dinos Rule Fort Worth

In this month’s installment of “scaring your infant shitless,” we present DinoRoars, the latest exhibit at the Fort Worth Zoo, 1989 Colonial Parkway in Fort Worth. Huge, realistic dinosaur replicas inhabit the new exhibit—they may not be Jurassic Park-perfect, but this is 2006, so these aren’t tacky robo-dinos, either. The…

To Put It Bluntly

Dear James Blunt, I remember the first time I saw you. It was an early morning in my small, stuffy apartment. I heard your voice calling from the living room, and I saw that gorgeous, angular, British-boy face. You stood on the beach in the “You’re Beautiful” video on VH-1,…

Choose This

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a decade since Danny Boyle led the charge for Cool Britannia with the surreal and poignant Trainspotting. With an edgy Britpop soundtrack and a hungry cast of unknowns (including pre-Obi-Wan Ewan McGregor), Boyle transformed Irvine Welsh’s slang- and jargon-challenged novel into the…

Rock Steady

Kid Rock, like Mike Tyson and Tom Cruise, should never say no to an interview. While Tyson and Cruise are great quotes because they’re crazy, Kid Rock is great because he says stuff like this: “I do not believe that artists or actors and people should be out there like…

Bono and You Too

Bono, U2 front man, humanitarian and sunglasses model, will speak 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Music Hall at Fair Park; he’s being presented by the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth, who apparently opted for Bono when Nik Kershaw, Boy George and the lead singer of a-ha proved unavailable. Anyway,…

Laughs x 5

A word of advice: When choosing a comedy club, stay away from places named Laffy’s or the Laff-Shack. Yukz, Inc! is a pretty terrible name too (as is The Chuckle Hole, The Komedy Klozet, Funny Ha-Ha and Zingers). And you can pretty much guarantee the lameness of a place called…

This Stinks!

From time to time, we’ve all had B.O. problems: Maybe you were the kid who never showered after gym class or the guy in the dorm who wore the same boxer shorts all finals week. Fortunately for humans, a hot shower can usually remedy any problems of an odiferous nature…

Winged Wonders

Butterflies flutter about our stomachs when we ride rollercoasters and frazzle us when we give speeches. Hawthorne compares them to happiness, quietly lighting on our shoulder if we’re patient, while Nabokov intensely pursued and named more than 20 subspecies of the illustrative insect he called “intolerable bliss.” Whether you see…

Way to Blow

There are two types of people in this world: People who have opinions and people who write Metro columns for the Dallas Morning News. OK, that’s not entirely fair, as Jacquielynn Floyd knows how to deliver a cogent point even if her commentary is about as middle-of-the-road as a Train…

Pray Tell

You’re busy. You’ve got to cram in that guy from sales and dinner with the accounts boss before heading out to cocktails with that cute blonde from the speed-dating event. You don’t have time for a full day of anything, let alone prayer. God understands, right? For your convenience, Dallas’…