A couple decades ago people argued about whether tobacco and asbestos actually caused cancer. Even when the evidence began to mount, there were still scientists who would scratch their heads in public and say they just weren’t sure (they were, of course, paid to say so by the tobacco and…
Back in our first modern dance class, we were instructed to pick a season and be a tree experiencing the weather of our chosen season. Just like that girl in A Chorus Line, we felt nothing like a tree and were less than convincing. Every class, the same exercise. Every…
Long before computer nerds staged a coup d’etat in the animated-movies sector, film geeks dominated the scene with stop-animation. Stop-animation is the old-fashioned way of making fantasy characters come to life on the silver screen and in the hearts of fans young and old. The magic takes place frame by…
Oak Cliff’s Kessler Park may just be the most beautiful neighborhood in Dallas. Full of rolling hills, giant shade trees and unusual architecture, the area consists mostly of developments built between the ’20s and the ’60s, as well as the city-run Stevens Park golf course. Named after Dallas city planner…
I’ve never quite understood the appeal of drag shows. If you’re a gay male, why would you want to see men trying to pose as hot women? Wouldn’t you prefer they pose as hot men? And if you’re a straight man, why would you want to attend a pageant at…
When Y Tu Mamá También debuted on American screens in 2002, nobody had big expectations for the Mexican film with the funny title that translates “And Your Mother Too.” Once buzz leaked that the road movie about two teenage boys and an older woman featured lots of sex, beautiful cinematography,…
The brain is a beguiling thing. One evening, you’re talking to a friend on the phone. Sometime later, you find yourself in a subway car, passing through an urban landscape. You don’t recognize the buildings, the neighborhood or the city. Don’t know why you’re on the train. Don’t even know…
Given Inside Man’s bullpen (director Spike Lee, stars Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster), moment in political history and advertising, you could be forgiven for anticipating some kind of socially relevant, perhaps even politically volatile dramatic smash-up–something with teeth, ambition, a functioning cerebrum and a lusty relationship with reality. But those…
As scientific advances have made forensic DNA matching a reality, a new field has emerged in criminal justice: exoneration. In cases where relevant biological evidence has been preserved, innocent inmates who’ve been serving time for decades suddenly have cause for hope. If a prisoner can manage to get legal help,…
There probably aren’t that many movie stars capable of retaining their charisma after a stroke has rendered them nigh-incoherent. But based on Illusion, Kirk Douglas doesn’t seem to have lost a step. He still has that intensity he always had, and even though he’s at the stage of his career…
It can’t be easy making films about war. It’s so inherently dramatic that, as a setting for art, it’s overdetermined; it drips with meaning even before the first scenes are set. And so much has been said already: War is hell. War is noble. War is surreal. War is absurd,…
Evan Daniel Lintermans’ Mountain Paintings Lintermans’ space-age paintings of Mount McKinley augur a nimble and brainy future for the new gallery Road Agent. If small quantities are a mark of high quality, then this show receives high marks for good stuff. Six acrylic-on-Plexiglas paintings hang on the walls of Road…
Macbeth Theatre Britain revs up the spooky old Scottish play with speed, sex and S&M-inspired costumes. Steve Pounders plays the ambitious Thane of Cawdor, determined to murder his way to the top job as king of Scotland. Down go Macduff, Duncan and several more rivals, stabbed, poisoned and otherwise offed…
Who knew Macbeth could be so hot? Theatre Britain, that plucky little company so skilled at staging farces and Christmas pantos for the kiddies, now brings forth Shakespeare’s bloodiest play in a production at the Trinity River Arts Center that strips away everything that isn’t absolutely necessary. That includes the…
What’s sooo terribly unsettling about a burn victim who can really blow a tune who prefers to keep to himself (sort of) and live under an opera house? Nothing…until he has to go and turn completely illogical. After all, who wouldn’t fashion a pasty, nightmare-inducing mask to cover up those…
When I think of art, I immediately think “loin, fatback, shank, strip and sparerib.” You know, overall slaughter. OK, maybe not normally, but it’s hard not to when looking at Mirka Hokkanen’s Manipulated, hanging through April 2 at the Continental Gallery of Deep Ellum’s Continental Lofts building, 3311 Elm St…
An argument can be made that no female writer has been more influential than newspaper columnist Heloise, “every housewife’s friend.” The uses of vinegar and the best stain removers! Organization tips and getting burned food out of a pan! Daughter Poncé took up the mantle of Queen of Household Tips…
I don’t know why I never saw The Three Musketeers. Something with Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland and Chris O’Donnell in tights has got to be good, especially if they’re playing swashbuckling swordsmen named Aramis, Athos and D’Artagnan respectively, and especially if, according to IMDB, “jokes and stunts are the expected…
I’m a lot of things, but I ain’t frontin’. I don’t try to be sumpin’ I’m not. I ain’t got nothin’ to hide…unlike the City of Plano. Our northerly suburban neighbors would have you believe not only that they know how to read but that they celebrate the activity to…
With such a mild winter this year, it’s hard to imagine seasons at all. You always hear that Texas weather can change on the turn of a dime, but in reality it just goes from muggy to hot and back again. Before the dreaded summer arrives and the muggy disappears,…
With Wilonsky being the movie guy here, the rest of us cinemaniacs just stand in his shadow. I’m not even sure who the other movie buffs are, but ‘’m going to go ahead and stake my claim as the second go-to (yet unofficial) movie guy around here. I might be…
We’ve never heard of World Theatre Day, but if we had to come up with a parade commemorating a “holiday,” we couldn’t do any better than the upcoming Masked March on Main. Featuring a G-rated, if creepy, blend of masked performers, puppets and children, the Masked March is a part…
