Come this time next year, The Jacket may well occupy the slot in movie discourse that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind does now–that of the film that coulda-shoulda-woulda received more Oscar nominations if only it hadn’t come out so early in the year and been forgotten by those with…
Richard Greenberg asks a simple but intriguing question in his play The Violet Hour, now onstage at Dallas Theater Center. Given a peek into the future, would any of us take an existential do-over and alter the decisions we made early in life? Charles Dickens used the same device in…
Leaving Eden SMU’s upper-level drama students glide seamlessly through an evening of six Chekhov stories woven into an abstract, spare narrative on the nature of loneliness and female identity. Director Greg Leaming assembles a strong cast–notably former Walker, Texas Ranger co-star Clarence Gilyard–and takes his sweet time letting us get…
Mission Control Theirs is “the Atari generation.” So begins the press release for the latest show put on by Dallas’ local avant-garde. Mission Control, the third show of Oh6 Art Collective, is by far the best exhibition that this motley group of mostly UTD grads has staged. It helps a…
I must thank my sister for her tip on watching horror movies. Both of us saw some movies when we were too young and have harbored an anxiety about them ever since. Last year I set a goal to overcome my fear of these traumatic flicks. The first challenge was…
Thursday, March 3 Anyone could take the photos that A.B. Wishart does–because he just shoots the world around him, showing details, light, shadow and tiny moments that other people don’t notice. From Dallas highway scenes, shot from a car window, of clouds drawing the eyes up from the ugly skyline,…
Although his upbeat songs and brilliant music career seem the definition of the philosophy “do what you love and success will follow,” Burt Bacharach says that, despite the success he’s achieved through it, writing music is not always fun for him. “Music is what I do, but I am very…
3/4 If the world were a better place, we Irish folk wouldn’t suffer from such stupid stereotypes. Not that other ethnicities don’t suffer from unfair prejudices, but mention the Irish in conversation and you’re not likely to hear a single redeemable response. As far as most Americans are concerned, the…
3/5 The chickweed has sprouted a lovely green in the back yard. The first crabgrass and dandelions are starting to peek out of the soil. Somewhere, under the fetid carpet of unraked leaves and last fall’s acorns, Mother Nature is stirring. Ah, spring. What is it but a time of…
3/3 The great ones need only one name: Cher, Gandhi, Madonna, Britney, Hef. That list also includes MoMa. Officially titled the Museum of Modern Art, New York City’s MoMa is known worldwide by its four-letter nickname, and it recently underwent a meticulous makeover, doubling its capacity while keeping its historically…
3/3 A drag queen in Addison? Who’d a thunk it? WaterTower Theatre is once again trying to get theatergoers out of downtown with its fourth annual Out of the Loop Festival. Considering most theater snobs won’t travel beyond Loop 12 for a show, much less the other side of Belt…
Give Dan Harris, the writer-director of Imaginary Heroes, plenty of credit for boldness and ambition. Not many kids fresh out of Columbia University would have the wherewithal to tackle a complex family-crisis drama with four or five different kinds of trouble running through it and half a dozen crucial minor…
Toward the end of Born Into Brothels, a superb and piercing documentary by directors Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, a 12-year-old child examines a photograph. It’s beautiful, he says, because it shows us how its subjects live. Yes, they’re very poor, and the shot is hard to look at, because…
Life is short and sweet, savor every minute. So says the message of The Living End, a quartet of charming yet provocative mini-musicals about life and death now on view at Lyric Stage in Irving. No, life stinks, according to the new Risk Theater Initiative show at the Bath House…
The Living End Four musicals in less than two hours. Now that’s entertainment. From a group of composer-lyricists out of a renowned musical theater workshop in New York comes this evening of mini-musicals, two based on famous short stories. Director Cheryl Denson has rounded up a cast of strong singers…
Concentrations 46: Zones of Dissolution Escapism can often provide the most direct path to reality. In his three-room installation, Daniel Roth pops the escape hatch, leading us to a reality that is bifurcated–equal parts fantasy and factuality. Roth works in a variety of media, including drawing, photography, sculpture and architecture,…
In the mid-1980s, Los Angeles’ Getty Museum was on the cusp of acquiring an ancient Greek statue. Using stereo-microscopes, scientists pronounced it the real deal. And without anything more than a cold stare, art experts the world over determined it was a fraud. The controversy over its authenticity, muddied by…
Thursday, February 24 It started innocently enough–watching occasional Great Chefs episodes on PBS. Then the Food Network came along, and we were no longer satisfied with whisks from Target and 30-year-old waffle irons. We wanted the prized KitchenAid mixer, and we wanted all the accessories. Watching Rachel Ray make fresh…
Televisions in bars can be a mixed blessing. A giant-screen TV in a sports bar provides the entertainment (at least until the big game is over). But in smaller lounges and dive bars TVs are a major distraction whether they’re beaming inane MTV programming, reality shows or more sports. As…
2/27 Fashion faux pas. Fake smiles. Unwarranted political platforms. Inflated egos. The culmination of all these things can mean only one thing: It’s Oscar time again! Oh, yeah, and some of the year’s top films will be honored and immortalized as well, but who has time to keep track of…
2/26 How can you tell the difference between your common everyday rain cloud and the storm that’s going to produce a tornado? Guy Webster, my elementary school classmate, knew. Walking home from school one day after classes had been let out early because of threatening weather, Guy pointed to two…
2/25 Aside from having a last name that evokes childish playground humor, Joey Seeman is a nationally and locally acclaimed artist (just look at the work he does for this paper) with an art style that broils in its expressionism. The main thing to remember is that Seeman’s paintings are…
