Sure, Lord of the Rings is phenomenal, but don’t ever try to tell us that Peter Jackson proved his genius for the first time in 2001’s Fellowship of the Ring. The scruffy New Zealand native has had us in his grasp since the deliciously gory Dead Alive (aka Braindead). Jackson…
Dallas’ antiques road show 10/16 My dad may not remember exactly what he was doing in 1957–he was only 5, though he claims to have a mind like a steel trap–but that year has always held significant memories for me. It was the year Dad’s old Chevy was manufactured. It…
Check out the Mavs’ new roster 10/19 It’s going to take awhile for the Dallas Mavericks to coalesce. They all say that, all 18 or 19 of them, or however many they have left today. Actually it’s a good thing that it’s going to take them time because it’s going…
Nasher Sculpture Center turns one 10/15 Chances are, in the last 12 months, you’ve visited the Nasher Sculpture Center, the two-acre sculpture garden at 2001 Flora St. that celebrates its first birthday this weekend. But we bet that those visits weren’t as odd as ours. Last time we walked through…
Rocky’s back with his sweet transvestite 10/15 The Rocky Horror Show is a theatrical haven for all manner of sexual deviants. Are you an S&M-loving transvestite? So is the lead. An incestuous man with an attraction to phallic weaponry? Climb on board. A sexually confused, less-than-a-day-old, muscley sex toy? Look…
There are at least three movies contained within the covers of H.G. Bissinger’s best-selling 1990 non-fiction book Friday Night Lights. One is concerned with the socioeconomic life of a small West Texas town built on the wobbly foundations of oil and racism and the out-of-whack worship of a high school…
Maybe it’s the mark of a great film that it can affect an audience member even when he sleeps through the entire thing. Such was the case with my father at a recent preview of David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees, a philosophy lecture masquerading as a comedy in which…
Before he made Primer for some $7,000, Dallas software engineer-turned-writer-director-actor-editor Shane Carruth had no idea how to make a movie, and some who see his on-the-cheap creation will argue he still doesn’t, while others will lavish upon it hearty praise reserved for visionaries who leap from the shadows to the…
Now this is a party. Uptown Players close out their third season with an orgy of writhing bods and steamy hook-ups in a production of Andrew Lippa’s Jazz Age musical The Wild Party. It has it all in terms of R-rated box-office appeal: nudity, boy-boy kissing (what would this theater…
For those of you who secretly find comfort in alien postures–who find yourself always the observer rather than the participant, forever the wallflower and never the butterfly–you’ll be happy to know that evidence shows this to be normal. We are alien by nature. Our collective provenance as humans may not…
Jesus Hopped the “A” Train Haven’t we seen this before? Murderers locked up in the notoriously harsh Rikers Island prison share their tales of woe and talk about God. Was it OZ? Law & Order? NYPD Blue? Of course, it was. Stephen Adly Guirgis’ two-act drama owes its thin plot…
The Dark Matters and the Lingering Lightness, installation by Michael Velliquette Installed in the small “project room” at Conduit Gallery is Michael Velliquette’s full-body multimedia environment, replete with voodoo-cosmic music and a myriad of interior accoutrements–aluminum foil doodads, construction paper chains à la second grade, and paper cut-out silhouettes all…
My dad never talked about World War II. The only reasons I even knew he’d served were the bent-edged black-and-white photos of him in his Navy uniform, with the flared legs many years before bellbottoms were cool. He was young, even younger than his sign-up papers said; he lied about…
Thursday, October 7 “Am I blue?/Am I blue?/Ain’t these tears in my eyes tellin’ you/Well, am I blue?/You’d be, too.” The Harry Akst/Grant Clarke tune may as well be the theme song for the ladies of Echo Theatre or at least Rhonda Blair, Terri Ferguson and Jerrika Hinton, the creators…
Nerds take a lot of flak in modern society, but if there’s one thing they deserve credit for, it’s dedication. Nerd love is some pretty severe stuff, particularly in the worlds of sci-fi and fantasy, where devotees re-create episodes of Star Trek better than hicks can re-create Civil War battles…
Bush and Kerry on tap 10/13 The first televised debate between John Kerry and George W. Bush wasn’t over but scant seconds before TV talking heads rushed to their desks to proclaim a winner. Kerry, looking and sounding more presidential than the scowling, fidgety actual president to his left, came…
There’s more to fear at Six Flags Ongoing For some people, Six Flags Over Texas is scary enough without the Halloween spider webs and masked men. Even brave writers at the Dallas Observer have been known to imitate a car alarm when shrieking through wimpy rides such as the Judge…
Dance the night away in Fort Worth’s Hangar 33 10/9 Are you one of those women–or men who are very secure in their sexuality–who’s seen Swing Kids a million times and have always dreamed of sauntering onto a dance floor in a period costume? Have you been practicing your dance…
Even ballet goes Lo-Carb 10/8 Somewhere in Dallas, this very minute, a tall, exquisitely thin, muscular dancer ritualistically measures five tablespoons of peanut butter, snaps the lid on the Rubbermaid container and acknowledges her day’s worth of food. Another, in a darkened kitchen, mini-blinds drawn, whirls a salmon fillet and…
Revolutionary idolatry is an odd business. Just ask unruly pop singer Stew, of the unruly pop group the Negro Problem. On his Naked Dutch Painter album, the melodic rebel dares to challenge a sacred image. “Don’t you wish there was, like, another picture of Ché Guevara?” he inquires. “Like, one…
Shark Tale is an animated film, though after you see it you might wonder whether the term is intended as oxymoronic. Put simply, it has no life in it at all. Not even the kids roped into an afternoon preview screening seemed terribly interested. Perhaps they’ve grown tired of computer-made…
If you aren’t familiar with Bishop T.D. Jakes, it could only mean you’re white or, like much of the entertainment industry and American media, generally clueless about the lives of this country’s tens of millions of evangelical Christians. To black Americans, Jakes is an icon–a preaching, teaching, entrepreneurial dynamo. Known…
