Michael Smith Michael Smith’s videos, installations and photographs break down many of the barriers of art while paradoxically remaining fully within its confines. Smith’s installation “Famous Quotes From Art History” draws attention to “art” not only as a thing but also as an institution. Playing on art’s role as a…
The Dining Room In the stuffy but elegant confines of an East Coast WASP-ish household, 60 characters come and go over six decades of meals, arguments and reconciliations conducted around one large dining table. Playwright A.R. “Pete” Gurney, now a master at chronicling the lives of upper-crusters who turn out…
William Shakespeare plagued you from orientation to graduation. You glanced at him as he sat on the cover of his works, coiffed and cocky, with a smug smile that said, “I know what you’re in for, but I don’t want to spoil all the fun.” Arrogant jerk. Agonizingly lyrical prose,…
Thursday, July 1 We do our fair share of joking around in Night & Day, but there are definitely issues we hold near and dear. Most of the time, we aim to alert our readers to entertaining or fun things to do, but Thursday offers an event that is important…
This one time, at band camp, we wore black bike shorts under ripped jean shorts and participated in a dance contest. So, it’s definitely a good thing our parents stopped shipping us off to camp right before puberty kicked in. Who knows what further embarrassments awaited us. Not that we…
7/5 In grade-school years, you were probably asked to collect family recipes and contribute to some fund-raising cookbook. For our Camp Fire group, we forked over the coveted recipe for Granny’s pecan pie. Bored one summer day after that, we figured we’d try to prepare one and surprise Mom. We…
7/1 Surely, you remember the Dream Team. The 1992 USA basketball gold-winners proved that legends such as Larry Bird, Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson could set rivalries aside to rip the rest of the world’s sorry butts to shreds. Too bad those days are long gone, as America’s greatest have…
7/1 If the British comedy Red Dwarf has taught us anything, it’s that there is no problem that can’t be solved, or created, by a chicken vindaloo. This spicy Indian dish–containing, at least on the show, chicken, beer and curry powder–can give you indigestion, improve a boring pizza or become…
7/4 In Texas, Willie Nelson and the Fourth of July go together like peanut butter and jelly, cold beer and a foam Koozie, Joanie and Chachi. One is fine; both is better. I know this, particularly in how it relates to Willie and Independence Day. But I’ve never been to…
America’s Heart & Soul, the debut feature from commercial director Louis Schwartzberg, is being depicted in some quarters as the antidote to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, mostly because it’s a documentary, being released around the same time, about the USA. For more simplistic minds who equate anti-Bush sentiment with hatred…
Sometimes a few orders of well-made appetizers can be as satisfying as a four-course meal. So it is with The Dining Room, now playing at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas. A.R. Gurney’s two-act play offers nibbles of story, several tasty characters and enough good lines to chew on to forgive the…
Cast: Photographs by Jin-Ya Huang In her photographs, Jin-Ya Huang turns fuzziness and blur into a visual vocabulary of the indecipherable. The illegibility of her images is by no means frustrating. The combined result of the artist’s secret prop choices and photo-digital process, these images will keep you guessing while…
6/24 Defining rock and roll’s birthday is nearly impossible. But Memphis staked claim to the date July 5, 1954, the day when a very young Elvis Presley recorded “That’s All Right (Mama)” at Sun Studio. Arguably, others were doing it first. And according to an article by David Hajdu from…
A strong toxin requires a strong antidote. In the case of the Bush administration, the cure is being served in significant part by Michael Moore, who previously delivered the rousing documentaries Roger & Me and Bowling for Columbine. This time, however, the exposé feels even more personal, as Moore reveals…
It’s often a challenge to fairly assess a film that, by its very conception, is simply targeted to an entirely different demographic from one’s own. I am not by nature romantic or female; for those who are, it may have to suffice that the mostly double-X-chromosomed crowd watching The Notebook…
It’s charming. It’s hilarious. It is perhaps the most beautifully crafted, lovingly rendered portrait of extreme geekitude ever to grace the screen. It’s Napoleon Dynamite–the first feature film from 24-year-old Brigham Young University student Jared Hess–and, if there is any justice, it’s going to be huge. Remember that kid who…
Perhaps some day in the distant future, film scholars and academics concerned with race relations will devote papers and lectures and even entire books to Keenen Ivory Wayans’ White Chicks, in which two FBI agents, played by Shawn and Marlon Wayans, don Caucasian masks and impersonate white women in order…
The first words the audience hears in the Richardson Theatre Centre production of the thriller Wait Until Dark come from President Gerald R. Ford, grimly granting Richard M. Nixon a full pardon for involvement in Watergate crimes. It’s a brief audio flashback to 1974, a dark period in American history,…
Wait Until Dark Frederick Knott knew scary. Before he wrote this thriller about a blind girl battling three nasty drug dealers in her own New York apartment, he penned Dial “M” for Murder. Knott was a master of the mystery with a twist, of the finale that turns the tables…
You’ve come to trust Night & Day for news about events that will improve your sense of culture. For that, we’re terribly sorry, because we’re about to recommend something that will drop your cultural standing about, oh, 400 points. On Thursday, Shock Cinema proudly presents Make Them Die Slowly. This…
Thursday, June 24 Jazz is chaos. Jazz is flashing red. Jazz is shocking yellow. Jazz is shadowy blue. It’s colorful, sometimes dark, sometimes vivid and occasionally a well-constructed mess. Romare Bearden’s art is all of that. He grew during the Harlem Renaissance, was raised around family friends Duke Ellington and…
The most insightful thing we’ve heard in a while is, in fact, something we really already knew. But when someone says something out loud, it’s funny how the statement takes on more importance and relevance. Chatting with Clarissa Pierro, lead dance instructor for The Art of Exotic Dancing for Everyday…
