Philanthropist, n. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket. –Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary Ray Nasher isn’t a man given to grinning. At 82, he is a diminutive man, stern of countenance and bald of pate, with…
Having lived in Arlington all my life, I realize–like most of us residents–that it’s a city without a great reputation for nightlife other than the regular meat market/sports bars and the endless restaurant chains. I know this, yet I still think there’s hope in places where ESPN isn’t the focal…
Thursday, October 30 To us, Halloween’s scare factor has nothing on El Da de los Muertos celebrations. While All Hallow’s Eve offers the chance to scream and run from fake ghosts in haunted houses, the Day of the Dead is asking real ghosts–the souls of departed loved ones–to return home…
Tobe Hooper is one helluva frugal director. On a minuscule budget and with the slightest amount of gore, he crafted a classic horror film that some adults still avoid like week-old beef reduced for quick sale. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hooper are legends. The movie has maintained both a…
11/1 Thanks to the Travel Channel and ESPN, which broadcast Texas hold ’em tournaments from ’round the world, every dude I know thinks he’s the next Scotty Nguyen. Or Phil Helmuth. Or T.J. Cloutier. This includes me, with my stacks of poker how-to’s sitting next to the bed (baby books,…
11/1 I was already excited about the 2004-2005 Dallas Mavericks before they traded for Antoine Walker and Tony Delk recently. And by “already,” I mean about two minutes after they crashed and burned against eventual champs the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference finals. My lady and I bought…
11/3 The International Museum of Cultures is an odd little corner of Dallas’ museum scene, with exhibits highlighting the indigenous cultures of little-known peoples in Papua New Guinea, Ecuador, Amazonian Peru and other Third World nations. It’s a small museum, something you can see in about an hour, with life-size…
11/4 In an entertainment world that serves up endless car chases, explosions and re-makes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is a shining beacon of class and quality. Like famed historian Stephen Ambrose says, “More Americans get their history lessons from Ken Burns than any other source.”…
10/31 The video games, films and music of our current landscape take a lot of heat in terms of repercussions and cause-and-effect finger pointing. But one bullet consistently fired from the anti-censorship camp is that of our historic love affair with foul play. Murder, the abomination as fascination, is a…
Everything’s going to be all right. If there’s a theme to this year’s Deep Ellum Film Festival, perhaps it’s that single, simple sentence of reassurance, repeated in a handful of movies screening this week and suggested in several others. A dying artist says it to an immigrant family that’s suffered…
Given the way the United Nations has been taking a beating in the American media over the past year or so, it may not be a bad thing that the new movie Beyond Borders is at heart a two-hour infomercial for Kofi Annan’s organization. As a call to action, the…
Sometimes something so wonderful appears on the big screen that I want to leap up like a shameless non-professional and hug it. Such is the case early on in Sylvia, a superb drama based on the brief life of writer Sylvia Plath. While boating in Cambridge, England, with her beau…
That a new feel-good sports movie called Radio contrives to move us is just fine–that’s what feel-good sports movies are supposed to do. That its makers choose to move us in the style of a linebacker sacking a quarterback is not so good. After enduring this flagrant emotional blitz, you…
On October 12, BBC America aired the second-season premiere of The Office, the beloved mockumentary that follows paper-selling rats ’round the maze of cubicles leading to the office of head cheese David Brent, a pathetic little man who says in public things no rational human being would even think in…
‘Tis pity Mother is a whore. That’s the theme of George Bernard Shaw’s drawing-room drama Mrs. Warren’s Profession, now getting a sprightly production at Theatre Three. Mother is Kitty Warren, wealthy, middle-aged owner of a chain of bawdy “private hotels” across Europe. Her adult daughter, Vivie, has been kept in…
Many of the 1960s protest singers used those warbly voices to spread their opinions. But rather than convincing, we’ve always found them so annoying that a plane ticket to the nearest front line didn’t sound like such a bad option in comparison. But then we’ve always been the “catch more…
Thursday, October 23 No television; no frozen dinners. Home entertainment in 1938 America came from a radio’s speakers, and dinner prep began in the house early in the day. As the kids come in from dusky games of stickball, the knob flips and the living room fills with booming voices…
Of all the things Timothy Leary was famous for–experimenting with LSD, being asked to leave his professorship at Harvard, getting arrested for pot possession, breaking out of prison, getting sent back to prison, experimenting with LSD, running with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, promoting…
10/24 Dallas’ Old City Park is offering a ghostly night Friday with tours of historical homes haunted by spirits. Palm and tarot readings, games, pioneer-era ghost stories and tales from Edgar Allan Poe are on the schedule for the Dark Night Halloween party.Ooo, scary stuff, right? Hah, we say, with…
10/25 The notion of revisionist history isn’t a pleasant one. What we don’t know because of chicanery or misinformation is capable of lingering longer than cold facts from a hard textbook. Examples are innumerable. Want one anyway? OK. Why is it that the most exposure we’ve had to people of…
10/24 Got an easily frightened first-grader and a tough-as-nails high-schooler? Trying to entertain both of them for Halloween? There are two options. Drop the teen off on Swiss Avenue and let him ravage the neighborhood, then take the little one to trick-or-treat until dusk. Or just throw them both in…
10/25 On Saturday, erotic art photographer Larry Hoth offers the chance to view his photos in the raw, so to speak. The exhibition, called The Erotic Female, is free (unlike the pay-per-view site where the photos are usually offered), and it features naked women in concealing and open poses as…
