10/24 Next year, we’ll just have to add a new category to our cheaper-by-the-pound Best of Dallas issue. At the risk of giving away insider info, we’re going to call it “Best Use of Pure Creativity in Modern Dance Programming and Sheer Inventiveness in Celebrating Halloween by Dancing Out Some…
Watching Hollywood’s endless stream of John Grisham adaptations–The Firm, The Chamber, A Time to Kill, etc. –it would be easy to assume that Grisham is the worst sort of hack writer, with simplistic morals that usually overwhelm logic and come close to contravening the very law the author is supposed…
When it made the rounds of the gay and lesbian film festivals last year, Km. 0 (Kilometer Zero) found itself the winner of several audience awards–prizes voted on by festivalgoers themselves for the film they happened to enjoy the most. Now finally opening in Dallas after wide release this summer,…
Veronica Guerin isn’t at all a bad movie, and some kind things will be said about it here. But cynical appraisal also has its place, so we’ll cover that aspect as well. Even before that, a significant disclaimer: Since this review is being written for several New Times publications, which…
A humorous and touching tale about unexpected friendship, The Station Agent marks the auspicious writing and directorial debut of actor Tom McCarthy. It concerns three people who have absolutely nothing in common except the solitary life that each leads. For Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) and Olivia Harris (Patricia Clarkson), being…
Dave, a man who’s barely there, lulls his son to sleep with stories of a boy lost in the woods who escapes from wolves; it’s a thrilling bedtime story for the child, a tale that never loses its excitement. Dave, played by Tim Robbins like some ghost who can’t quite…
In Kiss of the Spider Woman, the haunting Kander and Ebb musical now running at the Trinity River Arts Center, two men share a tiny prison cell in Argentina. Molina (Donald Fowler) is doing three years for sex with an underage boy. The ironically named Valentin Paz (Skie Ocasio) has…
On Sunday, Addison is likely to become hangover central. That’s because on Saturday the town will host Winefest 2003 in a 12,000-square-foot tent at brand-new Addison Circle Park. The Winefest name is a little misleading in that holders of the $35 ticket will gain access to a lot more than…
Thursday, October 16 If someone had asked us just a few days ago what “throatsinging” was, we’d have claimed it was when someone can say the entire alphabet while belching. While we still don’t know how it’s done, we do know that throatsinging originated in the tiny Autonomous Republic of…
On any given day in Dallas, you can saunter in to Gerald Peters Gallery on Fairmount Street and buy a small Picasso painting for $1.25 million, or pick up a sofa-sized David Bates at Dunn and Brown Contemporary for around $80,000. At the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, you can…
10/16 Friends will disown me. I’ll receive hate mail. But the truth is…I don’t much fancy the Beatles. I don’t disagree that they were instrumental to rock history. They have deceptively simple melodies. Those I like. I even have a few favorite songs, but of times spent wondering what to…
10/18 The women you’ll see outside NorthPark Center on Saturday aren’t the usual “ladies who lunch,” and their gathering has nothing to do with any sale at the mall. No, these ladies–and the men and children who come along to lend their support–are gathered to help fight breast cancer. The…
10/18 Those with plans of making foil antennas for someone’s Halloween costume might as well get on that a little early. Grapevine’s Butterfly Flutterby festival–featuring, among other things, a butterfly parade and costume contest–is this weekend. Adults, children and even pets can participate. Everyone ends up at downtown’s Liberty Park,…
10/17 While the shimmering waters in Venice reflected intricate light schemes against delicate buildings, artist Julie Lazarus–seated among the flowering vines of the lush Mediterranean–moved her pencil across a simple canvas to capture the remarkable landscape. Then she took her ideas to Murano, blending the shapes and colors into drawings…
10/22 We always thought our family was weird. And, well, we were right. What we didn’t realize was that we weren’t the only ones taking a dip in dysfunction. The world is filled with crazies, and, amazingly, they’re not all related to us. This revelation began to sink in sometime…
The opening credits insist Kill Bill: Volume 1 is “Quentin Tarantino’s 4th film,” when it’s actually his 3.5th; it’s too incomplete to be measured as a whole, half a movie waiting for a proper ending due to arrive in the next volume in February. Till then we’ll have to contemplate…
It’s beginning to look as though the films of George Clooney are less works of fiction than products of documentary crews following around the actor leading his enviable life. In film after film he’s seen dining with beautiful actresses in gorgeous surroundings perfectly lit for an evening’s seduction: Jennifer Lopez…
Whatever you think Demonlover is, chances are it ain’t. The title conjures up Frazetta/Bisley-like images of muscular monsters deflowering delicate damsels, but while such visions appear for a few seconds on-screen, they aren’t the point. You may have heard that the movie involves anime: It does, but again, it’s almost…
Is it real or is it biochemical? Does love spring from some mysterious, serendipitous, irrational depth or is it a cut-and-dried chemical reaction, a function of pheromones as cold-blooded as a snake? Dopamine, the feature directorial debut of Mark Decena, poses just such a question. The film takes its title…
Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins takes aim at the American dream and blows it to smithereens. The strangely hypnotic musical, now onstage in an excellent production at Quad C Theatre at Collin County Community College, imagines a surreal reunion of four killers of presidents and five who tried. Existing together on a…
The function of most film festivals is to introduce the enthusiastic filmgoer to the unknown. Certainly, the Vistas Film Festival will do a little of all that when it kicks off October 9: Its opening-night film is a Puerto Rican offering titled Julia, toto en mi, about a real-life poet…
Thursday, October 9 Kimonos and obis off. It’s time for Japanese moon viewing. Since the Heian period (794-1185 AD), gazing upon a perky Japanese bum has been surrounded by ceremony. A special time with hopes for a good harvest and offerings to the lunar god. Oh, right. Moon as in…
