3/30 While most people think of her television series and its groundbreaking “coming out” episode when they hear the name Ellen Degeneres, few realize that the all-ages content of her small-screen show isn’t just a sanitized version of Ellen’s humor. Instead, it’s a taste of what can be expected at…
Once upon a time, a scuffling actor named Sylvester Stallone decided that the key to stardom was to write a screenplay as a perfect vehicle for himself. Since then, untold hundreds or thousands of hopefuls, mistaking Stallone’s good luck (and, yes, talent) for some sort of cosmic justice, have confidently…
You know how boys love to play soldier? How they get stern-faced and march out to destroy an enemy whom they believe needs destroying? Well, actors are into that, too. Sometimes they soldier on even when Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson isn’t around to help them frown determinedly. Such is…
Lawrence Kasdan directs and co-writes (with William Goldman) Dreamcatcher, the latest addition to the Stephen King adaptation genre, currently at 74, including film and TV, and counting. Taking the Internet Movie Database as a source, this puts King handily ahead of Michael Crichton (23) and Bram Stoker (38), closing in…
The Dallas Video Festival folks like to say that when Bart Weiss and Melissa Berry conceived their child in 1986, before the fest even had a name, video was the dominion of pornographers and avant-gardists who were experimenting with the still-burgeoning medium. Video cameras were years away from being the…
Times being what they are, one line in Act 2 of the play Transatlantic Liaison is guaranteed to goose the audience to attention. “What a thankless people, the French,” growls Chicago author Nelson Algren to his paramour, French Existentialist writer Simone de Beauvoir. On opening night at Theatre Three, where…
The first thing one must say about Come Forward, the Dallas Museum of Art’s show of emerging Texas artists, is: At least it tries. This is not necessarily to damn with faint praise. Unlike too many DMA shows before it, this one isn’t just a PR moment masquerading as an…
Alvin Ailey was 27 when he and a troupe of modern dancers performed for the first time in New York City, a far cry from Ailey’s hometown of Rogers, Texas. About 45 years later, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has become one of the most reputed companies in American…
Thursday, March 20 ThursdayIt’s hard to imagine a Neverland scarier than the one in which Michael Jackson lives (either the one in his head or the actual property that houses him and his menagerie). But Damion Dietz’s Neverland comes close. The film, presented as part of a series hosted by…
There’s “freedom” fries, “freedom” toast and Inspector Gadget starring “Freedom” Stewart. One more and we’ll stick our “freedom” manicured nail down our throat and hurl, or “freedom” kiss a wall outlet and electrocute ourselves. But we have compatriots in our disdain. We have Beret!, the hardcore band so angry the…
3/23 This is Dallas, the city of trade shows, conventions, seminars and any other informative event that requires a ticket or a tax I.D. Here’s another, and so what, right? Wrong. For the first time the metroplex might just be opening its mind in a big way. June Wedding Inc…
3/22 The thing that makes the Uptown Run & Trolley Walk one of the best fun runs in the area is the large number of sponsors. The more sponsors a race has, the better the free food spread is afterward. With most races you get a banana, maybe half a…
3/23 For pity’s sake, give your poor, culture-starved kiddos something to listen to besides the Aussie-twanged musical stylings of Anthony, Greg, Murray and Jeff. Take the first step toward Wiggles deprogramming. Take a break from Raffi’s eco-political warbling about saving baby Beluga whales. Do yourself and your kids a favor…
3/21 “Fashion. Art. Music.” While it could be argued that the previous quote proves redundant under the umbrella of art itself, the bar/lounge Open is covering each base this Friday with NYC3 (three, as in cubed). Complete with a dance atmosphere supplied by sultry NYC personality DJ Penelope Tuesdae (who…
3/25 It’s impossible not to cry at some point when reading the work of John Irving. The New Englander has a gift for sideswiping his readers with a cheap shot of the sharpest emotion, and yet he appeals to the mother, the air-traveler, the romantic and many of the readers…
Perhaps the most incomprehensible image from Lee Hirsch’s documentary Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony is that of the smiling faces seen throughout. Even under the oppressive rule of the National Party, responsible for making “official” the apartheid laws of segregation and humiliation that defined and defiled South Africa for…
What more can go wrong in suburbia? Director Rose Troche (Go Fish) wants us to know, and to that end she has recruited another army of wounded parents, troubled children and broken dreamers, then marched them all into a whirlpool of dysfunction on the quiet, tree-lined streets just minutes from…
The Hunted pits Tommy Lee Jones against Benicio Del Toro in a battle of hand-to-hand, wit-to-wit fighting skills. Frankly my money would be on Tommy Lee any old day: He may be old, but he’s a tough geezer who looks like he could mop the floor with Benicio. (Also, frankly:…
Plays by Rebecca Gilman should come with a warning label: “As seen in Ladies Home Journal.” Gilman constructs heavy, overwritten dramas, including Boy Gets Girl, now onstage in Echo Theatre’s production at the Bath House Cultural Center, and Spinning into Butter, done last season at Theatre Three, around some mushy…
3/13 Cultural arts organization seeks young professionals with an interest in socialization, arts outings and leadership for ballets, art exhibits and more–possibly even a long-term relationship. During Culture Shock, the Fort Worth Dallas Ballet’s Members of Barre will wine and dine new recruits for its group, which provides a social…
We never imagined those hours spent watching Saturday-morning and after-school cartoons would give us information we could use in the real world 20 years later. We mean besides the there’s-no-such-things-as-ghosts lesson. (Thanks, Scooby Doo!) But one simple slogan blaring from the TV speakers actually is worth the reels on which…
3/15 Take your Claritin, your Allegra, your Tylenol Allergy, whatever. The time has come again to experience the blooms of nearly 250,000 bulbs. This year marks the most flora ever displayed since Dallas Blooms began 19 years ago. A landscape of thousands of pansies, violas, flowering azaleas and other blooming…
