Many of us fancy that we could earn a handsome living simply by sitting on a stage and talking about our lives in a clever way. After all, we spellbind friends, lovers, and co-workers for free every day, right? But truly, who among us is qualified for such a deceptively…
thursday december 10 If you asked most kids who was born on December 25–in theory at least–most would say Santa Claus. Christmas long ago stopped being solely a religious holiday. Actually, it isn’t even really about Santa Claus anymore either. It’s all about the gifts, baby. If you think we’re…
Thirty-five years have passed since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but people are still talking about it. While everyone is entitled to his own theory, only those who were there in Dealey Plaza on that sunny November day in 1963 actually have memories. Now, the Sixth Floor Museum…
The strained relationship between theater and the Christian church didn’t begin when Terrence McNally held a press conference to announce he was painting a lavender Jesus in Corpus Christi. Way back in seventh-century Europe, church elders declared a culture war against the cross-dressing, bawdy humor, and symbolic wine-pouring that honored…
About the closest most of us will ever come to the backwoods of Appalachia is watching Deliverance, and the harrowing misadventure upon which its plot hinges pretty much ensures that we won’t want to visit the backwoods of Appalachia. That the entire region and its natives have been defined for…
The character Simon Geist (Dan Zukovic) is a black-haired, dead-eyed intellectual who never smiles and never condescends when he talks: He’d never even think of kneeling to address you on your level. The actor Dan Zukovic is a playwright whose screenplay for his debut feature The Last Big Thing doesn’t…
Sandra Cisneros writes about what she knows, in the words she grew up with. This daughter of a Mexican father and Mexican-American mother brought the Chicano experience to mainstream literary circles with her first book, The House on Mango Street. Now, in celebration of December 12, the day of the…
thursday 3 We’ve never really seen the point of collecting autographs, especially ones you don’t obtain yourself. Sure, it’s tangible–albeit illegible–proof of personal contact, but that contact only lasts as long as the signature does, and probably only serves to irritate the person who is doing the signing. Buying autographs…
It’s rock! No, it’s art! It rocks! But it’s art! Ah. Must be the Good/Bad Art Collective up to its shenanigans again. Who better to yank the area’s music contingent out of complacency than the Denton tricksters-cum-artists, who for the third time in as many years will stage their(in)famous Rock…
According to the sparse information available in standard reference books, Chilean expatriate director Ral Ruiz, still only in his late 50s, has made more than 100 films since 1960; apparently only 50 or so are features, but that’s still an impressive number. He has been a staple on the festival…
When I was a kid, about 10, my mother was an extra in Semi-Tough, the film based on Dan Jenkins’ novel about Billy Clyde Puckett, Snake Tiller, and how football could turn grown men into morally corrupt cretins. Mom and Aunt Marilyn, my mother’s twin sister, were cast as sideline…
When The Dallas Morning News printed the Dallas Theater Critics Forum results on November 1, it was frisky foreplay working up to the climax of November 2, when the Dallas Theatre League distributed the 1998 Leon Rabin Awards at the Irving Arts Center. They are, of course, separate but related…
The Dallas Museum of Art couldn’t have chosen a better savior–and it’s not a new director but an artist–than Bill Viola. It’s not news that the museum has been trapped in an identity crisis for years now. Antiquity or modernity? Conservatism or gambles? Big-money exhibitions or small, pioneering ones? The…
In the rancid nightmare farce called Very Bad Things, Peter Berg, in his movie writing-directing debut, creates characters that you immediately want to see killed off. From the title to the ads to the Web site (which features a Vegas stripper who will dance for you), Very Bad Things has…
A third of the way through Home Fries, you may begin wondering whether the filmmakers haven’t outsmarted themselves. Overloaded with oddities but a bit short on horse sense, this is one of those stubbornly defiant, attitude-driven movies that’s so busy scrambling genres, breaking rules, and dashing expectations on the road…
“I just find it all so bizarre,” notes John Maybury, popping a cigarette into his mouth and lighting it in what appears to be one quick flip of the wrist. “All those issues of ‘being out’ and ‘are you in?’ We should have gone beyond that by now. I know…
Surprise and pleasure come wrapped together in A Bug’s Life. This big adventure about tiny critters is the latest piece of robust whimsy from Pixar, the computer-animation studio that broke into features with the 1995 smash Toy Story. It should prove irresistible to children. Toy Story opened up the secret…
thursday november 26 There’s something mildly disconcerting about eating in a strip club. Actually, eating in a strip club would only be less comfortable if you were dining on a sandwich made of glass and sandpaper. A few months ago, a colleague invited us to lunch at The Lodge, one…
He’s back: that “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner” Scrooge, whom Charles Dickens created and every theater company in the world recreates every Christmas in order to pay for the rest of their season. A Christmas Carol comes to the Dallas Theater Center for the 15th straight season,…
So many people rant on about the evils of the holiday season: “It’s hypocritical. Everyone acts selfish and lazy all year, then suddenly November rolls around, and they start donating to charity and going to church and caring about humankind. Then by New Year’s, they’re back to their old ways…
Here we go again. Enemy of the State is Fascism in America 1998, Chapter Four…or Five…or whatever we’re up to. It readily invites comparison to The Siege, but for better or worse its goals are more mundane. While The Siege seems like an ideological agenda driving a film, Enemy of…
The prodigiously talented and now corrosively bitter Woody Allen was once quoted as saying, “I’ve always tried to dissuade people and tell them my films are not all autobiographical.” Allen’s adoring cult has never been convinced of this, of course, because many have never wanted to be. Part of the…
