Never Fear, Shakespeare Is Here With A Turn of the Shrew

Once upon a time, we were in a high school English class, staring off into space or sleeping during those obligatory Shakespeare lectures. This dead guy has been popular through hundreds of years of English literature, but thou aren’t as witty as he. Lucky for us, Collin College is presenting…

Idiotarod Dallas 2011: Behind The Scenes Of The Secretive Race

Today, just after the 1 p.m. launch of Idiotarod Dallas 2011, bands of costumed “idiots” will mush their modified and decorated shopping carts across roughly 5 miles of the city’s streets as they compete for prizes in the first Dallas version of the race. Clearly inspired by Alaska’s annual 1,150-mile…

First-time Director Lee Trull Talks about Dying City and Keeping Theater Alive

The final show of Second Thought Theatre’s seventh and so far strongest season is Christopher Shinn’s Dying City (reviewed in this week’s paper). The two-actor (Grace Heid, Rhett Henckel), three-character drama was directed by Dallas Theater Center company member Lee Trull, his first time staging a full-fledged production. Trull’s been…

Smallest Group Show, Ever: Summer Scenes

I’ve been looking at your photos. I see them on Facebook, Twitter, Path, instagram and Flickr. Occasionally, I plan to post a few that I like, with your permission, in what I like to call, the Smallest Group Show, ever. This installment: scenes from Texas summer. View the show after…

Question The Artist: Illustrator Brian Stauffer

For our latest installment of Question The Artist, we’re proud to be working with and talking to the award-winning editorial illustrator Brian Stauffer. Stauffer’s work has graced our pages before, and we’re fortunate enough to have him grace our pages once again. Coming off of a recent gold medal win…

Louie Starts On FX Tonight, So: Five Of Our Favorite Louis C.K. Bits

The second season of Louis C.K.’s latest half-hour comedy, Louie, starts up at 9:30 Central tonight on FX. If it’s anything like his stand-up, his first show (Lucky Louis on HBO), or the first season of Louie, it will be a wonderfully and purposefully disjointed driving tour of C.K.’s head…

Pottermore: 10 Questions We Want Answered

“Accio Pottermore!” For a full week, hundreds of thousands of Potter Heads have uttered this command as they waited for the unveiling of JK Rowling’s website and wondered what it would actually be. The time finally came today. Pottermore is an exclusive interactive website for fans of all ages, and…

Bad Teacher and the Downside of Equal Rights in Hollywood

From Tad Friend’s New Yorker profile of Anna Faris (which Jezebel.com reblogged under the headline “Hollywood Insiders Admit Hollywood Hates Women”) to the glass-ceiling-shattering pressure assigned to last month’s Bridesmaids (which has thus far outgrossed every previous Judd Apatow project since Knocked Up), a case could be made that 2011…

Buck: Horse Whisperer Speaks Up

The documentary Audience Award winner at this year’s Sundance festival, Buck follows itinerant horse trainer Buck Brannaman as he applies his uniquely humane and frankly astounding methods in four-day clinics around the country. If that sounds as exciting as watching hay turn yellow, director Cindy Meehl finds the real story…

Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop: Try Harder

“I am angry,” Conan O’Brien admits in Rodman Flender’s tour doc Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop. “I’m trying not to be…but sometimes I’m so mad I can’t even breathe.” Prohibited from appearing on television for six months after his early 2010 break with NBC, Conan hit the road, capitalizing on his…

Cars 2: Life in the Breakdown Lane

Pixar’s Cars franchise takes a sharp turn from NASCAR mayhem and red-state-targeted ’50s nostalgia to 007 espionage with the upgraded sequel Cars 2, though in its delivery of Matchbox-machine superheroics for its young male demographic, it stays true to its prime function as an advertising vehicle for merchandise. Nonetheless, if…

Join Us

Who knew? Sometime during the 8th century, between bouts of famine, scurvy and smallpox, dynastic conflict and bloody religious war, the Franks invented “jazz hands.” And when they weren’t hacking away with broadswords, or hacking up a lung, they took time to create bouncy, light pop. It’s amazing what one…