Big Screen Darkness

Midnight movies are frequented by two types of people: the die-hard fans of a movie who know it, word for word, like the back of their hand, and said fans’ uneducated friends who have never seen the greatest movie of all time and are inevitably dragged along for a special…

Girls on Top

It’s hard to imagine being a woman in the workforce a few decades ago, when we were seen as sexual objects and not as intellectual equals. Sure, we could keep a home spotless and cook a mean meatloaf, but when it came to complex things like problem solving and conflict…

Shine On

For those who want to give up on the Dallas Stars now that beloved stars Mike Modano and Marty Turco have left, you have more than enough reason to give them another chance. They started the season 4-0-0 and beat Modano and his new team, the Detroit Red Wings, in…

The Los Angeles Boy-Toys

When we’re not hating the Spurs, Dallas Mavericks fans are generally fuming about the Los Angeles Lakers, the last in the triumvirate of Western Conference teams that have reached the NBA Finals in the past twelve seasons. The checkered past of Kobe Bryant, the shady, lopsided Pau Gasol deal, the…

Another Neiman’s Catalog

What does a sparkling, high-fashion display window have in common with a well-known collegiate art gallery? Artistic merit, of course! The Neiman Marcus Art Collection originated in 1951 when Stanley Marcus, son of Neiman’s founder Herbert Marcus, purchased a mobile by Alexander Calder. Ever since then the famous department store…

Your Eyes Deceive You

Remember those grainy photographs of the Loch Ness monster gliding through the waters of the famous Scottish lake? Though many of those images were proven to be staged, they still fascinate viewers. Since gaining notoriety in the 1970s, staged photography has challenged the notion that photographs must capture history and…

Little Picassos

If there’s any hope that civilization will continue to create art and literature more worthy of preservation than a passing Photoshop meme or blog post, it lies with the teenagers still developing their talents. Recognition of their hard work is the best way to ensure they stick with it, rather…

PC Load Letter

When technology fails, just about everything else does too. At least, that’s what most of us seem to think these days. As soon as the computer crashes or the satellite shorts out, it’s pretty tough to go through the day with just the bare essentials. Consider this strange new reality…

Excellent Point, Kiddo

If everything is as it should be, a child believes that anything is possible–that his towel cape can save him from a bed-to-floor fall, and that his drawing of a man with one arm four sizes bigger than the other is the start of artistic greatness. And if the child…

Here, Take the Keys

When two planes slammed into the World Trade Center almost 10 years ago, sending the buildings tumbling to the ground, it didn’t seem possible that there would ever be anything to replace the New York City landmark. But life goes on, and as the country began to heal artist Manuel…

One’s Trash Hurts Another’s Treasure

By this point we shouldn’t need highway road signs, a “Crying Indian” or revamped Los Lonely Boys songs to remind us not to litter. It should be common sense. And yet last year, photographer Dylan Hollingsworth captured on film an area of White Rock Lake that had essentially been turned…

The Green Hornet: Seth Rogen Schlubs It Up as a Masked Hero.

Only inertia will bring people to Michel Gondry’s 3-D spectacle, The Green Hornet. Opening amid persistent negative buzz in the mid-January dead zone, this long-germinating prospective franchise, based on a character that first saturated the nation’s radio waves in 1939, seems pretty much DOA. Rather than a $90 million Gondry…

Somewhere: There’s a Downside to Celebrity Living.

Dissolute action-movie star Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), first seen doing laps in his black Ferrari, has no destination in Somewhere, Sofia Coppola’s mood ring of celebrity lassitude. Coppola’s fourth feature is, at times, similarly aimless and empty. But those who groan that the writer-director has made another indulgent film about…

Blue Valentine plumbs the emotional depths of a marriage unraveling.

When the MPAA handed Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine an NC-17 rating this fall, cynics suggested that the so-called “kiss of death” was better publicity for the gently experimental marriage drama than anything famously crafty distributor Harvey Weinstein could buy. When the rating was reversed this month—downgraded to an R without…

It’s Literary Therapy

Now that the new year is underway, it is time for you to really start working on all of those resolutions. Yes, that’s right, the smoke has cleared, the confetti has been swept up and you may have even kicked that colossal hangover by now. Get to work! Get out…

The Aperture of the Adventure

Photography is a particularly challenging art form because it serves not only as a vehicle to stimulate our senses, but as a way to document the world around us. So a photographer doesn’t just have to possess an artistic flair–an ability to frame shapes and colors to make a visual…

Barney is Ready to Party

Back in the day, the coolest birthday parties had ice cream cakes and pinatas filled with good candy, but now it seems a kid’s party isn’t cool unless you have a jumpy house or something even better, like a miniature pony that juggles. We never get invited to the birthdays…

Get from Pulp to Perfection

OK, I’m not really a crafty person, so I still haven’t started my life’s scrapbook. Of course I’ve heard about those scrapbooking weekends, but what about us beginners? Well, look no further. Heirloom’s Grapevine Rubber Stamp and Paper Arts Festival is bringing the art of scrapbooking, and just about every…

Calling All Gleeks

What do Glee and Oxygen (the TV channel, not the scientific element) have in common? Well, nothing, really, except that they have taken up the call of finding a recurring guest star for the next season of Glee. Believe it or not, the Oxygen network, a channel responsible for high-caliber…

But It’s for Charity

If your New Year’s resolution is to lose the nickname “fat ass,” register for the Jiggle Butt Run, a 5K run/walk for women that benefits Safe Haven of Tarrant County Women’s Shelter. Get a jump start on that resolution and finally get a nickname you deserve, like “hot ass.” The…

Cover Your Ashes

If you’re familiar with Joel McHale and The Soup, you’ve probably seen segments featuring Cee Dub, the champion of Dutch oven (cast-iron cookware) campfire cooking. Dub–aside from being a small-screen sensation–is a fan of the Lone Star Dutch Oven Society. On his website he boasts: “After I checked out [its]…