Our parents used to throw us kids in the backseat with a bunch of comforters and then drive around town so we could check out the Christmas lights and displays. It was awesome, and way cheaper than going to the movies. Watters Creek is turning our ritual into an event,…
Three is a magical number–good stuff always comes in threes (as do celebrity deaths, but that’s beside the point). There’s The Three Musketeers, Three Cups of Tea, the Three Wise Men and, of course, Three’s Company. Being a part of a triumvirate is a magical thing, so perhaps that’s why…
Who did you despise the most growing up in our fabulous education system? The tall, chubby class bully? How about the class tattletale? Well, while you’re out swimming in the success they’ll never have this Christmas, why don’t you take your “I’m gonna give them what I never had” kids…
Most, if not all of us have seen water lily paintings, thanks to Monet. But if you get the impression that there’s more to them than that, you’re right. Rising Gallery’s latest exhibit, Waterfront, puts the famous flora front and center in new ways, like Lisa Distefano’s abstracts of Louisiana…
“Play should make you understand something new,” says a character in Nilaja Sun’s brief, beautiful play, No Child. Good plays can enlighten. Bad plays can, too, even if it’s only teaching you something about remaining politely silent and relatively still in a small, hard seat for a couple of hours…
Other people besides James Franco appear in 127 Hours, but as they’re unimportant, they will not be mentioned in this review. Danny Boyle’s film—based on the story of Aron Ralston, who in 2003 cut off his own arm after being stuck for five days under a rock in a Utah…
In the climax of Morning Glory, Rachel McAdams is dressed in a flesh-colored, diaphanous cocktail dress, its halter top and tight bodice giving way to spilling tulle. This is the kind of dress a screen heroine wears when a slow-building love plot is coming to a head; it is the…
Though based on actual 2001 events in Ohio that caused an unmanned freight train laden with toxic waste to go haywire, Unstoppable could just as well be set in the shining sun of Reagan’s 1980s. As the conductor-less locomotive begins gathering speed across rural Pennsylvania, bedecked with autumn leaves, it…
The science of global warming is tough enough to evaluate without the sort of hard-sell Ondi Timoner pushes on behalf of her subject, Bjorn Lomborg. Author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and the movie’s eponymous source book, the Danish adjunct professor of statistics became, over the past decade, a thorn in…
Around a Small Mountain travels with an itinerant one-ring circus of proud artisans, performing to shrinking rural crowds. “We’re the last classics,” announces one. And after a long and stubbornly marginal career heading his creative family, 82-year-old director Jacques Rivette nears closing time with this commedia dell’arte. Leads Sergio Castellitto…
Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan’s prize-winning documentary Last Train Home is an intimate portrait of an unfathomable immensity, focusing on a single family caught up in the world’s largest mass migration. Opening overhead shots show a huge mob waiting in the rain to push their way into China’s Guangzhou railroad station…
Sweden has two Abbas. One is a 172-year-old producer of canned herring. The other is a 38-year-old pop group. While the latter did have to negotiate in the mid-’70s for use of the name Abba from the former, there’s little doubt which Abba is Sweden’s most famous export. The pop…
Alright you effing cock-a-roaches, think back to your favorite Al Pacino movie and picture your favorite scene. Now imagine yourself at the AT&T Performing Arts Center for An Evening with Al Pacino asking the man himself any of the questions you’ve had about performances of his that you love, hate,…
If you give a cat a cupcake, it will probably eat it greedily and then vomit the half-digested remains on your bed about an hour later. That’s our experience, anyhow. The popular kids’ book by Laura Numeroff, If You Give a Cat a Cupcake, puts a slightly less realistic spin…
If you’re already into glittery vampires and werewolves who “phase” whenever they please, then you need no convincing to attend the Official Twilight Convention, which rolls into town this Saturday and Sunday at The Westin Park Central, 12720 Merit Drive. It should come as no surprise that this massive gathering…
How can you not love Kevin James and Vince Vaughn? Kevin is always the endearing and portly sidekick (with an asthma problem, if you remember his character in Hitch) and Vince is ever the fast-talking funny man who has cemented “ear muffs!” and “Dorothy Mantooth is a saint!” forever in…
My most lasting memory of a visit to the Musee de Orsay in Paris is of Clesinger’s “Woman Bitten by a Snake.” Her naked body, sculpted straight from the artist’s model, is curvaceous and pockmarked with cellulite. I couldn’t take my eyes from it. The unaltered form shocked me–sadly–as the…
You probably ate some form of contemporary fusion cuisine within the last week, but when was the last time you digested a little Dance Fusion? And if you said “last week” you’re either lying or sneaked into rehearsals of the Collin Dance Ensemble and Vissi Dance Theater as they prepared…
Get ready for a three-way with glass, stitching and plenty of photographs. If it sounds a little too kinky, never fear–it’s just the newest exhibition at the Craighead Green gallery, featuring Pearl Dick, Jeanie Gooden and Kenda North. Dick, a glass artist, is known for her stunning blown glass heads,…
Lend Me a Tenor, the play about the wackiness that ensues when a nervous tenor overdoes it on tranquilizers before a gala performance of the opera Otello, is hilarious–especially if you’ve ever known a tenor. The stage manager scrambles to cover, but it’s hard enough to hit high notes, and…
Visiting another country is exciting, but let’s face it, traveling across the world is pricey. That’s why the children of Africa are bringing their culture to us. Featuring children from some of the most famine-stricken areas in Africa, the African Children’s Choir brings some of the most talented performers to…
Spike Lee’s movies have always been a hit or miss with me. His 1989 film Do the Right Thing really smacks of his gritty and independent style of filmmaking that effectively illustrated the racial tension of the period, whereas Inside Man, though it was captivating to the end, just had…
