Theater provides its own version of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. By observing an actor in performance, we, the audience, unwittingly change the behavior of that actor as he or she plays the part. It’s an apt metaphorical fit to the experience of watching Michael Frayn’s dazzling, difficult play Copenhagen, currently running…
Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, a florid art shocker that Paramount welcomed into the world with the strained enthusiasm of a mutant baby’s parents, begins with U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leo DiCaprio) seasick, head in the toilet. The film is his prolonged purging, with Daniels coughing up chunks of his back…
The White Ribbon is Michael Haneke’s first German-language film since the original Funny Games (1997) and, addressing what used to be called “the German problem” while dodging the filmmaker’s own likability issues, it’s his best ever. A period piece set on the eve of World War I in an echt…
Where would you rather be at the end of the world? In an underground bunker with a nervous gay biologist and not quite enough food? Or in a living room with Stephen Hawking and a plate of pastrami? We get the lighter side of Armageddon in two small, odd, funny…
As personal assistant to the U.S. ambassador to France, James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) can keep himself in well-tailored suits and keep his terrific-looking kittenish girlfriend (Kasia Smutniak) in a nice Paris apartment. This is the basis for director Pierre Morel’s delicate study in trans-Atlantic manners, From Paris With Love,…
Sometimes the sweet nobility of a heartfelt community theater production can make its flaws forgivable. At all-volunteer playhouses such as Richardson Theatre Centre and Onstage in Bedford, where this week’s shows were reviewed, they do it all for love. Nobody receives star treatment. There’s no complicated scenery, and they sport…
Legally Blonde meets Glee meets Xanadu in Dallas Theater Center’s latest, the world premiere of the hyperactive musical Give It Up! (forced exclamation point theirs). The show reflects obvious influences of those and other pop-infused Broadway and TV phenoms, but its actual source material is Lysistrata, a comedy from 411…
“Did you shoot my daughtah?” is the question posed, in flat-voweled Bostonian, in the trailer for Edge of Darkness. And Mel Gibson, much-bereaved and much-vengeful, from Hamlet to Ransom to Revolutionary America, sets out to settle another score. Gibson is Thomas Craven: veteran, homicide detective, lonesome widower. His daughter, a…
Was it Colonel Mustard in the library with the wrench? Au contraire. You’re not talking about Clue Jr. here, especially if an audience member ends up being the murderer. In the Murder Mystery Players’ Shooting at Southfork, participants will have to put their game faces on when eight of them…
Typically we celebrate New Year’s with drinking copious amounts of booze, wearing funny hats and counting down to midnight with Dick Clark. Not so much for the Chinese New Year. Their main traditions are cooking a family dinner and cleaning the house from top to bottom to make room for…
If you really want to disappoint your wife or girlfriend this Valentine’s Day, get her a Russell Stover box or, better yet, an even cheaper generic variety pack. Then sit back and watch as she eats and exclaims, “Ooh, this one tastes like wax. Hmm, this one must be toothpaste-flavored…
You know when someone is talking about a movie and you say, “Hmmm–I’ve never seen that,” and they shriek, “WHAT? YOU’VE NEVER SEEN THAT??!!? OH MY GOD, you HAVE TO see it!!”? And it’s really annoying? You know how sometimes you are the person on the other side of things?…
I’ll admit it. When I first heard the Dallas Opera was putting on Cosi Fan Tutte, I was unaware A) that it was an opera at all, and B) that it was composed by Mozart. Having now figured this out, my high opinion of Wolfgang has begun to wane. Cosi…
If you thought journalists and biotechnology wouldn’t be caught dead in the same room, boy…were you right. Except in the case of Boom, a story that takes a marine biologist and a journalism student on the journey of their lives, perhaps changing the fate of the entire human race. Beginning…
Documentary addicts and hippies alike will be in good company when the Thin Line Film Festival hits the eclectic and artsy Downtown Square in Denton this week. Now in its third year, the Texas filmmakers’ festival will kick off on Wednesday with an appropriately blistery screening of Josh Fox’s Gasland,…
Facebook is nothing if not a cultural barometer. At any given time, I can login and see what people are reading (a disturbing amount of Twilight, apparently), listening to (OMG, the new Vampire Weekend!) and planning to do. And apparently, a pretty good cross-section of the metroplex–spanning all age groups–has…
Who was that masked man? Was it the Lone Ranger? Was it Zorro? No, it was that good old stalwart, The Phantom of the Opera. This musical joyride of thrills and tears was first performed in 1986, and it’s still playing to packed houses worldwide. The show was birthed by…
Mariah Carey recently pulled an Anna Nicole Smith while accepting a Breakthrough Actress Performance award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards. She slurred her speech and had that “I may have just drank a whole bottle of expensive Champagne by myself” look in her eyes. Girlfriend was definitely…
The J PLAYERS of the Jewish Community Center of Dallas presents an award-winning Broadway show, Ragtime, The Musical. The show explores the lives of an upper-class housewife, a Jewish immigrant and a Harlem musician all living in New York at the turn of the 20th century and united by their…
From Catholic Sacred Heart of Jesus imagery to the classic sweetheart tattoo, the human heart has inspired artists for as long as there have been artists. But my favorite piece of heart art isn’t a painting or a sculpture. Rather, it’s the moment in Indiana Jones and the Temple of…
I always thought the most relevant thing Pauly Shore could ever do after the turn of the century was–just like most celebrities whose fame peaked in the ’90s–appear on the newest season of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. Or get his very own help-me-find-fake-double-d-sized-love dating show (thanks, VH1). Surprisingly enough,…
If you’ve ever been to a bluegrass jam before, than odds are pretty good you’re heard at least one bluegrass version of a Beatles tune–usually “I’ve Just Seen A Face” or “I’m Looking Through You,” two of the twangier numbers in the Fab Four’s catalog. But the band Beatlegras takes…
