Three Times the Ladies

I once heard a saying that thanks to hair color, there’s a woman for every taste. But that’s rude, misogynistic and stereotypical of assholes that wouldn’t appreciate art. Don’t be that asshole. No, we should appreciate women for creative and intellectual differences and for the variety of their beings, not…

The Modern Age

While it’s fair to say that Europe is the cornerstone of art and its history, we aren’t doing too bad ourselves. Sure, we may not have Grecian urns or baroque tapestries dating back thousands of years but damn it, our dead artists can hold their own against any da Vinci…

(Not So) Great Dane

It’s too bad that Ticketmaster has an 8-limit ticket per household if you’re buying tickets to Dane Cook’s upcoming performance at the American Airlines Center. That’s like saying “Jesus is coming to town and passing out kittens and rainbows, but you can’t tell anyone.” This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to…

Drink In the Spirit

That’s the Christmas spirit! No, no, silly, I don’t mean the desire to give to those less fortunate and spend quality time with friends and family, I was actually referring to vodka. But whatever. You go on with the giving and the relatives. I’ll be slurping up a Bloody Mary…

His Tre-ness

Top Chef fans rejoice—you don’t have to head down to Abacus to see Tre Wilcox in action. After watching him make his way through the first half of Top Chef as the man to beat, he somehow got the ax in the 10th episode, leaving many of us disappointed and…

(Not) the Firestarter

When you think of famous piano-playing rockers, you probably either think of Dennis DeYoung from Styx or Tori Amos. Well, maybe not. But the king of piano-driven rock is, was and shall always be “the piano man,” Billy Joel. Billy has been churning out hit after glorious hit since the…

Barnaby the Scribbler

Not only does SMU art professor Barnaby Fitzgerald have an old-timey name, he also paints the type of old-school broads you might find in a Greek mythology textbook, lounging around eating apples with some naked dudes and minotaurs. His latest exhibit, Barnaby Fitzgerald:…complexions of the avatars…, collects a number of…

Riverxmas

One of the worst parts of Christmas is the music. There’s only so many times a person can listen to Elvis sing “Blue Christmas.” Even the traditional Christmas carols turn into an occasion for misery after they’ve been piped through every elevator, shopping mall and radio airwave in America for…

Miracle on Commerce Street

That humongous inflatable Hello Kitty floating above your head isn’t a menacing hallucination—it’s real life and a surefire sign the holidays are here. On Saturday, more than 350,000 people will descend on Commerce Street to wave to a cavalcade of creatures vying for attention at the Neiman Marcus Adolphus Children’s…

Cut to the Chase

The 13th annual Careity Celebrity Cutting event takes place Friday at Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth, featuring such irresistible luminaries as David Dewhurst and Tanya Tucker. For the uninitiated, cutting is an equine spectator sport in which a single rider gently guides a single calf away from its…

The Butter Queen

This Friday, Central Market will be completely out of whipping cream and butter. From noon to 2 p.m., skip your lame work lunch: Ina Garten is signing her Barefoot Contessa cookbooks at Central Market, 5750 E. Lovers Lane. And when the Contessa’s in town, may no dairy product live to…

Born to Run

Few films have been altered, released, re-altered, re-released, re-re-altered and re-re-released more than Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. The 1982 future noir cult classic is now on its seventh edition. Aside from the original domestic release and broadcast television versions of the film, Blade Runner has a more violent international cut,…

True Idols

In a world where art is made from human skulls and bodily fluids, it’s easy to forget that art and spirituality are closely related. As long as there has been religion, there has been an art form that immortalizes it. For example, an exhibition of laminas—or retablos—collects altarpieces that represent…

The Butter Queen

This Friday, Central Market will be completely out of whipping cream and butter. From noon to 2 p.m., skip your lame work lunch: Ina Garten is signing her Barefoot Contessa cookbooks at Central Market, 5750 E. Lovers Lane. And when the Contessa’s in town, may no dairy product live to…

Golden Boys

For pretty much as long as I’ve been watching football, Brett Favre has been just about the coolest guy in the NFL. Whether it’s his cameo appearance in There’s Something About Mary, his ever-present three-day beard or the time he threw for four touchdowns and nearly 400 yards the day…

DVD Releases for the Week of November 20

Angel-A (Sony) The Batman: The Complete Fourth Season (Warner Bros.) Bill Maher: The Decider (HBO) Broken (First Look) Chappelle’s Show: The Series Collection (Paramount) CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: The Complete Seventh Season (Paramount) Eric Clapton: Crossroads Guitar Festival 2007 (Rhino) Gene Simmons Family Jewels: The Complete Season 2 (A&E) Hairspray…

The New Face of Evil

The unsettling tone is established early in Call of Duty 4, when the president of a Middle Eastern nation is publicly executed on the world stage, and you, the player, experience the deposed leader’s final minutes through his own eyes, witnessing — through the rear window of a car —…

Jungle Fever

Hearts of Darkness:A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (Paramount) At last available on DVD, Eleanor Coppola’s 1991 documentary about her husband’s tumultuous trek downriver remains, easily, the best film ever about the making of a movie and unmaking of a man. Francis Ford Coppola thought he was going to spend 16 weeks in…

Mix-tape Biopic Captures Bob Dylan’s Spirit

Something about that movie though, well I just can’t get it out of my head/But I can’t remember why I was in it or what part I was supposed to play. —Bob Dylan, “Brownsville Girl” Literally speaking, Bob Dylan isn’t “there” in Todd Haynes’ staggering mix-tape biopic I’m Not There…

Enchanted: What a Toad

Hard to believe that it’s been 20 years since the release of The Princess Bride, if only because it hasn’t aged a day. Bereft of the pop-culture gags that curdle the Shrek movies and absent the cynicism of most other kids’ films used solely to peddle fast food and impulse…

Knockout

The Boxer is brilliant. The locally grown one-act play that charmed audiences at last summer’s Festival of Independent Theatres is now at Dallas Children’s Theater, with the same cast and an even more polished staging by Dallas writer-director Matt Lyle. What a gem. In a lively 60 minutes, Lyle’s darling…

Stephen King Adaptation Mist All Fogged Up

As one of what novelist Stephen King calls his Constant Readers, I was as jazzed as every other monster-lovin’ geek when word came that filmmaker Frank Darabont was making a movie of King’s classic novella, The Mist. Cynics suggested that after tanking big time with his Frank Capra homage, The…