When Halloween rolls around, I’m more of a get-drunk-and-wear-a-stupid-costume person than a go-scare-my-balls-off person. And, I’ve been that way since I was a kid and my mom handed me my first Halloweentini. But, if you like all of that gory, chainsawing, running upstairs when some dude is trying to kill…
There’s really not much I have to say about Goya’s Ghosts to sell it, frankly. Javier Bardem. Natalie Portman. Milos Forman. Two of today’s most beautiful and talented actors paired with the man who directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—it rarely gets more quality than that. We’re going to…
As a child you may have learned about death from your grandparents. More specifically, grandma bit it and then your folks had to explain why you wouldn’t be getting any more five dollar checks for your birthday. Or you may have learned about death the same way you learned about…
Will Rogers, asked during a Dallas visit what to do with the Trinity River, reportedly suggested “Pave it.” Most of the City Council agrees, wanting to rework a voter-approved parkway into a tollway running through the city’s flood plain. According to hysterical campaign propaganda, this is either the only solution…
Would you rather be a dog, a rat or a weasel? Watch what you pick, because in Raychael Stine’s work, you could be the strong protagonist, a sweet companion along for the ride or something much worse. With her first solo exhibition Dogs, Rats, and Weasels, Stine gives us a…
How do you turn a street urchin into an attractive, cultured lady? In Dallas, you ban the use of shopping carts and limit the area’s of food distribution for the homeless. But George Bernard Shaw took a different angle in his 1913 play Pygmalion. In the classic that would later…
On the Web site of Doug Varone and Dancers, the word “kinetic” comes up more than once. Kinetic. As in, the energy or force of motion when relating to material bodies. When applied to current choreography, basically, it just means “you need to see this company perform, like, now.” Their…
Eraserhead was the holy grail of David Lynch films for me and my friends in high school. We’d all seen Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, were obsessed with Twin Peaks, and had even managed to find a copy of The Elephant Man hiding in the stacks at Hastings. But Eraserhead…
Conduit Gallery’s current exhibitions feature three artists whose works bring to light those uncomfortable, embarrassing or intensely personal acts that are either performed in the dark or perhaps ought to be. Sex, politics, religion, reading, writing and watching movies are the themes of art works by New Yorker Annabel Daou,…
When I saw the word “droid,” my inner Star Wars geek came out, thinking it would be some tribute to the robot-humanoids of movies. Alas, no, this DROID is but a multimedia exhibition showcasing video as art via projection, sculptural monitors and mixing with soundscapes. Might not be the droids…
This weekend’s Bookworm Bash book sale benefits Senior Adult Services, “a nonprofit organization that improves the lives of seniors.” Sweet, right? Except it takes place in Addison, where anyone over the age of 28 gets the early bird special and a discount at the movies—that is, if you manage to…
Transformers (DreamWorks) No doubt, Michael Bay’s slam-bang action-figure commercial doesn’t play nearly as well on TV, no matter how high or high-def your screen; this demands to be seen on a screen the size of a skyscraper and heard on speakers as large as jet engines. So the first half-hour…
Late in Rendition, in case you’ve been blind and deaf enough not to have cottoned to the drift, a tense Washington exchange on the legitimacy of bundling dark-skinned Americans off to secret prisons abroad takes place. On one side is a driven young senatorial aide (Peter Sarsgaard); on the other,…
“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid,” Raymond Chandler wrote in 1950’s “The Simple Art of Murder,” smacking the ascot off the drawing-room mystery and all its crime-solving dilettante dandies. “He must be…a man of honor, by instinct,…
Sundance signals, for better or worse, the state of American independent filmmaking. Cannes keeps faith, for those who still believe, with the cinema d’auteur. And Toronto? The largest and most important film festival in North America seems to do nearly as many things as there are movies to see349 in…
Love him or despise him, head Jackass Johnny Knoxville has made millions from getting kicked in the yambag. Had YouTube arrived before Jackass, Knoxville, Steve-O, and the show’s other gutterpunk masochists might still be slinging French fries, getting burned by hot grease in a strictly nonrecreational way. But with a…
David Mamet wastes no time getting down to business in Glengarry Glen Ross, onstage in a ferocious production right now at Dallas Theater Center. He goes to the dark side of the real estate business. Selling worthless tracts of land in Florida—parceled into “units” with made-up Scottish names that end…
AC/DC: Plug Me In (Sony) Bob the Builder: Ultimate Adventure Collection (Hit Entertainment) Bully 911: Stop Being a Victim (Bayview) Believers (Warner Bros.) Best Picture Collection (MGM)The Hoax (Miramax) Hollow Man: Director’s Cut (Sony) The Invisible (Disney) Ironside: Season 2 (Shout) The Jazz Singer: Three-Disc Deluxe Edition (Warner Bros.) The…
To call a Shaolin Warriors performance a martial arts demonstration is like describing a symphony as a bunch of musical notes played together. These Buddhist monks offer a peek at ancient death-defying, death-dispensing moves with a show divided into seasons, representing the cyclical philosophy of their religion. Hopefully audience members…
At the risk of sounding like an old stick in the mud, I’ve gotta say that all these kids today with their MTV and iPod-whatsits have absolutely no attention span. People love movies by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, but put the two together into a double feature, and it’ll…
Who says Arlington isn’t scary? With the Boneyard touting over a half-mile of creeps, ghouls and screams, there’s no reason not to stop on the way to Fort Worth. The haunt is open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, plus every day through Halloween starting October 25. Grab a sturdy companion and…
The king of shock rock isn’t as shocking any more. But no worries, Dallas. As long as he sings that 1990s classic “Poison” we can all relive days in acid-wash without the brain damaging hairspray. And those first two words: “School’s out!” are enough to put a nostalgic smile on…
