I would pay a pretty fair amount of money to see Mayor Laura Miller deliver the proclamation establishing Saturday as “Free Comic Book Day” in Dallas while wearing a Wonder Woman costume. Sadly, I don’t think that will happen, but regardless, Zeus Toys and Comics’ CAPE 3: Bride of CAPE…
Usually, when error messages or pop-ups have a field day with my computer, I freak out. But while visiting one of the many Web sites for JODI, a collective of two new media artists, I learned that sometimes the sight of 1,000 pop-ups dancing across your screen is considered…art. The…
“My paintings are fun, and they’re supposed to be fun,” says artist Patrick Williams (not to be confused with our very own mad genius managing editor of the same name; ’round here we call him P-Dub) says in his artist’s statement. And with their images of goofy little beings in…
I think my all-time favorite Elvis Presley song has to be “In the Ghetto.” It strikes a chord with me not because it’s a sentimental piece with a heartfelt message, but because it’s totally hilarious. My favorite part is the line where songwriter Mac Davis rhymed “runny nose” with “cold…
With a title like The Appeal, one would think that the Undermain Theatre’s new production would be some kind of courtroom drama. Perhaps a stage adaptation of a classic episode of Law & Order. Or possibly a musical version of The Practice complete with a tap-dancing Dylan McDermott. You’d be…
I like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. And, no, not just because Alice is my first name. I mean, I have a special hate for that Brady Bunch Alice, and I can barely stand the girl in “Alice’s Restaurant”—what a prude. I don’t know what it is about Alice from…
When Petruchio pulls up his coat to reveal that he’s wearing assless pants, director Richard Hamburger, intentionally or not, makes his final statement to the Dallas Theater Center audience. To the Dallas theater community as a whole. This is Hamburger’s last production in a 15-year tenure in which his taste…
An oldie but a goody pops up at Theatre Three. Doug Jackson and Bob Hess play Oscar Madison and Felix Ungar, divorced, middle-aged journalists sharing a big, cheap (it’s 1965) apartment on Manhattan’s Riverside Drive. With their poker buddies serving as ad hoc Greek chorus, the men bicker over Felix’s…
Although the song in Wonderful Town titled “100 Easy Ways (to Lose a Man)” does talk about a bunch of different ways you could lose a guy, I was surprised it never mentioned these surefire ways you can lose your man: do his grandpa, ask him to do a chore,…
If you’ve ever sipped martinis while listening to Mötley Crüe, then the art of Michael Godard is probably right up your alley. Looking something like a long-lost sibling of illusionist Criss Angel and ill-advised Garth Brooks alter ego Chris Gaines, Godard is mostly known for his cheesy, cartoonish depictions of…
At last recollection the Trinity River in Fort Worth doesn’t smell like an overflowing cesspool. Good ol’ Panther City can actually promise pretty good times then at the 35th annual Mayfest, with activities actually in and on the river! Special attractions include aqua golf, a water balloon launch and canoes,…
Breasts? Is that really the best we can do? Has the human race not yet evolved beyond producing mammary tissue as the prime location for autograph signing? This is 2007, people. Getting your boobs signed in black Sharpie is like watching movies on Beta. It’s time for something new. So…
A dozen years ago, Kelly Reichardt made her feature debut with a wonderfully desultory, nearly avant-garde riff on the last romantic couple. Reichardt’s River of Grass was a comic, slacker Bonnie and Clyde, set on the edge of the Everglades. Her belated follow-up, the more elegiac but no less site-specific…
The road tour of Wicked first blew into town during the 2005 State Fair with a company that rivaled the Broadway originals for sheer gut-busting star power. The Glinda and Elphaba from that production are playing leads on Broadway right now—Kendra Kassebaum carrying on as the bubble-headed good witch in…
Planet Earth (BBC/Warner Bros.) Roll over, Marlin Perkins, and tell Jacques Cousteau the news: There’s never been another nature series like this. You will spend forever glued to this five-disc collection, finding among such holy-shit discoveries a herd of never-before-photographed camels who live in the frozen wastelands, great whites dining…
Al Franken: God Spoke (Docurama) Code Name: The Cleaner (New Line) Columbo: Mystery Murder Collection 1989 (Universal) Déjà Vu (Buena Vista) The Documentaries of Louis Malle (Criterion) The Drew Carey Show: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) Flipper: Season One (MGM) .45 (Velocity) Ironside: Season 1 (Shout! Factory) Jean Renoir:…
A game based on 300 has no excuse not to kick ass. Just picture yourself leading 300 Greeks (that’s 1,800 abs) against the Persian empire’s massive armies, led by the evil, pierced, and preening King Xerxes. Since your Spartans are the deadliest soldiers in the world, the Persians’ only chance…
“10 People will fight. 9 people will die. You get to watch.” So proclaims the poster for The Condemned, a movie executive-produced by World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon and starring self-professed “whup-ass machine” Stone Cold Steve Austin and oft-suspended former soccer star Vinnie Jones. So can someone explain where…
You would think that being raised by a Central American father would somehow—if even by osmosis—imbue me with knowledge of the nuances of socc—uh, futbol. Nope. All I learned about soccer from him is that a great header is often followed by vomiting behind the bleachers. We can’t promise puke,…
Holland’s gift to world cinema, Paul Verhoeven, can be a very bad boy and a very good filmmaker. Any of his movies could have been titled Basic Instinct—not least his epic World War II thriller Black Book, in which a Jewish chanteuse who has watched her family massacred by Nazis…
I sometimes look at the kindergartners that I teach once a week—crayons shoved up their nose, dirt all over their pants, Kool-Aid lining their lips—and I think that they are lucky to be so innocent and carefree. But, as the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth points out with their…
One of the best things about films that aren’t made in Hollywood—and this is particularly true of Asian films—is that literally anything can happen to any of the characters. The result of this freedom can be movies that are intense, breathtaking, brutal and powerful. The Korean movie Oldboy is all…
