Ten years is a really, really long time to do almost anything. Want to spend 10 years riding a bicycle? How about a decade of eating nothing but pad thai? Or maybe you’d rather do 10 long ones using the same shampoo and conditioner? No, thank you. The only thing…
I can’t say that I imagined my sweet, innocent hometown of Mesquite would be host to a horror convention featuring nightmarish legends such as Kane “Jason” Hodder, Candyman Tony Todd and guest of honor Tobe Hooper, director of the ultra-scary Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I can’t even imagine that, promoting his…
Even children need a place to call their own. In the best cases, it’s an escape from the daily grind of homework and popularity alliances. In the worst cases, as evidenced in the children’s classic A Secret Garden, it’s a respite from the loss of parents and isolation in a…
It’s probably because my mother happens to be in Vietnam right now for a conference, and also because my mother is a huge Frida Kahlo fan, but one of the paintings featured in Changing Identity: Recent Works by Women from Vietnam, reminds me of a Frida self-portrait. Nguyen Thi Chau…
In 1946, a Brit by the name of Wilbert Awdry wrote a book about trains called Thomas the Tank Engine. The book was set on the fictional Island of Sodor, and every year Awdry wrote another book about Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends, until 1972, when he published…
Violins often imply a sad turn of events. But some violins at the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra signify a very happy turn of events. The FWSO has enlisted 32 artists to jazz up the stringed instruments with paint and TLC (Tender Loving Creativity, that is). The finished products will be…
By Monday afternoon, they had all left Austin—the A-minus-listers who flew into Texas to promote their studio products with encroaching release dates. Among them were Shia “Is He or Isn’t He Indy Jones?” LaBeouf touting the Rear Window redo Disturbia, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Isla Fisher and Matthew Goode talking up…
The space-time continuum smacks the shit out of Sandra Bullock in Premonition, the latest in nonlinear nonsense, but the fun really gets going when she starts to smack back. As Linda Hanson, humdrum mom of Anywhere, U.S.A., Bullock sets things up by doing her thing, effortlessly establishing the girl next…
Finally, Dallas Theater Center does August Wilson. Only took them 20 years to get around to it. That’s about how long Wilson’s work has been part of the American theater conversation. Better late than never. Fences, which just opened in an astonishingly well-acted production at DTC, is one of the…
American Cousins (BFS) Appetite for Deconstruction: A Punk Rockumentary (MVD) Barbie Fairytopia: Magic of the Rainbow (Universal) Bloody Reunion (Tartan) Blood Trails (Lions Gate) The Ed Wood Collection: A Salute to Incompetence (Passport) Favela Rising (Netflix) Fires on the Plain: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) The Gene Autry 100th Anniversary Collection…
Casino Royale (Sony) James Bond gets a stirring shake-up in the best–yeah, Goldfinger fans, the best–film in the series’ 44-year history. Daniel Craig’s 007 has more going on above the neck and below the waist than even Sean Connery’s. He’s a genuinely compelling character–a bruised, fallible, cold-blooded bastard whose mixed…
Whether it’s slaying dragons in Zelda, zapping aliens in Halo, or inserting foot A into ass B in Virtua Fighter, the best games are the ones that offer some level of wish fulfillment. Grand Theft Auto added “Help yourself to a car” and “Drive it on the sidewalk” to the…
Saturday holds one big, slobbering, green option in one hand, and in the other, a later, more culturally sober option in the Fiesta Latinoamericana! Of course the trek to Plano may be disheartening and drive you into the nearest pub for a Guinness, but the reward of poetry from Latin…
I’m Irish (What? Laussade is totally an Irish name. I shortened it from McO’Malleylaussade). Being part of the Irish club is cool. It means I’m lucky, I sunburn easily, and my alcoholism and my inability to cook are genetic. If you’re Irish, or you like Irish stuff or you just…
Disney on Ice shows seem to be the only way Disney will put on a live show outside of a lavish Broadway musical. From Monsters Inc. to Finding Nemo, they keep rolling them out for the masses. I’m not quite sure how Nemo translates to ice, but if Tarzan ever…
There’s P.O.V., and then there’s P.O.V., and when it comes to a discussion about the best use of P.O.V. by a director, nine outta 10 times, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window will win the prize hands down. We all know the story: Jimmy Stewart plays a man immobilized by a broken…
Many of you probably know the story of Matthew Shepard, the young gay man severely beaten and fatally wounded by two thugs near Laramie, Wyoming, in the fall of 1998. Often described as a hate crime, the notorious murder prompted nationwide debate on hate crimes legislation, with then President Clinton…
You may have heard people say that no good deed goes unpunished. This was artist Dan Eldon’s reality. The African photographer dedicated much of his life to service in Africa, raising funds and mentoring students, and it was there where he was stoned to death at age 23. But the…
With the widespread prevalence of Photoshop and other image-manipulation programs, anyone can create a photomontage these days. Once upon a time this wasn’t the case: Berlin dada artists were the first to experiment with photomontage during World War I, blending several images together by hand to make compelling visual (and…
Oi, these goyim and their indigestion-inducing foods, with the barbecues and the crawfish boils and what have you. Just thinking about that traif gets us all farblondzhet in the boykh. It’s absolute meshugas. Luckily, our khevre over at Tiferet Israel are ladling up some spicy nosh of comparable fiery deliciousness…
I usually hate when people say, “Well, now I’ve seen everything,” because that’s just preposterous. There’s simply no way you could have seen every single thing in the world, you lying liar. But now that I’ve seen that video of the late Anna Nicole Smith in clown makeup, talking baby…
For some boys who never grow up, G.I. Joe is a series of 12-inch dolls nameless except for military designation. For a younger generation, G.I. Joe is a line of 3 3/4-inch action figures packaged with file cards fleshing out enough characters and back story to inspire an after-school cartoon…
