She may be most famous for her stint on The View, but if you went to public school in Texas in the early ’90s you probably remember Lisa Ling as one of the original teen hosts of Channel One News, the 12-minute news program with commercials pumped into schools in…
Let us applaud, on principle, Anthony Minghella’s return to small-scale storytelling. Breaking and Entering marks his first original screenplay since the oddball romcom Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991) and a retreat from the jumbo-sized period pieces of his Miramax-to-the-max phase. Overrated as they are, The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley…
Ticket buyers to Factory Girl are in for a drag; not even the drag queens will like it. Cookie-cut from the biopic assembly line, this life and times of Edie Sedgwick (Sienna Miller) is the least fabulous movie imaginable about the most fabulous persona in that most fabulous of scenes,…
If a word of Moonlight and Magnolias, the comedy now on the big stage at Dallas Theater Center, is true, then the movie version of Gone With the Wind could have ended up as The Da Vinci Code of 1939. Ron Hutchinson’s play suggests—no, it insists—that early in production, producer…
The Science of Sleep (Warner Bros.) Feature films are to video directors what sitcoms are to stand-up comedians, and for every David Fincher and Seinfeld, there are dozens of artists who should have stayed in the field they know best. Michel Gondry, who made his name directing fantastic videos for…
Explaining the appeal of the WarioWare series is like trying to describe a fever dream: It doesn’t make sense unless experienced. Nevertheless, here goes: Mario’s bizarro-universe twin, the greedy Wario, has invented over 200 absurd micro-games in a scheme to get rich and corner the videogame market. Quantity is job…
Alfred Hitchcock: The Early Years of the Master of Suspense (Lions Gate) All Quiet on the Western Front (Universal) Anything but Love: Volume One (Fox) Arabian Nights (Universal) Best Picture: Academy Award Winners Collection (Paramount) Boynton Beach Club (Sony) Charmed: The Complete Seventh Season (Paramount) Cinderella III: A Twist in…
We haven’t noticed Neil Young among the artists in the collection of outlaw country and country-rock concert posters that line the walls of the AllGood Café, providing inspiration and looking down in seeming empathy as hangovers are tended to with spicy comfort food and coffee refills on Sunday (and Thursday,…
It’s really pathetic what passes for “girl power” these days. Like those Cheetah Girls—anybody with a 5-to-11-year-old daughter probably knows what I mean—as if singing and dancing around in silly costumes is somehow empowering. And Barbie? That dip is as dumb as ever. Even a badass like Courtney Love has…
We, members of the NAAGP, hereby protest Casa Mañana’s Children’s Playhouse’s premiere of a new musical, Jack & the Beanstalk, on Friday and encourage all largish people and NBA players to join us for a protest at 7 p.m. outside the theater, 3101 W. Lancaster Ave. in Fort Worth. (We’ll…
He was straight O.G., out of Grayson County. He pimped, gambled, dressed like a dandy, sold intoxicants—sometimes illegally—and killed, killed, killed. Turn the clock forward 100 years or so, and Old West gambler and gunslinger Luke Short probably would have won a Grammy for best rap artist. There won’t be…
DJ Aaron Bisman is the CEO of JDub Records—the label responsible for the success of Matisyahu…but we’ll forgive him that. The goal of the 26-year-old and his company to spread Jewish culture through contemporary music genres such as punk, hip-hop, jazz and others while providing positive role models to young…
What can one say about Bob Seger that hasn’t been said 100 times at every auto repair shop and truck stop from Detroit to Toronto? Seger’s music speaks to the common man: It has boosted truck sales and brought tears of nostalgia to the eyes of everyone who’s ever made…
Maybe the wife and I are just devoted Democrats. Maybe we just needed an excuse to get out of town. Whatever the case, we took a pilgrimage to Little Rock last year to visit the William J. Clinton Presidential Center. It’s a lovely, glassy place overlooking the Arkansas River. It…
Think your kid’s got what it takes to be the next top chef? OK, maybe not right now, but Central Market can help you get a good start. Its cooking school staff has taken on the daunting task of teaching your little cookie monsters (ages 6 to 12) some baking…
I’ll admit that with the passage of time often comes ingenuity and progress. I really like having power steering in my car, and microwaves certainly come in handy sometimes. But when it comes to horror films made in the 1950s, I say there’s little room for improvement. Sure, the special…
The pleasure quarters of ancient Tokyo were legendary for their hedonism, and their activities are immortalized through paintings called ukiyo-e by some of the artists, bohemians and courtesans that frequented these “floating worlds.” The world’s largest collection of these rare customized paintings includes those by artists such as Hokusai, Utamaro…
Now that the snow has gone and the weather is getting better (ahem), it’s time to think about partaking in some outdoor activities. The people at Texas Discovery Gardens have you covered with their new monthly social mixer series, Organic in the City. This first mixer, “Murderous Plants: Love Potions…
Ideally on Valentine’s Day, your lover/spouse/trick will have you seeing stars. In a dark, soothing room dense with the aroma of overflowing and engorged rose blossoms, you will recline and relax waiting for Cupid’s arrow to shoot. Your tongue will delight as the pleasure of chocolate sweetness is inserted into…
Like his father—the legendary Texas singer-songwriter/artist/playwright Terry Allen—artist Bale Creek Allen has dipped his toe in many media, from acting to song to sculpture. He’s even tried his hand at creative taxidermy, forming art with the carcasses of diamondback rattlesnakes. His newest exhibit, Empire, uses sculpture, found objects and said…
Remember when you were in college and you read Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit and it made you want to start chain-smoking? And if you were already a smoker, it made you want to start mainlining equine tranquilizers? Well, imagine a play with a similarly suffocating setup, except instead of…
If you’re any kind of a Willie Nelson fan you’ve probably seen him at honky-tonks or big amphitheaters. If you’re a really big fan you’ve been to at least a couple of his Fourth of July picnics and maybe even a Farm Aid concert or two. Perhaps you even went…
