When reading materials on Jeff Abbott’s new thriller Fear we couldn’t help but think of My Blue Heaven, the moderately unsuccessful Steve Martin and Rick Moranis comedy. Try out these parallels: the mob, witness protection program, post-traumatic stress disorder, drug scandals. OK, maybe not so much on those last two,…
In my opinion, animal art isn’t the most intriguing. But my interest grew rapidly as I read the press materials for Feral Nature. Nine artists from throughout the country have explored and examined the idea of “the animal” and its relation to that which is human. It all sounded very…
There are some people you just don’t need to spend a whole lot of time with to get their point. Barney the Dinosaur. Paris Hilton. Certainly not Che Guevara, though whoever directed that Motorcycle Diaries movie could have lopped off a minute or 60 and just kept the parts where…
When you think of Chuy’s, two things usually come to mind: the Elvis Platter and the president’s underage daughters getting busted trying to drink margaritas at the Austin location. As Chuy’s celebrates its 18th annual Green Chile Festival, you’ll think of The Cat in the Hat as the chain adopts…
Jugs. Melons. Gazongas. Knockers. Pendulums. Hooters. Honeydews. Nugs. Why, you have all kinds of reasons to head to Gachet Coffee Lounge, 1804 Greenville Ave., and see the latest installment of its Get Reel Mondays movie series. Fine, that’s not fair; we know there’s more to The Best Little Whorehouse in…
If, at this remove, we can imagine Vienna in the late 1890s, we behold a great imperial capital in ferment. Gustav Mahler is not only reinventing the harmonic structure of serious music, he is getting his head seriously shrunk by Sigmund Freud. Arnold Schoenberg takes painting lessons from the eroticist…
Awinning tale of sex, real estate and more or less immaculate conception, Quinceañera, as you might expect from a white-made drama about Latino life in Los Angeles’ Echo Park, threatens at first blush to be all about a pregnant teenager and a prodigal cholo in the ‘hood. Yet this saucy,…
Snakes on a Plane represents the ideal of contemporary major-studio filmmaking–which is to say, major-studio marketing. Who needs word-of-mouth screenings or critics when you can sell the four-word pitch as written on a napkin? It points to a future that takes all the guesswork out of movie-going. A major-studio release…
Funny what a hot day and cold booze will bring out in people. Some hard truths, for one thing. And in James McLure’s paired one-acts, Lone Star and Laundry and Bourbon, now playing for the second time in two years at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, the combination of humidity and…
Like a real war, Chromehounds involves long stretches of tedium, occasionally broken up by a few moments of sheer terror. After what feels like weeks of ponderous marching from point A to point B in your titular “Hound” — a walking tank — combat erupts. The fighting is fast and…
Benito (Lions Gate) Cape of Good Hope (New Yorker) Clark Gable Collection, Volume 1 (Fox) Don’t Tell (Lions Gate) The Hard Corps (Sony) Hong Kong Phooey: The Complete Series (Turner) Hoot (New Line) James Stewart: The Signature Collection (Warner Bros.) Land of the Blind (Bauer) Lemming (Strand) L’Enfant (Sony) Machined…
Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier (Paramount) It’s all here, more or less: the 1979 theatrical cut of Francis Ford Coppola’s harrowing and still-hypnotic Joseph Conrad-in-Vietnam adaptation, the 49-minutes-longer-but-feels-24-minutes-shorter 2001 Redux edition, Marlon Brando’s entire 17-minute “The Hollow Men” monologue, even more “lost” and deleted scenes (including a spooky-shocking one, in…
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific is obviously the product of a simpler time. Without the contemporary detachments of kitsch, camp or irony, the story takes place in the midst of World War II, carefully addressing the issue of interracial romance while never straying too far from the love story at…
I’ve seen Bound by Honor: Blood In, Blood Out at least 20 times, and I love it. The three-hour epic chronicles the lives of three Latino guys and their struggles—one becomes a junkie artist, one an undercover narc and one a prison gang leader. It made me love Benjamin Bratt…
Dallas Stars goalie Marty Turco knows about commitment. In January of this year, he signed a four-year extension with Dallas instead of becoming a free agent. Also, he stands in front of a net and lets people hit hockey pucks in his direction at around 100 mph. The man is…
AARP be damned. Evander Holyfield, the first and only four-time world heavyweight boxing champion, returns to the ring with more than mere fights or paychecks on his mind, promising reporters last month that he will again become “the undisputed heavyweight champion.” You know, one with a 1-3-1 record for the…
The Hip Pocket Theatre, an experimental arts ensemble, produces original scripts and pieces not usually performed in this area, or any other area probably. The theater’s productions are interdisciplinary, utilizing traditional theatrical elements along with music, mime, dance, puppetry and projected images, so if anyone would be able to pull…
Friday is shaping up to be one hell of a night. For those of you not de-evolving with DEVO or watching Sam Jackson arm-wrestle snakes, consider this: a date with the “Devil.” Southern Rock legend Charlie Daniels (and his band) will play at the Silverado Ranch in Irving, to the…
Remember the TV show Hogan’s Heroes? Those wacky guys at Pocket Sandwich Theatre have another production that spoofs the silly wartime comedy of the ’70s, The Great Escape with Steve McQueen and the granddaddy of all POW movies, Stalag 17. Allied POWs try to outsmart, out-snoop and outlast their captors,…
Models slink among us, tower over us and, from some media reports, can simultaneously drink us under the table and steal our boyfriends. Impressive. You don’t have to go to New York or Los Angeles to see this rare species. Some of Dallas’ most beautiful will be at the MODA…
Any kid who took Film 101 thinking they could sleep through feature films for an easy A knew they were done for when they hit Eisenstein, Bergman, Kurosawa and Fellini. These directors created meaty, inspired (and inspiring) films—dramatic and sometimes bizarre, but not entirely lacking humor. With help from the…
Kirk Douglas might be fondly remembered for his turn as Vincent Van Gogh in 1956’s Lust for Life, but it was co-star Anthony Quinn that took home the Oscar, winning a gold statue for his supporting turn as French painter Paul Gauguin. Luckily for us, a young Bob Dylan was…
