Our top DVD picks for the week of July 18

The Best of She-Ra Princess of Power (Brentwood) Carnivale: The Complete Second Season (HBO) The Cavern (Sony) Clean (Palm) Don’t Move (Wellspring) An Early Frost (Wolfe) Flash Gordon: The Complete Series (Brentwood) The Incredible Hulk: The Complete First Season (Universal) Intimate Stories (New Yorker) Jack of All Trades: The Complete…

Not Like Beckham

Brooklyn is more than just what holds up the other side of that bridge, and though the most famous lullabies are on Broadway, other New York City boroughs also have stories to tell. The musical Brooklyn borrows the spotlight to shine on itself for a while, telling the story of…

Walls of Brazil

Even when confined to sepia tones and shades of black and white, a certain amount of colorful vibrancy exists in the photography of Marcel Gautherot. His lens captured a Brazil both ripe with promise and rooted in rich culture. In the late ’50s, Gautherot’s camera recorded construction of the newly…

Run to the Theater

Cases of mistaken identity are nothing if not wacky. Yes, if it’s wacky high jinks you need, look no further than the silly antics in comedy classics like Face/Off and The Fugitive. Wasn’t it hilarious when Harrison Ford took a tumble off that crazy dam? And didn’t you just crack…

Eye in the Sky

Have you ever been picnicking on a beautiful and breezy summer afternoon, enjoying a nice cheese sandwich and conversing with your significant other when suddenly, out of nowhere, a bird craps in your hair? Sadly enough this happens to thousands of innocent people every year, sabotaging joggers and ruining sand…

The King of Kings?

Sure, the title of the latest Magnolia at the Modern film may be The King, but that doesn’t mean you should show up in sunglasses and a rhinestone-studded polyester suit. (If you do I’ll give you some mad props, however.) See, The King isn’t an Elvis biopic but rather a…

Erin Go Sing

Be amazed by the musical spectacle, Celtic Woman, soon to play at Nokia Theatre! The Celtic women performers—wives and girlfriends of former Boston Celtic basketball players, naturally—will wow you with their ball-handling skills as they dribble, dunk and drive to a carefully choreographed 45-minute classical rendition of “Drunken Lullabies” by…

Let’s Go Bowling

Some films are instant cult classics, quick to rally legions of loyal followers to large conventions, fanzines and Web sites. Unfortunately, embarrassing costumes and makeup are usually involved when conjuring Siths, Wookies, Klingons and Vulcans. But in 1998 the cult scene achieved a new level of cool when Jeff Bridges…

Feline Wiles

There are plenty of reasons to see CATS. It’s a well-known and loved musical, composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on poems by T. S. Eliot. It holds the record as the longest-running Broadway show in history, has toured the world, been translated into 20 languages and enjoyed timeless popularity,…

Heavy Metal

What’s the best way to prove that you’re an iron girl from Texas? It’s certainly not an appearance on CBS’ Rock Star: Supernova, the show on which three Texas femmes are currently embarrassing themselves for the likes of ex-rockers such as Tommy Lee and Jason Newsted. Flailing around in tacky…

Place Your Bets

You know the painting–dogs hunkered down around the poker table having a grand old time. Thanks to the little poodle barmaid’s drinks, the rest of the players are oblivious to the two English Bulldogs sneakily passing aces to each other. What a pair of cheaters. But who would play that…

Full House

Judging solely by its abnormally high price on Amazon.com, Ron Uselton’s Lost Vegas must be a damn good read. After all, it’s more expensive than Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which boasts more than 1,400 pages (Lost Vegas comes in at a paltry 160). The story of the unlikely cast of…

September Mourn

The two Boeing 767s that hit the World Trade Center on September 11 were traveling at 400 to 600 miles per hour and, loaded with passengers and fuel, weighed almost half a million pounds each. Only an expert could attempt to analyze the forces that brought down the buildings. Morgan…

No Cheese, Please

Call me crazy, but when I first heard Kenny Chesney married Renée Zellweger, I actually thought they’d last. Not that I put much faith in celebrity marriages, but it just seemed romantic that the Hollywood starlet from Katy, Texas, embraced her rural roots and fell for the “aw, shucks” charms…

Black Comedy

Black Cinematheque Dallas is shining a spotlight on black film. And Marilyn Clark, the organization’s founder, is directing the show. BCD wants to dispel negative images of blacks and replace them with truthful, positive images. It does this by presenting black films by aspiring and accomplished artists from around the…

All Hail

The only Peruvian songstress we’re familiar with is the four-octave legend Yma Sumac. Her mambo/tiki/Les Baxter fare laced with the legend of her royal Incan heritage rotated on Mom’s record player most weekend mornings. Peruvian singer Eva Ayllón, however, was also influenced by an elder’s musical tastes at a young…

School Rules

Before Goosebumps and Harry Potter invaded every elementary school’s Scholastic book fair, Sideways Stories from Wayside School ruled the K-5 world. The charming, nonsensical stories of 30 weirdo students had little in the way of life-long lessons; boys and girls slept through class, pulled pigtails, talked to dead rats, turned…

Down South

An artist can find a lot of inspiration by crossing the Trinity River and heading south. First there’s Oak Cliff. Then there’s Carl’s Corner, the Czech Stop, the Brazos and Austin. Go further and you’ll find the cool, clear springs of New Braunfels and San Marcos, the Alamo and eventually,…

Sketchballs

The first indication that something is horribly wrong with Mass Hysteria’s particular brand of sketch comedy is the fact that they bill their show as “comedy sketch.” Second, jokes about online dating and spam e-mails are no longer so much pieces of fresh observational humor as they are case studies…

Three-Ring History

It’s been called “The Greatest Show on Earth,” and while there are some peep-show dancers in Times Square that might disagree, the circus certainly has a long history of providing family entertainment. P.T. Barnum’s first traveling show began in the late 1800s and rivaled that of James Bailey. Rather than…

Summer Break

Dallas becomes more and more bleak as the summer days wear on. Vibrant gardens fade to crispy brown hay, and those little wiggly lines coming up from the road just magnify the uninviting cement all around. Even people change from pink-cheeked to toast-like. Perfect timing for a blast of color…

Brain Trust

It’s almost hump week—that midpoint of summer when all a parent’s best schemes to keep kids busy are wearing thin. Grab your team and channel all that energy into beating the pants off other family teams at Cranium. It’s a combination of trivia, creative problem solving, scavenger hunting, charades and…