One of the only good things to come from Hurricane Katrina was a renewed appreciation for the art and culture that the city of New Orleans has always provided, whether we noticed it or not. The booze and beads were fantastic, but the blues and jazz were the main event…
If I picked up a paintbrush, dipped it in a can of black semigloss and painted a square on the wall, would that be art? Obviously not, even if I were extra careful not to drip. So when Russian artist Kazimir Malevich painted a black square on canvas in 1915,…
While it’s debatable whether the zany cornball gags of Mel Brooks’ comedies are still truly funny in today’s climate of hyper-cynical jaded irony fests, there’s one staple of Brooks’ comedic oeuvre who’s undeniably a timeless laugh riot: the late, great Madeline Kahn. Sure, she was typecast as the shrill brazen…
I tend to stay away from artist receptions. I went to one once, enjoyed the free drinks and canapés and even pretended to like the art while I was at it. I don’t think I’m being a snob about it—there were already too many at the event I went to…
Isn’t laughter supposed to be the best medicine? (Well, penicillin, then laughter, then a lot of morphine…) For a doggy in dire straits, your laughter could mean the difference between life and death. Comedian Todd Glass is on hand to deliver the laughs; you might remember him as the guy…
Calling Rian Johnson’s teen indie drama Brick a piece of stunt work might seem tantamount to hitting it with a pie, but it’s a high-speed wheelie of a strangely daring variety. Try this thumbnail definition on for size: a high school noir, complete with a Dashiell Hammett-derived plot line and…
You may not yet have lost your ardor and respect for the pressure-point hammer blow Quentin Tarantino executed on American movies, but it’s difficult at this late date not to view him as an imperative inoculation with unfortunate side effects: gas, bloating, dizziness, delusions of cleverness. Imitators flock when coolness…
We’ve all done it–killed an afternoon drinking in a pleasantly grungy roadhouse somewhere, boozily enjoying the illusion of having fallen off the grid, playing semi-forgotten blues songs on an outdated jukebox, and thinking aloud See, I should capture this feeling. This should be a movie. Sobered up, we don’t make…
We all want to believe that in even the most dangerous or frightening of situations we would have the courage to stand up for our convictions–that we would not name names, that we would not betray our friends or our ideals. Thank God, most of us will never have the…
Amid brutal competition from A History of Violence, Caché (Hidden) and Last Days, the top prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival went to L’Enfant (The Child), a Belgian drama about a 20-year-old hustler who sells his infant son like a bag of weed. The makers of this provocative movie,…
Lesley Dill Dill combines a variety of material–horsehair, wire, thread, tea, glue, ribbon, paper, felt, organza–to create work that is at once precious and weird. The wall-scaled “Blonde Push” brings to mind the enormous fringy brushes of a car wash without the whim and froth of suds. Long strands of…
Puppet Boy Dallas writer Lee Trull rewrites the Pinocchio story, setting it in Mussolini’s Italy among Fascists who demand that the wooden lad (played by Jason Thomas Mayfield) attend school and obey the rules. Instead, he runs away and suffers trials at the hands (paws?) of a larcenous cat and…
Good live theater can work on you like a shot of joy juice. When everything clicks the way it did in Kitchen Dog Theater’s recent Cloud Tectonics or Jubilee Theatre’s current Diaries of a Barefoot Diva, you can’t wait to see another show so you can feel that magic buzz…
The Mel Brooks Collection (Fox) Talk about taking the good with the bad; how else to describe a boxed set containing Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (Brooks’ silly masterpieces), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights and History of the World, Part 1 (both overrated, even by people who can’t stand…
On paper, Black sounds like a sure hit: Criterion Studios (the developer behind the spectacular Burnout games) designs a first-person shooter that does away with all that boring sneaking and instead focuses on the pure pyrotechnic appeal of a Hollywood-style gun battle. The game promised sub-woofer-rattling explosions, frantic gunfire in…
Bee Season (Fox) Best of 3rd Rock From the Sun (Anchor Bay) The Big Question (THINKFilm) Bustin’ Bonaparte (Freestyle) Dawson’s Creek: The Complete Sixth Season (Sony) Dirty (Sony) The Fallen (Anthem) Far Side of the Moon (TLA) Gorillaz: Demon Days Live (Virgin) Judges (Anthem) Little Manhattan (Fox/Regency) Liza With a…
At the opening of Lonesome Jim, a terrific new film directed by Steve Buscemi, a country song plays behind scenes of small-town desolation. “Good times’r comin’,” it promises, in the movie’s first joke. Nothing about these initial scenes–not the stark Midwestern landscape, not the sole figure running with luggage, and…
For an artist who has worked on solo projects most of his career, collaboration with another artist (or technician) may be one of the most difficult things to master. (Picture this: Cage match. Ego versus ego.) Apparently, little is beyond the realm of mastery for Chuck Close, an artist who…
Reading the DSO’s schedule, both of us were perplexed by the name of the act appearing 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora St. You have to admit a name like the 5 Browns raises a lot of questions…Are they five opera-singing football players from Cleveland? Or…
A couple of weeks ago in Night & Day, I came out of the closet as a movie geek and admitted to my vice of DVD collecting. That was my first step. To go even further, and decrease my chances of a decent social life, I feel the need to…
Pop quiz: How many astronauts are currently in space? The answer is either two or five, at the International Space Station, depending on what day you are reading this, since three were scheduled to return to Earth on Saturday.Gone are the days when space exploration was big news. Today, people…
I first heard Ladysmith Black Mambazo performing “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” with Paul Simon on a Saturday Night Live repeat I caught on Comedy Central. That was also the last time I knowingly heard them, but it’s not because I wasn’t impressed—they certainly danced better than Chevy…
