I once heard a theory that there are really only two dozen or so stock narratives, all contained in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. For example: Adventurers/thieves find treasure, then kill one another while each tries to grab the gelt for himself (“The Pardoner’s Tale” and, more recently, The Treasure of the…
Barnyard Betsy Odom makes life on the farm wholly surreal and extra-terrestrial. Odom uses everyday materials–duct, masking and reflective tape, papier maché, plastic, Styrofoam, latex wall paint and Astroturf–to sculpt a landscape more inflected by the wonderland of Lewis Carroll’s beloved Alice than Rudy’s Farm of sausage fame. Strolling a…
Pump Boys and Dinettes Check your cynicism at the door, settle in at one of the comfy tables and order a cold drink to enjoy this musical that’s as light as a butter-flake biscuit. The waitressing Cupp sisters (Jenny Thurman, Arianna Movassagh) and their friends (Willy Welch, Gary Floyd, John…
The old adage about strangers with candy holds true for metal-faced freaks with movie passes. Taking treats from either will end in disaster. And who said horror films can’t offer life lessons? While we can’t even begin to describe the résumé of Italian horror great Dario Argento, we’ll just say…
Thursday, May 27 We see the homeless every day, but we don’t really see them. We avoid eye contact, walking to lunch downtown, trying to find our cars in Deep Ellum, pumping our tanks full with $24 of gas. We play a game of keep away. It’s time to take…
Texas Stadium will be the place to be on Saturday afternoon, and there won’t be a football team in sight. Still, the Redneck Cowboys vs. the Parrot Heads game should be quite entertaining to watch before Jimmy Buffett, George Strait and Alan Jackson share a triple bill that evening. Some…
5/28 A little can do a lot. For example, our office is pooling cash to bribe a co-worker to perm his hair. And, in the same vein–only nicer, more mature and useful–there’s 500 Inc., a nonprofit organization founded in 1965 when 500 individuals pledged $10 each to raise money for…
5/29 We don’t see too many black cowboys in our travels. Granted, we also don’t run into Latino, Asian or even Caucasian cowboys very often, but we’re pretty sure that the one thing rarer than an African-American cowboy is an African-American cowboy in a rodeo. Yes, they’re out there and…
5/29 Some people are ugly. There’s no way around it. Big noses, too-pale complexions, chins that bottom out at the sternum–God was cruel to these people. Beauty will elude them no matter their pursuit. Then there are the average-looking ones. These people, with the help of makeup, a good haircut…
5/30 On one end of the country-music spectrum, there’s the glossy sheen of Nashville’s Music Row, the scene that gave Garth Brooks a headset and allowed Faith Hill to become a Stepford wife. On the other end, there’s the dusty, rough-around-the-edges grit of the Texas country movement. These guys have…
5/25 Why is it that the most traumatic tales make the best stories, especially the ones with a sacrificial ending? And why do they perpetually involve an exotic but tormented virgin (insert misunderstood maiden for slight variation) and a soldier (insert young and dashing man of nobility with a heart…
5/20 My experience with art has been limited. It’s not that I don’t appreciate fine work. It’s more that I don’t get around to appreciating fine work. Believe me, I have the ability to appreciate in me. (It stays in me most of the time, but what can you do?)…
5/21 The naysayers have turned into yay!-sayers; the cynics, into True Believers. Here we are, barely into May, and already the experts who wrote off Your Texas Rangers have penciled them into the playoffs. The Anaheim Angels might have something to say about it yet, but the Rangers may devil…
5/22 Primp like you mean it this year if you’re going to the Antiques to Zebras auction benefiting Turtle Creek Chorale. Carson Kressley, the flaming fashionista of Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, is hosting, and we’d hate for you to get a tongue-lashing. QE fans realize Kressley, the…
The first few minutes of Shrek 2 are cluttered with more references to the movies than David Thomson’s thick, rich history text New Biographical Dictionary of Film. Watching the movie is like sitting next to an ADD patient with access to a remote control and a hundred premium cable channels;…
In 2004 A.D., as the five remaining members of the legendary Monty Python comedy troupe lie in coffins in a Vanity Fair spread to jeer at their own deaths, it’s really nice to have them back together commanding the big screen. Behold anew their wonderfully wiggy Monty Python’s Life of…
It’s hard not to like a show that raffles off chess pies at intermission. Pump Boys and Dinettes, now playing at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, is its own big sticky slice of American pie. A Broadway hit with its original cast of songwriter-performers in the early 1980s, the revue featuring…
Old MacDonald’s farm has fallen through the looking glass, and farming has never been so fun. No, there are no giant clefts in the ground, there have been no earthquakes and Mother Earth has not swallowed up the old Scotsman’s livelihood. Rather, Old Mac’s farm has been rethought and kindled…
Pump Boys and Dinettes Check your cynicism at the door, settle in at one of the comfy tables and order a cold drink to enjoy this musical that’s as light as a butter-flake biscuit. The waitressing Cupp sisters (Jenny Thurman, Arianna Movassagh) and their friends (Willy Welch, Gary Floyd, John…
Alex de Leon The question begs: What to do with art that makes avid if not heavy-handed political statements in an era so eager to wrest itself from the rant, screed and morality inherently connected with political art? Is it the responsibility of art to engender social revolution, much less…
Hyphenation of related modifiers is just another trick of the playwrighting trade for Brad McEntire, artistic director of Audacity Productions and its offbeat offshoot, Mild Dementia. “Somebody called us anarcho-theatricalists, and that stuck,” McEntire says. Audacity supports a small, nonprofit group of stage writers, directors and performers in Dallas, while…
Thursday, May 20 After reading the page-turner that is Midwives by Chris Bohjalian, we were so intrigued by the holistic practice that we even watched the original Lifetime movie based on the novel. Yeah, Sissy Spacek is great and all, but it just didn’t give us the vibe of what…
