9/24 The Dallas Children’s Theater–local haven for bead art and full-body animal costumes–is turning 20 this year. To mark the occasion, the company members have decided to throw a big birthday bash with food, fun and live entertainment. Headlining the event is the DCT’s newest production, The Island of the…
9/20 Like crows, the people of Dallas are attracted to bright shiny objects. This simple fact explains so much, doesn’t it? It’s the reason there’s always a small huddle of humanity at the base of Reunion Tower, looking up. It’s the reason you can never find a parking place at…
9/23 To look at Philip Glass is to look at what could be a genetic splice of Eric Bogosian and Klaus Kinski. For some, to listen to Philip Glass is the musical equivalent of the same caustic artists. Complex, repetitively chaotic and structurally random, Glass is arguably the pre-eminent American…
When Nicolas Cage plays still and sullen–a man possessed by self-loathing and melancholy in Adaptation, say, or the landlocked angel in City of Angels–he comes off as drowsy. He disappears into those roles like a head plopped in a fluffy pillow, and it doesn’t quite suit him. Cage has excelled…
God bless Johnny Depp. For the second time this year, the man has almost single-handedly redeemed an action movie that would otherwise be indistinguishable from the pack. Introduced right up front in Robert Rodriguez’s Once Upon a Time in Mexico, he’s first seen dressed up like Prince in purple glasses…
Once upon a time there was a guy named Sam Raimi. He grew up in Michigan and made amateur horror movies. He stuck with his hobby, and now he’s a filthy rich A-list producer-director in Hollywood. Beats workin’. Unfortunately, since we haven’t yet seen a genre-redefining horror movie in the…
Hedwig and the Angry Inch is every inch the rock musical Rent tried to be and wasn’t. That Hedwig also is a campy drag act, a subversive sex comedy, a witty philosophical allegory based on Plato’s Symposium and a nostalgic tribute to feathery Farrah hair of the 1970s makes it…
Fans will read A. Scott Berg’s Kate Remembered, published only 13 days after Katharine Hepburn’s death on June 29, and find within its pages a woman very much like the actress’ on-screen persona: cranky and charming, tough and thoughtful, independent and in love with those who can keep pace with…
Thursday, September 11 Timeless, tried and true. Things deemed “classic” are generally a sure bet. Think about it. Someone says, “That movie was just so classic.” Or, “Now this is a classic spaghetti sauce.” The brain just automatically accepts that the item in discussion is complete, mastered, if you will…
Now that it’s finally cooling down outside, there’s really no good excuse to not shake it to Tito Puente Jr. and other Latin musicians all day Saturday at Festival del Centro, the final leg of the Latino Cultural Center’s five-day grand opening celebration. Puente Jr.’s music–a pop, Latin jazz and…
9/11 Of all the quirks that make us uniquely American, none is as perplexing as our propensity for selective outrage. How easily we assimilate some of our country’s great–and countless–human tragedies with barely a whimper. We hardly blink any more when a newborn is discovered in a trash bin, or…
9/11 Who says all lawyers are evil? In the wake of the September 11 tragedy, the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers wanted to do its part in helping victims and their families. In a few short weeks, the group managed to secure a location and gather all the necessary permits…
9/12 Just in time to kick off Hispanic Heritage Month, Teatro Dallas presents the national premiere of classic Latin American children’s story The Tales of My Tia Panchita. Costa Rican writer Carmen Lyra’s compilation of stories her aunt Panchita told her as a child in the 1890s are a blend…
9/14 Nobody’s putting distinguished art scholar, patron and purveyor Dr. Ted Pillsbury out to pasture, although his graceful exit as managing partner in Pillsbury and Peters Fine Art did land him at the Meadows. Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Museum snagged Pillsbury as its new director this summer and opens its…
9/11 When I was a kid, my mother used to drive me to school in the morning–like other kids, I’m sure–but I was positive they didn’t have to go through the torture I did on the way. She used to listen to classical radio. I remember when I heard that…
Most will deny it, but inside every grown man lurks a hypersensitive adolescent girl. Allow me to tell you all about mine and to share some of my poetry… Whoa! Relax. Put away that gun. Just seeking to emphasize that in the case of director Catherine Hardwicke’s debut feature, thirteen,…
It seems like everybody’s raving up Mexican cinema these days–either as a merit badge of self-conscious hipness, or because the stuff is impressive and sometimes both–yet the excitement is definitely deserved with Herod’s Law (La Ley de Herodes). This movie kicks the feisty Y Tu Mamá También right in its…
Before he even had any kind of legacy, Mark “Gator” Rogowski was imagining, in on-camera interviews, what it might someday be. “When fear is gone,” the 18-year-old skater opined, “nothing will remain. Only I will be here.” A few years later, when a drunken binge in Germany led him to…
The 1990-’95 run of Saturday Night Live, when the show was a playground populated by, among others, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Dana Carvey, Chris Rock, Chris Farley, Kevin Nealon, Mike Myers and David Spade, was a low point in a show with a longer history of making you groan than…
J.J. Abrams should have no time to talk about the past, not when before him lies an extraordinary amount of work due in the very near future–like, any second. The creator of Felicity and screenwriter of Armageddon is preparing a new series about bounty hunters for ABC, which will debut…
You have to have some big set of scones to rewrite William Shakespeare’s longest, most famous play. So here’s some advice for Dallas writer-composer-actor-director Scott Eckert, who has done just that with Lesson 2: Hamlet: Get fitted for an extra large codpiece, sirrah; you have succeeded at making the Bard…
Two-and-a-half years ago Dallas business owner Greg Weiner’s mental light bulb went on. For about a month now, his brainchild has found a home in one of the several bars he owns. It is a dark, womb-like hole in the wall called the Slip Inn, and its description, as well…
