If you’re like us, you’re a procrastinator who sat out on the traditional day-after-Thanksgiving holiday shopping spree known as Black Friday. Your idea of Black Friday is Christmas Eve, which this year also falls on a Friday, unless you’re just hoping to receive some re-giftable goodies at an office or…
Christmas is on its way, so go see some boobs to celebrate. The burlesque scene in Dallas is kicking off a variety of new holiday-themed shows to really give a “reason for the season,” and Viva Dallas Burlesque is featuring a collection of local and national talent Friday at the…
It’s the holiday season again, and you’re looking at your calendar and wondering just how many break and bake cookies you’re going to buy for that work party and get-together with friends. In case you didn’t know, those prepackaged sugar cookies stamped with Christmas trees are getting old. Honestly, they…
I think it’s fair to say that one of America’s greatest contributions to the world would have to be our love and production of kick-ass blockbuster movies. But truth be told there is one trilogy of book-to-film movies that, surprisingly, comes from a Scandinavian country that most Americans know but…
The 2009 movie Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench was shot on black and white film with a hand-held camera. It’s dark. It’s gritty. It’s raw and heart-wrenching, buoyed only by the prominently featured brassy jazz music. It’s musical mumblecore, and it’s not apologizing for the oxymoron. You see…
Doug Benson is one of the hardest working men in show business. With a new Comedy Central show, The Benson Interruption, the weekly podcast Doug Loves Movies and a very active stand-up career, he has more irons in the fire than a busy blacksmith. He also finished sixth on NBC’s…
Break out the cigarette lighter–Cheap Trick is in town. The ’70s power-pop group is the poor man’s Rolling Stones: Both have been touring, like, forever. Cheap Trick has released more albums and compilations than Phil Spector has wigs, and guested on soundtracks from Top Gun to Transformers. The band’s bread…
A big thanks to all the schools out there–where else can a bunch of adolescents get together to plot random acts of deviance? To be fair, youngsters aren’t always up to no good–in fact, sometimes their planning begets a life-changing occurrence. (And we’re not talking about the popular girls’ decision…
In the age of graphic design software, an artist can enhance luminosity with a few clicks of a mouse. It’s not so easy when the mouse is a paintbrush. That’s one reason we’re impressed by the work of Texas painter Bob Stuth-Wade, who’s especially talented at illuminating landscapes through brushstrokes…
It’s fair to say that during September and certainly October, in the build-up to Halloween, horror films dominate movie theatres. People expect that. However, it seems that one horror film adaptation slipped through this season’s cracks. Level Ground Arts presents Manos: The Hands of Fate starting Friday, just in time…
Apparently, there is a really bad movie from 1964 called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and it has a 2.3 out of 10 rating on the Internet Movie Database, which is weird because Gigli (2003) has a 2.4. The plot of the film involves Martians that kidnap Santa and take…
I hope you’re comfortable with scantily clad woman performing sensual routines as a form of holiday entertainment, because it’s definitely gonna be a burlesque Christmas this year in Dallas. Now before you dismiss the notion as just smut theater, remember burlesque isn’t the same for everyone across the board and…
While some people deal with their problems by downing a bottle of scotch, The Man in the Chair pulls out a record and listens to his favorite musical when he feels “blue.” That’s the premise of The Drowsy Chaperone, a musical spoof of Jazz Age-era musicals that appeared on Broadway…
All three artists currently on display at Conduit Gallery are worthy of a visit, but James Michael Starr’s work in Modern Times is especially intriguing. A great example of his creative sculptures is “Continental Divide,” a hefty streamer-trailing iron ball wrapped in vintage images of homes, steeples and columns from…
For some unfathomable reason mothers can’t resist plopping their kid down on Santa’s knee, crocodile tears and leaky diapers be damned. No wonder some of the poor guys carry a flask filled with “holiday cheer.” The annual photo-with-Santa inevitably surfaces during inopportune times, such as first dates, or even worse,…
Museums are a very good thing during the Christmas holidays. Everyone on the roads loses their mind, making even a trip to Chick-Fil-A an epic battle to survive red-light running, intersection blocking and bumper riding all in the name of retail spending. Just sitting at home to watch TV requires…
About 800 miles northeast of Dallas sits a small town in Illinois called Galesburg, which is notable for two reasons. First, it was the birthplace of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Sandburg, who once said, “Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.” Second, it is the hometown of photographer Chris…
The usually silver-tongued Eliot Spitzer, political hero of last month’s Inside Job and now ubiquitous media personality, stammers and hesitates when asked to explain the psychosexual motivations behind his spectacular flameout in Alex Gibney’s gripping Client 9—or, if you prefer, Inside Blowjob. Spitzer, whose tireless efforts to redeem himself led…
“She doesn’t sing that way because she’s had it easy.” This is how Tess (Cher), the long-suffering owner of the nightclub at the center of Burlesque, defends her new star Ali (Christina Aguilera) to the club’s jealous deposed marquee attraction, Nikki (Kristen Bell). The same phrase could substitute as a…
“Great,” sighs the wicked witch in Tangled, a CG-animated spin on the Rapunzel story, “now I’m the bad guy.” Mother Gothel, the frizzy-haired, sharp-featured enchantress with the inimitable voice of Donna Murphy, is Disney’s first villainess whose chief crime is being an underminer, and the heroine of Disney’s 50th animated…
Everest looks suitably majestic in this IMAX documentary, though five different expeditions on the peak are awkwardly cobbled into one dubious narrative. At issue is whether, in 1924, George Mallory and his rope-mate reached the summit 30 years before credited first-timer Edmund Hillary. Mallory’s body was discovered in 1999 by…
Some young actors yearn for that flashy role in a blockbuster movie that will prove their bankability to a doubting Hollywood. Kristen Stewart, on the other hand, seems determined to accentuate her anti-star bona fides, delivering aggressively affectless interviews and bracketing this summer’s $300 million-earning Twilight: Eclipse with two grittier…
