Spike Lee’s movies have always been a hit or miss with me. His 1989 film Do the Right Thing really smacks of his gritty and independent style of filmmaking that effectively illustrated the racial tension of the period, whereas Inside Man, though it was captivating to the end, just had…
The concept of genius is one that has somehow become fluid. The guy at the jukebox who just played the Replacements song that fits your mood perfectly: totally a genius. Michael Gruber’s artful use of drops on KTCK-AM 1310 The Ticket: yep, freakin’ genius. But clearly, the term has become…
Allow us to make a half-baked, probably regrettable and inaccurate generalization: Musicians, artists and chefs don’t get tattoos because they look cool, but because they smoke so much pot that their short-term memory is shot. All right, maybe that’s not the case for all of them, but it would explain…
We writer types have a prickly disposition. Sometimes we’re, howyousay, anti-social or just downright ornery–especially when it comes to events that air on the side of “work-related” or “during our free time.” But we’ve officially gotten our fancy pants ready–of our own volition–for this weekend. We’re excited. We can’t be…
There are two kinds of Celtic groups in this world: those who cite Neil Diamond as a musical hero and those who don’t. Celtic Thunder is the former. And you’d think with a name like Celtic Thunder they would be forced to forfeit some of their European punch, as their…
The title of Undermain Theatre’s latest production, David Rabe’s The Dog Problem, is redundant. Dogs themselves are problems. They’re a drain on your finances and cover your house in piss, shit and puke when they’re not demanding you play with them or running up medical expenses. Kinda like kids, except…
Consider it a quasi-swap meet for photographers. Enter the Dallas Portfolio Exchange–a group showing of Dallas-area professional photographers who trade and display fine art photography. Give 12 professional photographers a mission to create “13 identical, archival, photographic prints from one single image,” and have them share their portfolio with the…
Three-dimensional works have always captured the human imagination. Lines, colors, shapes and images are designed to intentionally force, jut and propel their way into your impressionable mind. From the interactive pop-up stories from your childhood memories to that puzzle book that always forced you to cross your eyes to see…
Parents do the darnedest things. Take Harpagon, for example. The titular character in Moliere’s 1668 satirical comedy The Miser, Harpagon brokers out his daughter like a thoroughbred race horse and disinherits his son after stealing his girlfriend. Stay classy, Pops! But only a French guy who died more than 300…
Kathleen Cahill’s dreamy comedy, Charm, gets a sweet production at Kitchen Dog Theater. Tina Parker stars as Margaret Fuller, a real-life early feminist writer whose pals included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The boys won’t let her swim in Walden Pond (back in that century, ladies…
Texas artists Brent Kollock and Michael Roque Collins both find inspiration in the harrowing, it seems. Whether that’s considering the meaning(lessness) of life or conflicts of past with present, respectively, the two incorporate bits of their “other selves” into their artwork featured in The Language of Myth: New Work by…
Bet if you knew that when you had kids you’d be sentenced to years of shelling out wads of cash to see dim-witted 3-D films created for the sole purpose of parental wallet-shredding (we are looking at you, Mastermind), you’d have gotten that puppy, right? And maybe built that wet…
Bet if you knew that when you had kids you’d be sentenced to years of shelling out wads of cash to see dim-witted 3-D films created for the sole purpose of parental wallet-shredding (we are looking at you, Mastermind), you’d have gotten that puppy, right? And maybe built that wet…
Does it matter that a young Israeli filmmaker’s imaginative reconstruction of an abandoned Nazi propaganda film about the Warsaw Ghetto is not, strictly speaking, a documentary? Not if it sets a crucial historical record straight. Discovered by East German archivists after World War II and accepted for decades as one…
In Due Date, a skinny, scowly and dryly self-referential Robert Downey Jr. meets a chubby, beardy, quasi-autistic Zach Galifianakis boarding a flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Downey plays Peter, a Bluetoothed architect with a very pregnant wife (Michelle Monaghan) waiting at home for him; Galifianakis’ Ethan is a would-be…
Inside Job, Charles Ferguson’s follow-up to his Iraq War gut-twister No End in Sight, is a documentary that inspires less shock and awe than sickening ire. The movie opens with the cautionary tale of little Iceland, an idyllic nation so stable that, as put by one local, it enjoyed “almost…
Comely, independent, willful young lass returns to collect family inheritance in rural England, drives the local men wild, makes several misalliances, and inadvertently precipitates a catastrophe before nature finally takes its course. Adapted from Posy Simmonds’ excellent graphic novel, Tamara Drewe knowingly updates Thomas Hardy’s gloomy pastoral Far From the…
Scandal–even just implied scandal–sells. If a book is banned or if the Catholic Church speaks out against a movie, curious people become all the more determined to take part in the forbidden media. But after 90210, The O.C., Gossip Girl, and Skins, one might assume the public had become accustomed…
Fresh off its 2010 Reader’s Pick award for Best Sunday Brunch in our Best of Dallas issue, Blue Mesa Grill is hosting a Hill Country & Produce Festival, intended to showcase the tasty fresh produce from local Texas farms on the food and drink menu. The festival will be a…
The Golden Dragon Acrobats spin from ropes, flip through hoops, balance umbrellas on their toes, and leap like cats. The traveling troupe of Chinese acrobats, seemingly made of rubber, twist and turn and contort in ways you never will, or would want to. The acrobats learn the tricks of the…
Imagine indulging yourself in the richest of chocolate, the sweetest of candy and the warmest of caramel. Sure, today’s diets probably don’t include even the smallest pinch of sugar in their recipes, but that shouldn’t stop dieters from enjoying a delicious treat from time to time. Barbara Fairchild, Editor-in-Chief of…
This Sunday, Chef Tre Wilcox (who you might remember as that buff badass from season three of Top Chef) will face off in an Iron Chef-style competition against Chef Ed Mendoza (an instructor at Le Cordon Bleu). A secret ingredient will be unveiled and both chefs will have one hour…
