Joust OK

My, my, Michael York looks happy. Why shouldn’t he? He’s starring in a national tour of Camelot, getting away with sleepwalking through a role for which he’s 30 years too old. But he’s famous! He’s charming! He’s British! That appears to be enough for York and for his languid King…

Cannibal Corpse

Hannibal Rising (Weinstein) Pointless beyond belief, Hannibal Rising serves more as a cautionary tale than horror story. Made for $50 mil, the movie pocketed half that during its U.S. run and likely wound up in the red–an appropriate adios for a franchise starring a peripheral character better served by shadows…

Student Bodies

Dating games have come a long way since the days when Chuck Woolery invited mullet-sporting contestants to bump uglies on Love Connection. In Japan, the “dating simulator” video game craze has raged stronger than a schoolboy’s hormones since the early ’90s. But here in America — where our gaming interests…

Our top DVD picks for the week of May 29

Above the Law (Genius) The Andy Griffith Show: Complete Series Collection (Paramount) Big Train: Seasons One and Two (BBC Warner) Biography: Legends of the Silver Screen (A&E) Circle of Iron: 2-Disc Special Edition (Blue Underground) The Closer: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros.) Drive Thru (Lionsgate) The Foursome (Universal) Free…

No Goal for Girls

Two weeks ago, I trekked out to Frisco with a small soccer, er, futbol-lovin’ posse to watch Oduro, Gbandi, Toja and the rest of the FC Dallas smoke out Real Salt Lake with two of the sweetest goals this season. We cheered. Loudly. We ate elote and hot dogs. Drank…

Tune Me Up, Scotty

As much as I’d like to think that all the best music happened in the ’60s, it has to be conceded that one or two good things happened after the first Star Trek series went off the air. In recognition that maybe not all the musical highlights of Star Trek…

Throw Down

Sure, the Irish can throw a mean parade, but can they throw a telephone pole? While wearing a skirt? Probably not, I say. We Scots have to make do year-round with the concessions our Irish friends are willing to make to the shared elements of our culture—sure, they’ll put on…

Fair Lilith

Ah, the Ice Queen with the hidden, passionate, horny heart of fire; the bookish woman who whips off her glasses, shakes the bun out of her hair and growls. Keep your Madonnas and your whores, your bleached bims and skeletal supermodels; for sheer hotness, nothing beats Marian the Librarian with…

Shooting With the Stars

If it wasn’t for my phobia of popping noises, I would go see Chicago with Lisa Rinna and Tom Wopat. I don’t think my ears or heart could handle all the shooting though. Kids’ birthday parties are a bitch with all those balloons. And the gunshots in my neighborhood are…

Code Red

I’ve always had mixed feelings about A Few Good Men. Rob Reiner’s major motion picture adaptation of the Aaron Sorkin Broadway play gave me more reasons to hate Demi Moore and Tom Cruise, while giving everyone else yet another Jack Nicholson impression to beat to death. The truth indeed. Yet…

What Play?

Child actress Kaitlin Cullum played Libby Kelly on the mid-’90s sitcom Grace Under Fire, acting as the freckle-faced foil to recovering alcoholic Brett Butler and her gaggle of Everyman blue-collar suitors. Then, presumably, young Cullum went on to an adolescence plagued with drug addiction, promiscuous sex, convenience store robberies and…

Have a Gay Ol’ Time

Gay film festivals are the best. Oh wait, GLBTQI film festivals are the best, to be politically correct. Although, might I suggest to the community a more marketable, minimally syllabic identity? Just saying. Even after years of pseudo-acceptance by the community at large, “gay” is still a huge resource of…

Man’s Best Actors

Dallas has certainly seen its share of film festivals this year. The AFI was amazing (though I still want my two hours back from that Hal Hartley movie), the USA Film Festival showed some real gems, and the Asian Film Festival is yet to come. And yet, despite all of…

With Great Accord…

When in doubt, craft a play about writing the life story of a South African student. By all means, include dance numbers. Make sure to have an emotional battle between that oh-so-elusive fame and a satisfying home life. Bruce Graham did those things and created According to Goldman, and now…

Cloud Strokes

One of my favorite childhood activities was looking for shapes in the clouds. I had a similar sensation while viewing a few of Brent Kollock’s paintings. “Is that a mouth? Are those fingers? Is that a five-legged gnome with wings?” Whether you like it or not, Kollock’s work demands a…

Eating for the Kids

If you’re like us, you don’t give a lot of money to charities like Make-A-Wish, but you do give a lot of money to restaurants that put food in your belly. And maybe, hypothetically, you’d like to do both. If so, Maggiano’s Little Italy is here to help make your…

Candles on the Range

Not that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, but I never realized museums celebrated birthdays. I guess it’s because museums in general are just too old. They’d have to make a pretty huge cake to hold 130 candles for the Met, and what about the Louvre? There…

The Wrong Way

I’m not gonna lie to you. I’ve hated Sublime for a decade now. Hated them ever since high school, when a bunch of my friends would go around singing that song about hand jobs. You know the one—”And then she pulled out my mushroom tip/Goin’ over it just went drip,…

Neighborly Cuisine

Ah, the Ice Queen with the hidden, passionate, horny heart of fire; the bookish woman who whips off her glasses, shakes the bun out of her hair and growls. Keep your Madonnas and your whores, your bleached bims and skeletal supermodels; for sheer hotness, nothing beats Marian the Librarian with…

Charleton Heston, Jr.

Ladies and gentlemen, this week you are the luckiest rock ‘n’ roll fans in the world. The “Motor City Madman” is coming to town to “Sacrifice the White Buffalo.” We are getting a rare audience with quite possibly the most over-the-top, misogynistic, bow-hunting, guitar-shredding, loin cloth-clad rocker that ever rode…

Oh, Lydia!

Since 1981, Fort Worth’s Jubilee Theatre has represented, at first as a struggling troupe and now as a bastion of black theater. Specialized as it may be, the Cowtown crew is more than a niche-filler, it’s a local institution. Make the trek down Interstate 30 to catch the Jubilee’s 26th…

Zombie Flick

Have you seen the previews for that movie Bug that’s coming out? Ya know, the one starring the least creepy but least talented Judd? It looks all kinds of scary. Like, the regular horror film “Aaaaah! Bugs all over me get offa me get offa me!” type of scary plus…