One local connection to this morning’s Academy Award nominations: the Iraq War doc No End in Sight, released by Magnolia Pictures — otherwise known as Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner’s distribution company. Cuban and Wagner have been here before, having financed such Oscar-nominated films as Enron: The Smartest Guys in…
Amy Adams and Emily Blunt engage in some Sunshine Cleaning PARK CITY, Utah — So much for all that pre-Sundance talk about how the writers’ strike was going to spark a fire sale at the fest. So far, not even the biggest titles have been sold — not the Tom…
A couple months back — or, the first time Tom Hicks was protested by Liverpool FC fans — I mentioned something about how, ya know, maybe it’d be a nice idea to start a petition calling for Hicks to sell the Texas Rangers. Liverpool fans, rallying right now in England,…
Illustration by Brian Stauffer Pardon us, Friend, while we indulge in some self-congratulatory navel-gazing. The story “Split Decision,” Matt Pulle’s incisive feature for the paper version of Unfair Park about Dallas’ embarrassing scrape with the feds over Preston Hollow Elementary School’s deliberate segregation, has been nationally recognized in the lofty…
Might as well look at a picture of the McKinney Avenue Baptist Church, which stood on McKinney Avenue for 97 years. Because it ain’t there no more. For a solid year, city council member Angela Hunt worked with the city’s Landmark Commission, Preservation Dallas and neighborhood activists to protect the…
There have been plenty of Trinity River shindigs in the 10 years since the original vote to approve the project, but no event brought out more big guns than the mayor’s Trinity River Corridor Project Summit Friday at City Club. The alphabet-roster of attendees could fill Unfair Park for a…
Says in this media release that tomorrow, former Dallas Cowboy Everson Walls and current Washington Redskin Shawn Springs will make an appearance in the George L. Allen Sr. Courts Building New Tower Ceremonial Courtroom on Commerce Street downtown. Only, this is no autograph session: The two will be joined by…
Oh, man, I think I may have bone cancer. Not, wait, I must be choking on food. Got the sweats bad. Is my hair on fire? I seem to be convulsing. Oh, I know what it is! I’m trying to spit out a positive remark about The Dallas Morning News…
Speaking of local sports team owners, in the February issue of GQ, Mark Cuban sits down for a Q&A inside his Dallas office — “a room filled with pictures: Cuban playing rugby; Cuban in front of his private plane; Cuban presenting an award to Don Nelson, the former Mavericks coach…
Until Friday, Richie’s June 27 item about a Fox Sports Network TV special on Tom Hicks hadn’t received a single comment; now, there are eight nine 10 a bunch, and they keep rolling in. And most of them are written as open letters to the owner of the Dallas Stars…
Colin Hanks, John Malkovich and Ricky Jay in The Great Buck Howard, which is mostly so-so, to be honest PARK CITY, Utah — Snow was promised all day, eight to 12 inches by mid-Monday morning, but so far, not even a flurry. The same could be said of the acquisitions…
The McKinney Avenue Baptist Church stood on McKinney Avenue for 97 years. Then Saturday happened. So, I leave town for three days, and this is what happens: The Hard Rock Cafe — otherwise known as the former McKinney Avenue Baptist Church, built in 1910 — is no more. Just one…
Perhaps no film at Sundance is more anxiously awaited than Morgan Spurlock’s Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, in the hands of Weinstein Co. For whatever reason, folks have been speculating for months that perhaps the Super Size Me director found bin Laden; Spurlock has brilliantly dodged the…
Walter Mosley, author of Devil in a Blue Dress and Black Betty, hanging out in the Sundance HQ Friday afternoon As the sender and recipients of this particular e-mail are fine folks well-regarded in the movie bidness (I know, right?), we’ll leave their names off this missive. But for those…
Here’s one more WTF video for your Friday viewing pleasure: a decimated-Dallas what-if just posted to the YouTubes courtesy something called CNCNewsTV. Actually, says the NYC-based publicist who shot us the link, it’s for a new series called Six Degrees Could Change the World, which will air at 7 p.m…
As Unfair Park’s become something of a Chantix message board in recent months, following the death of Carter Albrecht and bandmate Danny Balis’ assertion that the smoking-cessation drug might have had something to do with his altered state that night, it’s only fitting three different Friends have sent links to…
Over the past week, there’s been much discussion in this space and elsewhere about the killings of Sarah and Amina Said and whether their father’s Muslim faith had anything to do with him allegedly murdering them for adopting Western ways. Coincidentally, Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church is hosting…
Farewell My Concubine is a familiar love story in China. It’s been a poem, a novel and an Oscar-nominated 1993 film. Now it’s also a 90-minute Western-style opera (sung in Mandarin with English subtitles), and it’s coming from China to Richardson’s Eisemann Center with its original 130-member cast and orchestra…
While I’m at one film festival, seems like a good time to tell you about job openings at a cinema-lovers’ shindig a little closer to home: Melina McKinnon of the AFI Dallas International Film Festival sends word that the festival, now in its second year after an impressive bow last…
Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell are stuck In Bruges, which kicked off Sundance last night. PARK CITY, Utah — The Sundance Film Festival hadn’t even officially begun Thursday when word circulated through the 4-below Park City climes that the Directors Guild of America had reached a tentative, three-year deal with…
Genius or brilliant? You decide. –Robert Wilonsky…
By now, no doubt, you’ve read The Dallas Morning News’ piece about Farmers Branch’s tenacity: Despite the fact the federal courts have all but killed Ordinance 2903, which called for punishing landlords who knowingly rented to illegal immigrants, the city council next week will once more consider a revised ordinance…
