Sorry, but why are there "plenty" of tickets left for Spike Lee's lecture Saturday on the University of Texas at Arlington campus? I mean, Martin Sheen's great and all -- really, heart-attack stories from the making of Apocalypse Now are worth the price of admission, and word is Josiah Bartlet's polling well in advance of Super Tuesday. But Sheen's appearance tomorrow on the SMU campus, as part of the Tate Lecture Series, is sold out -- no doubt because Michael Douglas was originally scheduled till he backed out -- while a UTA rep says there are lots o' inexpensive tickets left for Lee's appearance, as part of the Maverick Speaker Series, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
And UTA's doing the right thing by Lee, who's currently finishing Miracle at St. Anna and is as engaging a public speaker as any two-time Oscar nominee. Beginning today through Thursday, there will be on-campus screenings of and panels about Lee's devastating Hurricane Katrina documentary, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. And on Friday, Adonis Rose, UTA jazz artist-in-residence and the artistic director of the Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra, will lead the UTA Jazz Band in a free jazz concert titled, appropriately, "Music from the Films of Spike Lee" at 6:30 p.m. in the Rosebud Theatre. Following that, there'll be a screening of Lee's bank-jobber Inside Man at 8 p.m. --Robert Wilonsky
