Arc-en-Ciel has been one of our favorite Chinese-Vietnamese restaurants for a long time. We had heard its Arlington branch was something, if we could find it. So we spent last Friday night in the depths of darkest Arlington, wandering around looking for a branch of a restaurant based in Garland...
A cross between the Farmers Market and a grocery store, Fresco's sells only produce in the original boxes. The retail space at Skillman and Live Oak is warehouse-bare, dim, and empty, except for the stacks of crates and the cash register. The mountains of lettuce, peppers, onions, potatoes, and all...
Conventional wisdom says that the Coen Brothers--Joel, who directs, and Ethan, who produces--can do no wrong artistically. Of course, that's not true. Barton Fink, with its arrogant antihero wittily subverting the idea that the creative process can take the place of real-life experience, was a generally dense and often obtuse...
There are two theories behind the Hollywood mistreatment of Julia Roberts' latest vehicle, Mary Reilly: Either the studio, TriStar, shot several endings because the film sucked, or because its fitful, mischievous tone wouldn't suit Julia Roberts fans. The movie was pulled from its original release date last summer and subjected...
Mike Nichols' new film, The Birdcage, has most of the trappings of a typical domestic comedy: Val (David Futterman) returns from college to announce to his father, Armand (Robin Williams), that he's engaged to the daughter of a right-wing U.S. senator (Gene Hackman). The senator is embroiled in a controversy,...
thursday march 7 Dawn Upshaw: Critics have fallen all over themselves to sing the praises of American-born soprano Dawn Upshaw ever since she won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1984. Terms like "sweeping romanticism" and "spine-tingling" are tossed around as easily as Nerf balls, but the word no...
Not long ago, Cheer Dallas, the country's first serious gymnastics-oriented, pompon-eschewing, non-drag-wearing gay cheerleading squad, had the opportunity for statewide exposure. This Week in Texas, a magazine with a huge circulation that lists events in the gay community across the Lone Star State, wanted to put a couple of the...
On November 3, 1993, both the letter and the tape were introduced as further evidence for terminating forever Pat Hope-Hall's parental rights. Court-appointed social worker Paula Everett and Carol Bowdry, a retired CPS administrative reviewer, both urged this harsh remedy. Bowdry described Pat's relationship with Alicia as "toxic." She testified...
Phil who? When U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm dropped out of the presidential race, he left a couple of high-profile Texas Republicans with a hard decision: To whom should they shift allegiance? Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison stood shoulder to shoulder with Governor George W. Bush to publicly announce they wouldn't decide--just...
Journalistic charity begins at home Obviously it's a little much for BeloWatch to expect The Dallas Morning News--whose editors talk so much about objectivity, accuracy, and even-handedness--to describe the world as it really is. But it's quite astonishing how sharply the paper skews reality when it's reporting on itself. On...
Setting aside that Pat Buchanan is a racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic anti-Semite, what wonderful news from New Hampshire! It's the nuts! It's the berries! Yes, well, that is rather a large mound of manure there connected with his name, much of it justified, I'm afraid. There's even more: He defends...
I always wanted to use the word "penultimate" in a sentence, and this is the penultimate week of the 1996 Drive-In Academy Award nominations, better known as the Hubbies--the only awards that never honor Emma Thompson under any circumstances. And the nominees are... Best Geek Acting * Penny Arcade, Hellroller,...
The cloyingly heartfelt sound of new-age music swells in the background as the credits brashly announce the topic for the day's show: "Help! My Daughter's Been Kidnapped." Sally Jessy Raphael's nasal voice rises over the music as images of girls playing with their fathers flood the screen. "Today," says the...
Is the black man worth loving?" The question hung over the crowd gathered in the pews of Jubilee United Methodist Church on a recent Friday night, a promise and a paradox. To each of the 125 African-American men and women, the answer was obvious. Yet here was Robert Ashley, well-known...
Gazing into the abyss There are at least two errors in the statements made by Ed Zabel in the Observer article about him ["Dealing with the Devil," February 15]. The first concerns gargoyles, which were designed to be waterspouts, and nothing else. The second concerns Zabel's bizarre theory that the...
The Geraldine Fibbers' 1995 full-length debut Lost Somewhere Between The Earth and My Home is a majestic record, epic in its musical scope and explicit in its use of language. It's the kind of record that comes along once every few years, that appears out of nowhere then slinks back...
Word processor Like Richard Thompson, who gave it his guest shot on 1983's ironically titled Fame and Wealth, Loudon Wainwright III is a storyteller who recounts his tales to a small, fanatical audience; theirs is the cult of the literate and the twisted, the kind of folks who laugh when...
Four months ago, Erykah Badu was serving coffee at Grinders, the Lower Greenville coffee house across the street from the Arcadia Theatre, antique stores, and trendy dive bars. She was a 23-year-old would-be actress and dancer trying to make ends meet, living with her mom in the South Dallas home...
Great music should be described in terms of the mood in which it puts the listener. In the end, after the echoes have faded and the CDs are stored away in their jewel boxes, we remember the finest worksongs because, individually, they make us do things or feel strongly at...
Speaking of coming around again, that's what's happening to Oak Lawn. Once a hot dining neighborhood in Dallas, where all the the most chic and newest restaurants were clustered--Old Warsaw was at the corner of Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn, Mario's and Spanish Village were nearby, Jamie's Hamburgers was just...
Yeah, this is just the thing. Drop by an uptown joint to watch the Magic play the Knicks, hunker down at the bar, grab a brewski, and lay into...a veggie burger? Everything about the Uptown Bar & Grill seems like a typical after-work stop-in bar: its dimness, its dull decor,...
I'm no fan of mob justice, but in the name of good filmmaking, I say American audiences should campaign to get the American citizenship of Barbet Schroeder revoked. The filmmaker began his career 27 years ago in France, making a series of deliberately obscure personal dramas--two of which featured soundtracks...
