It's quite a compliment to say that an artist's failures are more interesting than most of his colleagues' successes. The description certainly applies to Robert Altman, a filmmaker who works so close to his heart and intuitions that even his most ill-conceived films usually show you something startling and fresh...
The Fire Chief of New York City keeps trying to get permission to rip down all the fire-alarm boxes on the street--let people just dial 911 if they see a fire--but nobody wants to let him do it. Everybody thinks the city will burn down or somethin'. But listen to...
The best way to describe Jodie Foster's singular brand of beauty is bird-like--large eyes, sharp nose, a concentrated mouth, a tiny frame. She contains a fierce intelligence which compels her to talk a mile a minute. The tom-boyishness of her childhood movie performances returns even as she riffs eloquent on...
The conventional line about Hollywood is that there are few good roles for women. And while women still tend to be simultaneously blamed and glorified for what happens to us as a culture, it remains unlikely that cinema--as pure a social reflection as you'll find--can create an adult female who...
thursday december 22 TubaChristmas Concerts and the Dallas Bach Society: The tuba has as long and esteemed a history as most of the other brass instruments--but somehow, all that goes down the tubes when you hear one in its natural habitat. Not to say that the tuba is an unworthy...
Public sentiment in the United States has historically placed public funding for the arts somewhere near the bottom of the list of government priorities, and accordingly, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has been a prime target for congressional trims and cuts. It currently operates on half of its...
Holier than thou Religion is one of the great underreported realms of American journalism. Not because it isn't written about. Every newspaper in America regularly sets aside space for religion stories; almost every sizable paper has its own full-time religion reporter. The problem is that what they write resembles the...
Inside its modest confines, Direct Hit Records resembles most any independent record store: CDs, new and used, line one wall; and used LPs and seven-inch singles sit in a bin smack in the middle of the store, facing another wall of new records. Near the store's entrance, a rack displays...
The Go-Go's have long been dismissed and forgotten--relegated to slots on new-wave-hits-of-the-'80s compilations alongside Kajagoogoo, Bananarama, and Bow Wow Wow, written off as disposable products of a disposable era that gave us the Yugo, Members Only jackets, James Watt, PeoplExpress, and Cabbage Patch Kids. Where, say, the Runaways (and Joan...
The peach-colored building stands amid plainer houses of entertainment along Restaurant Row like a country club among car dealerships. Its nightclub and adjacent management offices affect an air of aloof respectability, complete with valet parking and handcarved Spanish doors. Inside, a brass chandelier dominates the foyer. An ornate staircase ascends...
To the victor belongs the spoils. Or so the saying goes. But if the victor happens to defeat the city of Dallas, his battle has just begun. Just ask civil rights lawyer Mike Daniel. For the past year, he and fellow lawyer Betsy Julian have been trying to collect their...
Presumed ignorant Excitement is building at Buzz as the O.J. Simpson trial approaches. Forget the 12 jurors in L.A.; we'll have our eye on the Arlington 10. In one of the more creative Simpson-trial media excesses to date, the Arlington edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has selected a group...
During a political question-and-answer session, a middle-aged, middle-class white woman hesitantly held up her hand and said: "You know, Time magazine said one reason Tom Daschle might have trouble getting elected minority leader is because South Dakota is just so...well...blah. What can we do about that?" The heartbreak of being...
Letter from Coppell: I am not a clod What a bunch of erroneous claptrap! ["The muckraker of Coppell," December 1]. Arthur Kwast was not a "former engineer" on my last visit to his office nor did an outgoing councilmember present Mr. Moore his "Team Wacko" cap. This cap was designed...
Bill Bates wanted to be a Dallas Cowboy ever since elementary school. He had spent his life preparing for this career on the field. But nothing prepared him for the night last week at Incredible Universe when a pair of soft cotton panties came sliding across the table for an...
Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol because he needed money, and it's been produced for that same sound reason for more than a century. It might have proved more interesting, however, if the Dallas Theater Center had staged a modern adaptation of Dickens' Oliver Twist this year rather than the...
Crucify and mortify "Boilermaker," the track that kicks off the Jesus Lizard's 1992 album Liar, explodes suddenly and unexpectedly, as though the first couple of minutes were lopped off; you're placed immediately into this volatile blur, a man screaming "I'm calm now" over this monstrous guitar riff that comes out...
The big deal about Cafe Express isn't the concept - we've seen upscale fast food (as if that weren't an oxymoron) before - but the fact that its owner is Robert Del Grande, a real big deal chef, the owner of the renowned and illustrious Cafe Annie in Houston. This...
I've expressed loudly and often my general distast and ill-will toward Cajun food outside Cajun country. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times - I don't think it works, and I resent people continuing to try. Let Muhammad go to the mountain, I say. Most Cajun...
When fans of old Hollywood complain that modern feature films are too darned commercial--that they've lost the personality and passion that made films emerging from the old studio system so pleasurable--they are often reminded that there's no such thing as the Good Old Days. Movies are, and always have been,...
I just got kicked out of a hotel bar for smoking a cigar. I don't mind so much gettin' kicked out, 'cause it was a 15-dollar Bolivar and I managed to save it without havin' to smush it out in an ashtray. But what bugged me was: there was nobody...
The set of the gentle-spirited independent romance Late Bloomers incurred a stroke of bad luck last week, when the director, Julie Dyer, narrowly escaped an attempted mugging in an alley behind an East Dallas house where a wedding scene was being shot. She managed to escape her assailant, who panicked...
