To pick up a recurring theme of these reviews, I'd like to remind you once again I'm a snob. This week's example concerns snobbish preconceptions: I expected to hate The Italian Oven. I'm sure most of my high-falutin' foodie friends would hate it, and I'm glad I didn't invite any...
"A good movie can take you out of your dull funk and the hopelessness that so often goes with slipping into a theatre," writes legendary film critic Pauline Kael in an influential 1969 essay entitled, "Trash, Art, and the Movies." "If somewhere in the Hollywood entertainment world someone has managed...
There are several criteria I use when judging a restaurant, but I don't use all of them all the time. Food, setting, service, atmosphere, and wine selection are all important but not necessarily equally important. Sometimes one thing is more important than another. After all, there are different expectations and...
Whenever Berta Obregon hears the sounds of salsa--the hypnotic rhythms of the drums, the rapid-fire punctuation of the horn section, the primal urgings contained within it all--she is compelled to dance. It's a force greater than she, a provocative and sensual sound that sneaks up on her and compels her...
Every October, Trammell Crow, the legendary Dallas real estate developer, hosts a camp-out for rich and powerful men at his East Texas farm. Crow, now 80, invites about 150 businessmen and government leaders. His guests have included former president Gerald Ford, former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Dallas Cowboys...
Need a walker at the charity stripe, Roy? OK, so Roy Tarpley shot a miserable four-for-12 from the floor in the Mavericks' disappointing loss Dec. 8 to the Washington Bullets. Does that make him eligible for handicapped parking? The morning after the game, a spry Tarpley was spotted parking his...
News' sacred Crows One would imagine that a federal grand-jury investigation of an internationally known businessman who lives in Dallas would grab serious attention from the Dallas Morning News. One would imagine wrong. About a year ago, U.S. News & World Report published a 1600-word story about Libyan attempts to...
Let's talk about rock 'n' roll I am in total agreement with Robert Cox's letter in the November 25 issue regarding how "out of touch" the Dallas Observer is with the local music scene. Robert Wilonsky should take a little trip up to the north part of Dallas and visit...
Coming in at 10,000-plus performances, The Fantasticks is the Cats of off-Broadway--and the longest-running musical in the world, according to press materials. Much of its legendary charm is due to its lyrical, sometimes melancholy music, from the legendary "Try to Remember" to "Soon It's Gonna Rain." The work, written by...
The fright before Christmas Two years ago, Jerry Jeff Walker and his Gonzo Zippa-Dee-Doo-Dah Band (or whatever) swung through the now-defunct Lone Star Roadhouse in Manhattan, and in a crowd filled with expatriated Texans with a little Lubbock homesick blues stood one New Jersey man who got the point. Standing...
In the late '60s--before the Grateful Dead had ever recorded a note, just as Jefferson Airplane landed its deal with RCA Records--Richard Goldstein wrote in The Village Voice that the music emanating from San Francisco was "the most potentially vital in the pop world." The Bay Area bands, he insisted,...
I am a city girl. I grew up in cities--Southern cities, but definite metropolises. I did not grow up eating greens, red beans, or okra regularly, and my Mama, a wonderful cook, refused to fry chicken--unless we were going on a trip, when she served it in the car accompanied...
Restaurateurs have one goal. Not to cook the finest food, but to make a living. To do that, they have to make you want to eat at their place. And not just once--simply because it serves the trendiest cuisine or is owned by the sexiest athletes. The trick is, they...
I'm as tired of fruitcake jokes as I am of fruitcake; they're as endless as the stuff itself. This year, forget the fruitcake. Send them cheesecake instead. The jokes aren't really any better, but you don't have to douse cheesecake with liquor or serve it with hard sauce to make...
Gillian Armstrong, the director of Little Women, isn't a daring, kinetic film artist like Martin Scorsese or Peter Jackson or Jane Campion. She's a storyteller of a purer, less flashy sort--like William Wyler, George Stevens, and other directors from Hollywood's studio era. Armstrong has faith in the strength of her...
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...
