5/29 Some people are ugly. There’s no way around it. Big noses, too-pale complexions, chins that bottom out at the sternum–God was cruel to these people. Beauty will elude them no matter their pursuit. Then there are the average-looking ones. These people, with the help of makeup, a good haircut…
5/30 On one end of the country-music spectrum, there’s the glossy sheen of Nashville’s Music Row, the scene that gave Garth Brooks a headset and allowed Faith Hill to become a Stepford wife. On the other end, there’s the dusty, rough-around-the-edges grit of the Texas country movement. These guys have…
5/25 Why is it that the most traumatic tales make the best stories, especially the ones with a sacrificial ending? And why do they perpetually involve an exotic but tormented virgin (insert misunderstood maiden for slight variation) and a soldier (insert young and dashing man of nobility with a heart…
5/20 My experience with art has been limited. It’s not that I don’t appreciate fine work. It’s more that I don’t get around to appreciating fine work. Believe me, I have the ability to appreciate in me. (It stays in me most of the time, but what can you do?)…
5/21 The naysayers have turned into yay!-sayers; the cynics, into True Believers. Here we are, barely into May, and already the experts who wrote off Your Texas Rangers have penciled them into the playoffs. The Anaheim Angels might have something to say about it yet, but the Rangers may devil…
5/22 Primp like you mean it this year if you’re going to the Antiques to Zebras auction benefiting Turtle Creek Chorale. Carson Kressley, the flaming fashionista of Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, is hosting, and we’d hate for you to get a tongue-lashing. QE fans realize Kressley, the…
The first few minutes of Shrek 2 are cluttered with more references to the movies than David Thomson’s thick, rich history text New Biographical Dictionary of Film. Watching the movie is like sitting next to an ADD patient with access to a remote control and a hundred premium cable channels;…
In 2004 A.D., as the five remaining members of the legendary Monty Python comedy troupe lie in coffins in a Vanity Fair spread to jeer at their own deaths, it’s really nice to have them back together commanding the big screen. Behold anew their wonderfully wiggy Monty Python’s Life of…
It’s hard not to like a show that raffles off chess pies at intermission. Pump Boys and Dinettes, now playing at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, is its own big sticky slice of American pie. A Broadway hit with its original cast of songwriter-performers in the early 1980s, the revue featuring…
Old MacDonald’s farm has fallen through the looking glass, and farming has never been so fun. No, there are no giant clefts in the ground, there have been no earthquakes and Mother Earth has not swallowed up the old Scotsman’s livelihood. Rather, Old Mac’s farm has been rethought and kindled…
Pump Boys and Dinettes Check your cynicism at the door, settle in at one of the comfy tables and order a cold drink to enjoy this musical that’s as light as a butter-flake biscuit. The waitressing Cupp sisters (Jenny Thurman, Arianna Movassagh) and their friends (Willy Welch, Gary Floyd, John…
Alex de Leon The question begs: What to do with art that makes avid if not heavy-handed political statements in an era so eager to wrest itself from the rant, screed and morality inherently connected with political art? Is it the responsibility of art to engender social revolution, much less…
Hyphenation of related modifiers is just another trick of the playwrighting trade for Brad McEntire, artistic director of Audacity Productions and its offbeat offshoot, Mild Dementia. “Somebody called us anarcho-theatricalists, and that stuck,” McEntire says. Audacity supports a small, nonprofit group of stage writers, directors and performers in Dallas, while…
Thursday, May 20 After reading the page-turner that is Midwives by Chris Bohjalian, we were so intrigued by the holistic practice that we even watched the original Lifetime movie based on the novel. Yeah, Sissy Spacek is great and all, but it just didn’t give us the vibe of what…
I was just 5 years old that day my mother took me to the zoo. We headed to the petting zoo, where we bought pellets for feeding the animals. My favorite was the llama that looked like a dusty cotton ball with legs. I wanted to have my picture taken…
In the mood to launch a thousand ships? Fine, but it’s gonna cost you. Feel like sacking the Temple of Apollo? OK, but bring drachmas. Depending on who’s counting, Warner Bros.’ pre-summer blockbuster Troy budgeted out at anywhere between $175 million and $250 million, including the big wooden horse, assorted…
What becomes of Morgan Spurlock’s body after a month of eating and drinking nothing but McDonald’s assembly-line foodstuffs is not surprising. He bloats up, gaining nearly 30 pounds in 30 days. His sex drive peters out, among myriad disappointments visited upon Spurlock’s vegan-chef girlfriend, who’s only too happy to discuss…
Breakin All the Rules Part of an ever-expanding subgenre that includes The Brothers, Two Can Play That Game and Deliver Us From Eva, Breakin’ All the Rules serves very little purpose beyond reminding us that there are black people in the world and they have love lives as well as…
Marie Jones’ 1999 Irish comedy Stones in His Pockets, the final production of Theatre Three’s current subscription season, turns out to be this theater’s best in many a moon. About time, too. This company has limped through the past year with a lineup of plays that were ill-chosen (Arsenic and…
Stones in His Pockets Like Greater Tuna with an Irish brogue, this little play by Belfast playwright Marie Jones uses two actors (James Crawford, Michael Turner) to play 15 characters, including women, children, Americans, Brits and the denizens of a tiny Irish village. A big-budget movie shoots on location in…
By: Photographs by Nan Coulter As the prepositional title of the show suggests, Coulter’s photographs set in relief images that are in between: pictures that are pregnant with the remains of what came before and the possibilities of what comes after. While Coulter has photographed world-renowned cities, you won’t find…
When an advice book has an index like this one, you know you’re dealing with a wild one. For instance, let’s take the S section topics: saints and sinners, sand in your crack, secrets and lies, septic tanks, sexual awakening and Shanghai beef baloney. Or perhaps the M section: menfolk;…
