We’ve always wanted to travel on a passenger train. A lifetime of watching Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, North by Northwest and Strangers on a Train (the list of Hitch’s films with train scenes could go on), and we’re completely wrapped up in that seduction and mystery that roll along two…
Thursday, June 5 Baseball often involves three things we find repugnant: food cooked under heat lamps, sitting outside in the heat and people wearing white pants. But more important than inappropriate heat and fashion emergencies is that guy, the one who thinks he’ll change our mind. If only we knew…
Dana Carvey made an excellent point in his 1995 HBO special Critic’s Choice. Gordon Sumner must have had serious balls to ask his friends to start referring to him as Sting. Carvey describes the young musician with his pals as he reminds them of his new name, to which they…
6/7 Though it’s one of the area’s largest fund-raisers benefiting North Texas HIV/AIDS organizations, Razzle Dazzle has always been a skippable event in years past. Why pay to get onto the Cedar Springs strip for this one event when you’re just going to end up in the same old bars…
6/7 There’s strength in numbers, especially when it comes to fighting breast cancer. That’s why you’ll see herds running around in matching T-shirts at the Plano Komen Race for the Cure, the latest in the Komen Race for the Cure 5K runs and fitness walks. Since the first race in…
Ongoing When recently mulling over just how much I remind myself of Harrison Ford and the many rugged cinematic icons he’s personified, a few undeniable similarities became apparent. First, there are the all-American good looks. Next, there’s the affinity for the male “one earring” statement. Above all, though, the most…
6/7 Life as a poor terrorist can be frustrating. Sure, the grocery store carries envelopes and stamps, but anthrax, the most important ingredient in low-grade postal terror, is a wee bit tougher to come by these days. But fear not, mail rebels, for there’s a better, less contagious means of…
6/5 Don’t bore your fund-raising dinner guests with the same tired surf ‘n’ turf entrée: For your dining pleasure, we are pleased to suggest T-Bone ‘n’ Weasel. Since you are likely skilled at T-bone preparation, let us concentrate on that inimitable side dish, the weasel. After deboning the carcass, season…
If you’re reading this paper, chances are you’re more literate than the average American. If you’re reading the film reviews, it’s also likely that you’ve become familiar with words like “bravura” and “eponymous,” which seem to exist only in the vocabularies of professional movie assessors. But what if you were…
Another week, another remake–summer, that season of air-conditioned originality, must be upon us. Only unlike The In-Laws, which creaked into theaters last week, this latest updating of a decades-old action-comedy has two things going for it: Its forebear is a veddy British caper film little-seen in the United States, which…
If grown-ups were meant to watch Walt Disney cartoons, God would have kept us all in the third grade for two or three decades. Still, somebody has to drive the SUV every time the Disneyfolk decide to lure the little ones down to the multiplex, and as long as the…
You’ve been warned: This is a column about politics wherein a popular-culture critic (dunno what that is either, but says so on my tax returns) interviews a former rock journalist-turned-publicist-turned-band-manager-turned-record-label-executive about how the Democratic Party alienated everyone under the age of death. You may take this with a grain of…
“Adults are obsolete children,” said Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, the beloved author of dozens of books that taught children to read and parents to read faster. For generations, toddlers have cut their first molars gnawing corners of The Cat in the Hat and Hop on Pop. Seuss’…
We have one of those friends, and we bet you do, too. That person who can’t finish an e-mail message without some sort of smiling, winking, tongue-sticking-out face using a combination of punctuation marks and numbers. Then there’s the worst of all: the heart, the sideways one using a “less…
Thursday, May 29 Joni Mitchell says, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” So what if it’s your mother’s cemetery plot instead of paradise and a supermarket instead of that parking lot? Suzan-Lori Parks assigns that li’l problem to Billy, the main character of Parks’ novel Getting Mother’s…
We had no idea how much trouble Sandra Bullock’s career was in until we heard about Top Speed coming soon to a theater near us. The final film in the trilogy of Speed action flicks, Top Speed takes place when, on their honeymoon, Annie Porter (Bullock) and Alex (played by…
6/1 There’s a lot more to Latin music than salsa and merengue. Check out KNON 89.3-FM’s fourth annual Latin Energy Festival, one of the summer’s first all-day concerts, to get a rich sampling of modern Latin music sounds–Norteno, rock en Español, Latin rap, hip-hop, Latin dance, freestyle and more. Featured…
5/30 The suits invented the charity golf tournament, not the jocks. And why wouldn’t they? It’s the perfect ploy to play all day and get paid for it. The company pays while you play, and any self-respecting golf tournament will have the beer iced up and flowing by the time…
6/4 Every third-grader one day will be a teen-ager, which means the dance club get-down will undoubtedly occur. Why not start them out early by sending them to the library to get their groove on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. The Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs Neighborhood Touring Program will feature…
5/30 It’s gonna be tough, but at no point in the following will the author resort to that old bromide, “I don’t know what’s art, but I know what I like.” I don’t know what’s art. Let’s just leave it at that. For example, I’ve always been curious about people…
5/29 Two words that strike fear into the heart of wedding planners, caterers and Vera Wang: “old maid.” Despite the array of Bride’s, Modern Bride, Southern Bride and Neurotic Bride magazines (no, really, there should be Neurotic Bride magazine) that our old college chums studied religiously, we chose to never…
Many moviegoers see hyperactive Jim Carrey as the second coming of Jerry Lewis, but no one’s ever mistaken him for God. Clearly, he’d like to change that–at least for now, at least at the box office. Hey, you’d feel the same way if your last movie were The Majestic. In…
