4/26 While many are watching the tube or blissfully sleeping in this weekend, people across the nation are voluntarily free-falling a couple of miles at speeds of more than 100 mph, and not in their nightmares. In fact, Operation Freefall, a fund-raiser for Speaking Out About Rape (SOAR) and the…
4/24 Kids Who Care will be presenting Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Fort Worth’s Scott Theater. If you haven’t seen it, imagine a GAP commercial with religious overtones. If you have, then know that it’ll be a lot like the version starring Donny Osmond, only considerably less annoying…
4/25 Last summer, fresh out of college, Dentonites Mark Searcy and Brian Gibb decided to quit their jobs and follow their dream to make their own magazine. They wanted to create a forum that focused on up-and-coming young artists, similar to the way that corporate design magazines spotlight corporate art…
4/25 The motto of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo seems to be “anything you can do, I can do better.” Except, replace “you” with “girls” and “better” with “funnier.” The Trocks–as the all-male, ethnically diverse troupe is wont to be called–take stuffy, classical ballet with its prima roles portrayed…
Just to admit this up front, my ideal concept of musical comedy involves Bryan Adams and Dave Matthews garroting each other onstage with their own damnable guitar strings. Nonetheless, even viewers with a more centrist appreciation of the genre may feel disappointed by this friendly new folk-music curiosity called A…
Better Luck Tomorrow, about Asian-American high-schoolers making good grades but up to no good, arrives with the furor (albeit minor–a rumpus, perhaps?) attendant a Sundance Film Fest fave. In this case, Internet movie-gossip hounds bark among themselves about changes made to the movie after MTV Films and Paramount Classics got…
Adolf Hitler killed his own dog. Most of his other evil is well-documented now, and words alone are inadequate anyway, so let’s begin by considering this comparatively microscopic offense. For the many who shower their canines with at least as much affection as they offer other human beings (and often…
The Harry Potter phenomenon–on the page, in the movies, at the bank–has aroused in publishers and studio heads alike a sudden new appreciation for our children’s needs. These people understand that no consumer is more motivated than a kid in the heat of a craze, so every last one of…
A few things learned from the memoirs of Marines who served in Gulf War I: They’re more terrified of being killed by friendly fire than enemy artillery; they’re bored brainless most of the time; they harbor fantasies of being shot, but never somewhere too painful or where it might inflict…
When all elements come together, a night at the theater can be as refreshing as a three-day weekend. In WaterTower Theatre’s production of the Rupert Holmes musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the cast is first-rate and the technical aspects are nearly flawless. Holmes’ book and music offer a cleverly…
We love birds. We adore the way they peck under their wings while cleaning. And the way they cock their heads side to side when they hear an intriguing sound. We also love the way they can fly and land and grab things in their talons. But we especially love…
Thursday, April 17 MTV and reality do not a pairing make. We’ve never once had a wall-sized aquarium or a penthouse atop a Vegas casino. The network, though, does promote an original series called True Life, and tonight the Lakewood Theater is showing a documentary scheduled to air as part…
Matthew Shepard’s father, Dennis, perhaps said it best: “Matt’s beating, hospitalization and funeral focused worldwide attention on hate. Good is coming out of evil.” Though the words came in a statement in which Dennis Shepard rejected the death penalty for one of two men convicted of luring 21-year-old Matthew from…
4/22 Though the long-running event was recently severed from The Dallas Morning News Wine Competition held earlier this year and the newspaper is no longer a sponsor, the Dallas Wine & Food Festival will still bring a throng of vintners, chefs, authors and culinary experts and those who hunger after…
4/19 Having spent the majority of our formative years in a trailer-park-and-Dr-Pepper environment, the country club set is our sworn enemy. We spit on them and their festivities in contempt; the mere sight of a matched sweater set makes us salivate. Every now and then, though, we try to put…
4/19 Craving chocolate-covered crickets? Up for petting a hissing cockroach? How about catching the heftiest roach in sight and entering it in a biggest roach contest? No, these aren’t double dog dares. At least not on Bug Day at the Dallas Museum of Natural History, featuring the museum’s live and…
4/23 Some movie stars are svelte and angular like Ben Affleck, or deliciously round and curved like Halle Berry or parts of J.Lo. But it’s hard to get top billing when you look like a striated brake drum. Yet the 1996 film Big Night starred exactly that: timpano, or timballo…
4/17 Just reading the rules of this weekend’s Swing Dance Championships gives us endless enjoyment. From Rule Four: “All swing styles are allowed, including Push, Whip, Shag.” Maybe we’ve watched the latest Austin Powers movie a few times too many. Americas’ Classic Swing Dance Championships Convention offers the opportunity to…
Among Anger Management’s copious flaws is the fact its premise doesn’t wash. Adam Sandler’s Dave Buznik, a designer of catalogs for overweight-cat clothing, isn’t really angry at all; he’s just a self-loathing, introverted mess whose insecurities date back to a crowded street party in Brooklyn circa 1978, when he was…
In 1997’s The Apostle, Robert Duvall took on a subject near and dear to his heart: Southern Pentecostal preachers. No one would make the film for him, so he went ahead and directed it himself, garnering much acclaim from media both secular and religious for his warts-and-all portrayal of a…
Imagine a large, dead Saint Bernard with its bones removed. Then visualize a hefty bellows inserted into it from behind, with a gorilla hopping up and down on it, causing the huge dog’s baglike corpse to twitch spasmodically, wheeze and croak. Voilà, this is today’s Nick Nolte. What’s amazing is…
The title Morvern Callar may sound like an Edward Gorey book or a job designation for telephone solicitors, but it’s actually a name–pronounced (roughly) “Mawvin Calla” (like the lily). Although some sources claim that “morvern callar” is Scots for “quieter silence,” the words don’t show up in online Scots dictionaries…
