Atmos Energy expects to raise customers’ bills by 60 to 90 percent this winter; TXU wants to raise its bills by 24 percent by January. It’s costing $40 a week just to get to work. And all I want for Christmas are cheaper utility and gas station bills, but instead…
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Lucasfilm Ltd.) The final installment of the Star Wars saga actually plays better at home: You can watch it, then pop in the original trilogy and chart the evolution of Anakin, and have it all actually make sense. Though it’s still a…
Pity the videogame zombie. He spends his short afterlife dodging self-righteous heroes hell-bent on peppering him with buckshot, setting him on fire, or blowing him to smithereens with a bazooka. Well, Stubbs is here to even the score. Set in the 1950s, Stubbs the Zombie casts players as the eponymous…
American Chopper: Third Season (Columbia/Tristar) Attack Pack (Commando, Predator, and Kiss of the Dragon) (Fox) Bill Maher: I’m Swiss (Image Ent.) The Brady Bunch: Four-Season Pack (Paramount) Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam (Warner Bros.) Disney Princess: A Christmas of Enchantment (Disney) Duran Duran: Live From London (Universal Music) Fame:…
If Jarhead, director Sam Mendes and writer William Broyles Jr.’s adaptation of Anthony Swofford’s 2003 Gulf War memoir, seems at all familiar–like, say, a DJ’s mash-up of Full Metal Jacket and Three Kings–there’s good reason for it. Swofford, 20 years old during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, writes in his…
Does Steve Martin have multiple personality disorder, or is he just brilliantly in tune with some things and wildly out of touch with others? Shopgirl, the movie based on Martin’s novella of the same name, is one of the most schizoid films in recent memory. It opens with crystalline originality,…
Dafatir: Contemporary Iraqi Book Art Before you stammer in disbelief, yes, Iraqi artists are making contemporary art. And, yes, it’s good. This show educates and enthralls through form, disabusing you of any misconceptions you might have had about Iraqi culture while indulging your eyes and emotions. The book art showing…
Danny and the Deep Blue Sea WingSpan Theatre Company presents John Patrick Shanley’s taut little romantic comedy about two young losers who find true love by accident. Actors Heather Henry and Clay Yocum act with such authenticity and raw abandon that they’re almost too real. Director Susan Sargeant keeps the…
Give us a T! Give us an A! A little of both are on display in Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical, now shaking its pompons and some booty at Kitchen Dog Theater. Based on the infamous smut film from the late ’70s, but only very loosely, this is porn to…
Any guitarist proud of their calluses and pasty complexion will correct you in a heartbeat should you mispronounce this name: Yngwie Malmsteen. Since performing with Steeler in 1981, the Swedish “neo-classical” guitarist has thrilled guitar geeks with his arpeggio-ridden, largely instrumental works. Now that’s great and all, but I’m no…
Thursday, November 3 We’d like to think that if we were stuck in a cabin in the woods during a snowstorm with no electricity, no phone, no radio, no outside contact at all, that an innate hunter-gatherer instinct would kick in and we could chop wood, start a fire with…
These days, every demographic has its own film festival. We just had the Latino culture-highlighting Vistas Film Festival in October and the Asian Film Festival of Dallas in August. There is also the Juneteenth Film Festival celebrating African-American movies and even the KidFilm festival. But it works. Think about it…
The Hulk and Hellboy meet and greet 11/4 Since adding North Texas to its circuit of comic book conventions two years ago, Wizard Entertainment has brought in more Hollywood hype than actual creative talent from the medium it’s supposedly celebrating. Not that anybody’s complaining about an appearance from Kevin Smith,…
City folk commune with nature 11/4 When Charles Darwin sailed to the Galapagos, he found seals so tame they would nibble on his pant leg. Dian Fossey pretended to munch bamboo in order to bond with African mountain gorillas. Farley Mowatt ran naked among caribou in the Canadian tundra (or…
Get bidding for little beggers 11/6 Who knew a little German shepherd went so well with a glass of French Cabernet? We’d never have paired a well-aged Siamese or domestic tabby with red wine either, but the folks at Operation Kindness sure do know how to serve their homeless animals…
Blind Lemon remembered 11/8 Chances are if you strolled through Deep Ellum past the corner of Elm Street and Central Avenue in 1912, you would have noticed a blind man singing country blues and heard the clink of coins people dropped into a tin cup tied to his guitar. In…
Writer and director Noah Baumbach has made three light films–one so slight (1997’s party-hopping Highball), it didn’t see release till five years after its completion, and even then it snuck onto video-store shelves credited to a pseudonymous writer and director. There was nothing on his filmography–not even his co-writing credit…
The Weather Man, starring Nicolas Cage as a disappointment of a son and a failure of a father, was screened for critics in the spring, before its April release was pushed to October, ostensibly to allow for the off chance that Cage or Michael Caine (as Cage’s father) might be…
With a name like Prime, a movie had better be about something more than an older woman digging on a younger man, much to the disapproval of the younger man’s mom. It ought to be about, oh, I dunno, math or something–like Pi or Proof or even Primer, Shane Carruth’s…
It’s been 85 years since Douglas Fairbanks slashed his way into the top tax bracket as the masked hero Zorro, and Hollywood still can find no reason to shut down the franchise. Technically speaking, The Legend of Zorro, starring Antonio Banderas as the guy with the sword and Catherine Zeta-Jones…
Talk about striking while the iron is hot: It’s been only a year since Saw became an instant cult hit, as well as a topic of debate among horror fans. Was it an innovative new classic, or did the occasionally lackluster acting and ludicrous final twist doom it to also-ran…
Devotees of Asian cinema–especially those with a thirst for blood–will probably delight in the unofficial sequel to 2002’s horror sampler Three. Like its predecessor, Three . . . Extremes is a trilogy of short films that root around in the dark regions of the psyche and conclude that human behavior…
