My heart beats like a Swedish masseur’s fists inside my ribcage, and my palms begin to itch and sweat. I crane my neck so I can make out what’s in the tree. It’s nighttime, and the image of the girl in white is suspended like a moon against the red…
Thursday, September 15 It’s too bad Bill Owens wasn’t in our family. Our photo albums would have been far more impressive. After looking at the photographer’s book Leisure, it’s clear that Owens has an unusual talent for making the mundane seem like the most interesting stuff in the world. A…
Both men are wearing long-sleeved, collared shirts and jeans, standing on the same ranch in Montana on the same day at the same time. But in many ways they couldn’t be farther apart. One is Richard Wheatcroft, a rancher, who’s been running the family business since he found his father…
Forget Miller Time, it’s Oktoberfest 9/15 Early September in Texas is such a tease. Fall clothes are arriving in stores, people are planning their holidays and the days are getting shorter–but it’s still 95 degrees, and even a bathing suit feels uncomfortable. Quintessential fall festivals such as Oktoberfest seem oddly…
Beauty pageant for horse and rider 9/17 Dressage is one of the most exacting equestrian disciplines, requiring absolute cooperation between horse and rider. It involves virtually invisible cues from riders as horses perform an array of maneuvers that are normally very difficult to execute on command. Movements such as the…
Great art is just a hop, skip and a jump away 9/17 “What lives in art and is eternally living is first of all the painter and then the painting.” Van Gogh’s words offer an explanation for that awkward moment when your dear friend shows you that painting she just…
Universal languages of art, music and dance 9/17 he number of reasons to travel to Fort Worth these days seems to increase proportionally with the rise in gas prices. There are great museum exhibits, new plays, music every weekend. For a limited time, Dallasites can enjoy one of the wonders…
Da Ali G Show: Da Compleet Second Seazon (HBO Home Video) Sacha Baron Cohen’s inching closer to Tom Green territory; come this time next year, his HBO show is likely to be on the pop-culture junk pile. Which isn’t to say this double-disc set doesn’t hold up–it’s just wearing thin,…
After Sex (New Yorker Video) Ben-Hur: Four-Disc Collector’s Edition (Warner Bros.) Candlemass: The Curse of Candlemass (Navarre) Carlito’s Way: Ultimate Edition (Universal) Escaflowne: The Movie–Ultimate Edition (Bandai Entertainment) Everybody Loves Raymond: The Complete Fourth Season (HBO Home Video) Fever Pitch (20th Century Fox) Happily Ever After (Kino International) The Hitchhiker’s…
Bug The two-legged freaks battle six-legged ones in Tracy Letts’ thoroughly fascinating dark comedy about paranoia, love and anarchy. Kitchen Dog Theater stages the two-act play in their tiny black box space, giving the audience an even better sense of the claustrophobia the characters feel in their cramped hotel room…
The Blues Brothers 25th Anniversary Edition (Universal Studios Home Video) Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman’s modern-day revival of the Blues Brothers is less a stroke of comedy genius than a dose of karaoke night at Hooters. Fight off those thoughts and pop in this 1980 classic. John Belushi and Aykroyd,…
Barn of the Naked Dead (Koch Vision Entertainment) The Bela Lugosi Collection (Universal) Bruce Springsteen: VH1 Storytellers (Sony Music) Charmed: The Complete Second Season (Paramount) Crash (Artisan) The Deer Hunter: Special Edition (Universal) Dragnet: Volumes 1-3 (Delta Music) Fat Albert’s Halloween Special (Ventura) Fraggle Rock: Season 1 (Hit Entertainment) Greta…
Fans of the last two Miramax films from Swedish director Lasse Hallström–Chocolat and The Shipping News–may be happy to know that he has stuck to the exact same formula for his latest, An Unfinished Life. Like its predecessors, this is the tale of an itinerant single parent with a precocious…
The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which is based on a true story the same way Harry Potter and Star Wars movies are, is the latest–though certainly not the last–movie of this bloody (awful) year trying to scare the money right out of your wallet. It has but one thing going…
forces of evil in a bozo nightmare Plush Gallery heralds its return to Commerce Street downtown with a provocative gallimaufry of witty and mostly small pieces. Reinforcing the oddity of this jumble is its new location in a small boxy office space on the fourth floor of the Manor House…
The Imaginary Invalid They didn’t warn about the rhymed couplets. If they had, there’s no way we would have agreed to sit through more than two hours of the highfalutin’, Dr. Seuss-style, sing-songy stuff. Theatre Three’s Jac Alder has done his own translation of the Molière farce about a hypochondriac…
The real test of any play written as a star vehicle is how it works when performed by lesser mortals. Two productions that have just opened–Theatre Britain’s Lettice & Lovage and Theatre Three’s The Imaginary Invalid–feature so-so scripts that could benefit from more commanding personalities in the leading roles. Peter…
In a blur of frenetic movement, old galleries are shutting down, relocating and cocooning while word of new galleries crackles among cognoscenti and crowd alike. The logic of this shake-up seems more cockeyed than the stuff of 20-20 vision, with all the movement creating a virtual geography of Brownian motion–so…
No more antes, no more chips, no more green felt. Please. There’s little we wouldn’t at least consider giving up if it meant we never had to hear another word about poker again. This five-card frenzy has gone on long enough. Isn’t Dave Foley supposed to realize that he’s wasting…
Thursday, September 8 Our first year of college, we faced many challenges: trying to avoid the Freshman 15 while living off grilled cheese sandwiches, sneaking beer into our dorm without the RAs noticing and calculating the last possible second we could wake up and still make it to our 8…
Once upon a time during a rather tedious drive from Dallas to Washington, D.C., my driving companion and I discovered that, having been out of Texas for nearly 24 hours, we had a hankering for some Mexican food. Just off Interstate 81 in Virginia, we spotted a wildly colorful Chi-Chi’s…
Aged to perfection 9/8 In the pantheon of ancient gods and goddesses, few lived a remotely fun life. They were forever grappling with hardships such as being seduced by another species and giving birth to an egg or pissing off the guy in charge and being cast into the underworld…
