Up the river without a paddleboat 9/10 We don’t like to be party poopers, but in the case of Saturday’s Trinity River Challenge, a grievous error floats on the horizon and we can’t help but call it out. The race, which begins with a 7:45 a.m. check-in at McInnish Park,…
Faxing and copying made John Pomara a Legend 9/8 John Pomara has art down to a science. The abstract painter relies on modern contraptions such as fax machines and copiers to produce his work. “It’s all about a personal touch and mechanical engagement fused together on the same picture plane,”…
Take a road trip to Queertown 9/8 Dallas is a multi-faceted city containing a variety of neighborhoods and even independent towns, each with its own distinct personality. Whatever might tickle your fancy, it’s available here in our fair city. Into muggings and bad metal bands? Try Deep Ellum. Prefer shallow…
The problem with making black-lacquered high school satire is this: Heathers came out in 1989, and it pretty much did the trick. There’s always room for an excellent addition to the genre, and in 1999, it appeared in the form of Alexander Payne’s Election, a film blessed both with a…
At the opening of The Constant Gardener, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles’ adaptation of the novel by John le Carré, we hear a conversation before we see it. The screen remains black, still running credits, as a man and a woman negotiate a departure. Slowly, the scene dawns, revealing the couple…
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…
Shades of Gray Written by 21-year-old college student Brent Black, this two-hour musical revue makes light of life’s little oddities. Like, how does a lonely PlayStation addict attract “Player 2”? Or what’s the best way to get a shy guy and a shy girl to talk to each other? And…
Home to many a forgettable, popcorn-tossing, low-comedy melodrama, Pocket Sandwich Theatre now owns bragging rights to something pretty cool: the premiere of the first professional production written and directed by Brent Black. At 21, the kid from Irving is still a year away from his drama degree at the University…
John Waters, the self-proclaimed king of bad taste, filmed a 300-pound cross-dresser named Divine eating dog doo for Pink Flamingos and gave Selma Blair huge breasts to play the stripper Ursula Udders in A Dirty Shame. To Waters, those are in “good” bad taste. So what would the tyrant of…
Thursday, September 1 Be honest, you’ve already been to Sam’s Club and purchased your weight in Little Smokies, tortilla chips and jars of queso. The television screen has been so thoroughly cleansed it sparkles between speakers equipped with surround sound. This year you even went all out and purchased a…
“Relax and let God lead you.” Sounds pretty good, if I could only get that “relax” part down. But that’s what 31-year-old Renae McMillan is trying to teach women to do–well, Christian women. Wait a minute, Renae, we don’t like exclusivity, particularly when it comes to spiritual matters. What’s up…
Last blast before class 9/3 Kids can get away with things that would seem, uh, disturbing in adults: They can pretend balloon animals are real critters, sing at the top of their lungs even if they don’t know the lyrics, cover themselves with paint and glue and be active and…
Meet your zoo neighbors 9/3 Why leave Dallas on Labor Day weekend? The airports will be crowded, the interstate will be a mess and the gas prices will probably exceed the cost of milk per gallon for that three-day weekend. With so much hubbub, everyone is better off inviting out-of-towners…
T-Rex’s red carpet treatment 9/7 We heard a rumor that Dallas has famous people, so we scoured the pages of Us Weekly, People and In Touch looking for glamorous hometowners. Sadly, we came up empty-handed, unless you count a handful of reality TV personalities and the Wilson brothers. We like…
Steps in a new direction 9/3 When artists experiment with other genres, the results can be tragic. Take Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time”–the unfortunate song that sends a shudder down our spines when we think of actor-singers. Or, two words: David Hasselhoff. Then there’s Farrah Fawcett, who dazzled the…
Cineastes swooned over Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai’s 2000 film In the Mood for Love, a slow-as-molasses melodrama about two tediously formal people whose spouses are having an affair with one another. Thrown together by circumstances, they find themselves falling in love but, determined not to emulate their cheating…
Terry Gilliam’s last film featured the former Monty Python troupe member as an eccentric, demanding and difficult director prone to destroying his ambitious projects before a single frame of footage was ever shot. “If it’s easy,” he says in the movie, “I don’t do it.” Alas, this was not a…
space-invaders The question begs: As painting morphs into so many new lives, doesn’t it at some point cease to be painting and become an entirely new medium? The answer to this question is less important than a productive riposte: Who cares if it’s sculpture or architecture when it leaks into…
Art Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning script calls for expert actors capable of making this talky play a tour de force. The three men onstage in this low-rent production–Howard Winningham, Tim Shane and Mark-Brian Sonna–aren’t up to the challenge. They don’t seem to understand the text (not to mention subtext) of this…
The first person we see in Contemporary Theatre of Dallas’ explosively funny production of Beth Henley’s The Miss Firecracker Contest is Carnelle, the leading character played by Jennifer Knight, practicing her patriotic tap routine for a Fourth of July beauty and talent pageant she desperately wants to win. “Boom!” she…
When it comes to blues, I am way out of the musical loop–like when I figured interest in rap would die out after The Fat Boys lost popularity. In fact, I’m not sure I could have more ridiculously underestimated the interest in the blues as a genre of music. See,…
Thursday, August 25 Next time a well-meaning but still highly irritating relative asks why we’re almost 30 and still not married, we’re going to say, “Because I blew my 401K on a really crappy matchmaker.” Too bad all the matchmakers left are the online kind, not the manipulative older woman…
