12/19 Hmm, let’s see. He has longish hair and a full beard. He wears black leather boots and a distinctive jacket. He hangs around with a posse of like-minded individuals. How about that? Give him a few tattoos and Santa could easily pass for a biker. So it’s only fair…
12/17 While you’re buying a leaf blower for your brother and an iPod for Sis, drop by the toy aisle for something to brighten a kid’s stay at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas. The Toys for Tots Soiree, an annual charity event, is the perfect opportunity to make a difference…
Ongoing Once upon a time, Charles Dickens wrote a little gem called A Christmas Carol. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Remakes and variations of this touted Christmas classic spanning all mediums have been done up and dumbed down. Actors ranging from Shakespearean graduates to Muppets (not quite a mop, not…
If you’ve already decided to see Ocean’s Twelve, it’s probably best not to read much about it. Unlike its predecessor, a remake that clung to a hoary heist formula, the sequel contains ample pleasures, most of which amuse as the result of surprises both great and small. There’s no one…
They walk among us. They resemble people, approximate our words and actions, present themselves more or less as human. And yet they are more–a different species, with their own dark legends, their own clandestine meeting places. They are dorks, and they are going to be pretty OK with Blade: Trinity…
To bastardize something is not usually a good thing. Bastardization–or crossbreeding, as one might have it–signals the trivializing or making hackneyed of an idea or object once thought awesome, taken seriously or held in esteem. To bastardize is to make something impure–to contaminate or pollute that which is otherwise pristine…
Constructions & Architecture This show makes what might otherwise seem like the incongruent forces of art and architecture seamless and fluid. This gathering of things, sounds and interactive sculpture reinforces the turn toward media contamination and full-body sensuality in the art world over the last 30 years. John Frost’s walk-through…
Dallas Christmas Festival Everything about Prestonwood Baptist Church and its Dallas Christmas Festival is big and broad, from the cast (more than 1,000) and running time (three hours-plus) to the humor. Being all things to all people, as the Apostle Paul advised, Prestonwood divides the show into distinct parts: a…
As icons go, surrealist painter Frida Kahlo has become as recognizable as the Virgin Mother or Ché. Her face peers out from jewelry, bags, clothing and décor of various kinds–and not just in Mexico or the Southern states. Her uni-brow is beloved and universal; her gaze is all-knowing and piercing…
Thursday, December 9 The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has caught the Christmas fever. Screw peace on earth and good will to men. They want bigger; they want better. And they want it now. Just Christmas isn’t good enough; this year it’s Christmas–around the world. Of course, bigger can be better. This…
Skepticism suits Dr. Edmund P. Pillsbury. It informs his professional acumen; it sharpens his impressive intellect. It feeds his wry sense of humor; it counter-balances his lifelong love of art. Pillsbury runs Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Museum. Before that, he saved Gerald Peters Gallery from turmoil at the top, partnering…
12/12 Ballet gets a big boost this time of year–like when a scrawny male dancer determinedly hoists his flabby-tushed partner high up on his shoulder. The Nutcracker is an audience-builder and a money-maker, so area ballet companies gut up and produce the complicated ballet. Many dancers, many costumes, plus quarrelsome,…
12/11 Joggers can be some selfish sons of bitches. No, we’re serious. Pick up a copy of Runner’s World and read their opinion columns, where some self-absorbed jerk will surely spout off about the reasons jogging is so amazing. Good for the legs. Time for self-reflection. Plenty of fresh air…
12/11 Tired of hearing that same damn Christmas song come out of your worn 1988 Oliver & Company McDonald’s limited-time-only ornament? Does your Christmas spruce need a little artsy juice? On December 11 from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., the eighth annual Blue Yule at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary has…
12/9 Let’s say, for the moment, that you’re the Christ child. You are accustomed to being portrayed in solemn Nativity scenes, robust with ceremony. Then one December–this December–a group of actors in Dallas decides to tell your story in its own, slightly demented version of a “pastorela,” the story of…
Mike Nichols’ new film Closer is a boiling pot of lust, mistrust and double-dealing that might well be taken for outright soap opera–or, in quite a few places, soft-core porn–were it not for the sophisticated gleam of its well-heeled London desperadoes and the vicious dazzle of its dialogue. Adapted from…
Movies pushing the indomitableness of human nature tend to make me puke, mainly because they’re often created with a palpable self-congratulatory air by film-biz insiders whose real-life concept of “suffering” extends to being brought an incorrectly prepared frappuccino. This emetic response is doubled when the featured indomitable human happens to…
Zombies do not deliver Christmas cheer. A small squad of the eerie undead stomp onstage to represent the Spirits of Christmases Yet to Come in Act 2 of Dallas Theater Center’s A Christmas Carol. They step-drag, step-drag in front of Ebenezer Scrooge (James Carpenter). Rising from the misty graveyard in…
We have been dealt a blow–an insult to our collective intellect, psyche and social well-being. Yet so many feel nothing, numbed by a happy and willful oblivion. We gleefully assume our position in the herd, eyes glazed over and lips alternating between the upward turn of a smile, the slack…
Maya Schindler Maya Schindler paints a world in which plastic drips blood and bears flesh wounds. Hung from the walls of the front gallery, one finds eight large canvases depicting huge sirens captured and made still while twirling in frenzied motion. Each painting is slightly different from the other, some…
A Christmas Carol It came upon a midnight drear in writer-director Jonathan Moscone’s adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic. We get a Scrooge (James Carpenter) who’s more timid than Tiny Tim. His “Bah, humbugs” are bah-oring. The Spirits of Christmas Past and Present stroll onstage almost casually (the latter wearing…
Thursday, December 2 We know how to dismember a jaw to get a good dental imprint, retain DNA evidence, look for prints and check a wound for gunfire residue. Thank you, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. We have come to appreciate William Petersen’s entomological trivia and the dramatic pronouncement of any…
