1/28 There is a myth, propagated by critics and other lost souls, that dancing is difficult. In fact, dancing is as easy as walking, skipping and landing your own reality television show. (Dancing well? Now, that’s another story.) It’s a matter of discarding the stiff mantle of self-consciousness, which many…
1/30 This is Texas, and there are few things we enjoy more than football (state-sanctioned death and gas-guzzling pickup trucks, maybe, but that’s about it). Which is why it’s been so hard around here of late, what with the Cowboys ruining our year with the 6-10 disappointment that they tried…
1/29 Kitchen Dog Theater departs from its usual philosophy of forcing audiences to question their moral and social compasses, exciting their creative drives and offering nothing but fresh material on January 29 when it hosts its kinda everyday, somewhat traditional, totally alcohol-lubricated fund-raiser called Hooch & Pooch. The event, which…
1/27 If Tim Rice and Elton John took a crap on the floor, put a hat on it and called it a musical, it would still be one of the best damn musicals you’ve ever seen. After the gigantanormous success of their The Lion King collaboration, John and Rice cranked…
Assault on Precinct 13, the sluggish remake of John Carpenter’s grungy 1976 movie of the same name, begins with a bang to which it never lives up. In a smoky den of all manner of iniquity, Ethan Hawke’s trying to close a drug deal. With his girl splayed out on…
“Twenty-four hours. 350 miles. His girlfriend’s kids. What could possibly go wrong?” In the case of Are We There Yet?, here’s the short answer: a flaccid screenplay, bratty kids stripped of depth and personality, a single joke replayed in every scene, unearned attempts at sentiment and a bizarrely whitened backdrop,…
Being terribly clever can make for terrible comedy. Freedomland, Amy Freed’s odd play about a family of brilliant eccentrics, spews clever lines 90 to nothing for more than two hours. “Sentimentality is a form of murderous aggression,” quips art critic Titus (Lee Trull), staring at a kitschy painting titled “Clowns…
Bodies Past and Present: The Figurative Tradition in the Nasher Collection In this succinct array of sculptural pieces now showing in the two main galleries on the street level of the Nasher Sculpture Center, one is not so much challenged by the figure of the human body but carefully taught…
Bad Dates After you see this little one-character comic gem, you’ll want to do two things: (1) go shoe shopping; and (2) be best friends with actress Julie White. In Theresa Rebeck’s play, the adorable White is Haley Walker, a discombobulated restaurant manager transplanted from the Deep South to Midtown…
As an official boundary sketch artist for the U.S. government, Arthur Schott was a dismal failure. Schott’s job in 1850 was to travel the border between Mexico and the United States and render unmistakable landmarks that would prove where each country started or stopped. Schott was only one of a…
Thursday, January 20 After watching a particularly suspenseful film (or simply a really good one), we sometimes wish we’d never seen it so we could naívely watch it all over again. Abbreviated Enlightenment offers that fresh and new opportunity with its play /ochen chotto schpiel/: ¨very little play.¨ The troupe…
Bill Komodore. Linnea Glatt. Vincent Falsetta. Allison V. Smith. Frank Tolbert. Benito Huerta. Pamela Nelson. Brian Fridge. Ann Stautberg. Greg Metz. It’s an impressive list of artists that any gallery would fight for. But Barry Whistler Gallery didn’t have to fight. They just had to ask. And in some cases,…
1/21 Compared with some 102nd birthdays–extra serving of pudding (tapioca sounds festive), Wheel of Fortune AND Jeopardy, new slippers, deck of large-print playing cards–staying up past midnight does sound pretty damn exciting. That’s how the Dallas Museum of Art celebrates a century plus two. It stays open until midnight as…
1/22 To me, Smucker’s Stars on Ice is just the latest in the long line of events marching through the American Airlines Center that have nothing to do with professional ice hockey. It’s heartbreaking, really. But I won’t hold that against the pretty ice dancers. The Emmy award-winning and nationally…
1/22 When we’re feeling philosophical, the phrase “Life is a circle, we’ll meet again” seems to best summarize our outlook. Our quote comes courtesy of Marc Singer in the 1982 sci-fi movie extravaganza Beastmaster, but the sentiment, as you’ll find at the Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art,…
1/20 Sis Carr wasn’t one of those 1950s housewives who took care of the kids, fixed dinner and looked forward to the weekly bridge game on Saturday night. Nope, not Sis. Even her name vibrates with enthusiasm, which she has, and energy, which her friends and colleagues in Dallas arts…
Bad Education, the new film by the flamboyant Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, opens on a man sitting at a table, poring over the tabloids for stories of interest. When he finds something he likes, he reads it to his lover: Isn’t this an arresting image? Could we generate drama from…
It’s not easy to pull off a good morality tale. Too often, movies with a message, or about a movement, reduce characters and events to types. They pit unqualified good against unqualified evil–a dark narrative temptation–and, like so much of what issues from Hollywood, do so to ill effect. That’s…
Paul Weitz, with brother Chris, co-wrote and co-directed 2002’s adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel About a Boy, in which a cocky grown man (Hugh Grant) learned how to actually act like a grown man by observing a gawky young boy (Nicholas Hoult) who was nearly abandoned by his suicidal mother…
Nobody messes with Samuel L. Jackson–at least not at the movies. He’s Shaft reinvented, the coolest cop on the street. He’s Mace Windu, the only swashbuckler in the Star Wars galaxy who gets to swing a purple lightsaber. Best of all, he’s Jules Winnfield, the ultra-hip hit man who spouts…
You have to hand it to Sean Penn. OK, you don’t absolutely have to, and if you’re a Red Stater through-and-through, you certainly won’t want to, but give him some credit. After being pilloried in the press for visiting Iraq under Saddam’s reign, torn apart by housecats in a puppet…
I’m approaching a sobering event that most people make every effort to forget: the high school reunion. It’s the pivotal point for just how unsuccessful you can be before someone calls you on it. You know, “Wow! You were voted Most Likely to Succeed, Andy. Are you really enjoying your…
