10/31 The video games, films and music of our current landscape take a lot of heat in terms of repercussions and cause-and-effect finger pointing. But one bullet consistently fired from the anti-censorship camp is that of our historic love affair with foul play. Murder, the abomination as fascination, is a…
Everything’s going to be all right. If there’s a theme to this year’s Deep Ellum Film Festival, perhaps it’s that single, simple sentence of reassurance, repeated in a handful of movies screening this week and suggested in several others. A dying artist says it to an immigrant family that’s suffered…
Given the way the United Nations has been taking a beating in the American media over the past year or so, it may not be a bad thing that the new movie Beyond Borders is at heart a two-hour infomercial for Kofi Annan’s organization. As a call to action, the…
Sometimes something so wonderful appears on the big screen that I want to leap up like a shameless non-professional and hug it. Such is the case early on in Sylvia, a superb drama based on the brief life of writer Sylvia Plath. While boating in Cambridge, England, with her beau…
That a new feel-good sports movie called Radio contrives to move us is just fine–that’s what feel-good sports movies are supposed to do. That its makers choose to move us in the style of a linebacker sacking a quarterback is not so good. After enduring this flagrant emotional blitz, you…
On October 12, BBC America aired the second-season premiere of The Office, the beloved mockumentary that follows paper-selling rats ’round the maze of cubicles leading to the office of head cheese David Brent, a pathetic little man who says in public things no rational human being would even think in…
‘Tis pity Mother is a whore. That’s the theme of George Bernard Shaw’s drawing-room drama Mrs. Warren’s Profession, now getting a sprightly production at Theatre Three. Mother is Kitty Warren, wealthy, middle-aged owner of a chain of bawdy “private hotels” across Europe. Her adult daughter, Vivie, has been kept in…
Many of the 1960s protest singers used those warbly voices to spread their opinions. But rather than convincing, we’ve always found them so annoying that a plane ticket to the nearest front line didn’t sound like such a bad option in comparison. But then we’ve always been the “catch more…
Thursday, October 23 No television; no frozen dinners. Home entertainment in 1938 America came from a radio’s speakers, and dinner prep began in the house early in the day. As the kids come in from dusky games of stickball, the knob flips and the living room fills with booming voices…
Of all the things Timothy Leary was famous for–experimenting with LSD, being asked to leave his professorship at Harvard, getting arrested for pot possession, breaking out of prison, getting sent back to prison, experimenting with LSD, running with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, promoting…
10/24 Dallas’ Old City Park is offering a ghostly night Friday with tours of historical homes haunted by spirits. Palm and tarot readings, games, pioneer-era ghost stories and tales from Edgar Allan Poe are on the schedule for the Dark Night Halloween party.Ooo, scary stuff, right? Hah, we say, with…
10/25 The notion of revisionist history isn’t a pleasant one. What we don’t know because of chicanery or misinformation is capable of lingering longer than cold facts from a hard textbook. Examples are innumerable. Want one anyway? OK. Why is it that the most exposure we’ve had to people of…
10/24 Got an easily frightened first-grader and a tough-as-nails high-schooler? Trying to entertain both of them for Halloween? There are two options. Drop the teen off on Swiss Avenue and let him ravage the neighborhood, then take the little one to trick-or-treat until dusk. Or just throw them both in…
10/25 On Saturday, erotic art photographer Larry Hoth offers the chance to view his photos in the raw, so to speak. The exhibition, called The Erotic Female, is free (unlike the pay-per-view site where the photos are usually offered), and it features naked women in concealing and open poses as…
10/24 Next year, we’ll just have to add a new category to our cheaper-by-the-pound Best of Dallas issue. At the risk of giving away insider info, we’re going to call it “Best Use of Pure Creativity in Modern Dance Programming and Sheer Inventiveness in Celebrating Halloween by Dancing Out Some…
Watching Hollywood’s endless stream of John Grisham adaptations–The Firm, The Chamber, A Time to Kill, etc. –it would be easy to assume that Grisham is the worst sort of hack writer, with simplistic morals that usually overwhelm logic and come close to contravening the very law the author is supposed…
When it made the rounds of the gay and lesbian film festivals last year, Km. 0 (Kilometer Zero) found itself the winner of several audience awards–prizes voted on by festivalgoers themselves for the film they happened to enjoy the most. Now finally opening in Dallas after wide release this summer,…
Veronica Guerin isn’t at all a bad movie, and some kind things will be said about it here. But cynical appraisal also has its place, so we’ll cover that aspect as well. Even before that, a significant disclaimer: Since this review is being written for several New Times publications, which…
A humorous and touching tale about unexpected friendship, The Station Agent marks the auspicious writing and directorial debut of actor Tom McCarthy. It concerns three people who have absolutely nothing in common except the solitary life that each leads. For Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) and Olivia Harris (Patricia Clarkson), being…
Dave, a man who’s barely there, lulls his son to sleep with stories of a boy lost in the woods who escapes from wolves; it’s a thrilling bedtime story for the child, a tale that never loses its excitement. Dave, played by Tim Robbins like some ghost who can’t quite…
In Kiss of the Spider Woman, the haunting Kander and Ebb musical now running at the Trinity River Arts Center, two men share a tiny prison cell in Argentina. Molina (Donald Fowler) is doing three years for sex with an underage boy. The ironically named Valentin Paz (Skie Ocasio) has…
On Sunday, Addison is likely to become hangover central. That’s because on Saturday the town will host Winefest 2003 in a 12,000-square-foot tent at brand-new Addison Circle Park. The Winefest name is a little misleading in that holders of the $35 ticket will gain access to a lot more than…
