Some movies are so bad that they make you look back over your recent moviegoing life with the merciless eye of an FBI agent assembling a dossier, desperately trying to figure out whether the people responsible for the picture that ruined your evening showed signs of obnoxious incompetence early on...
thursday may 18 Deepak Chopra: It's hard to know where to draw the line among the hordes of books every year written by pop-psych gurus, "secret of success" motivators, and candy-cane spiritualists, but the works of Deepak Chopra, M.D. seem a good place to start. On the one hand, Chopra,...
Wild at heart Who would know more about affairs of the heart than St. Paul Medical Center, where they regularly repair and transplant them? The hospital's cardiac-rehabilitation program's "Going Home Instructions," handed to recovering surgery patients, is full of common-sense advice about exercise and warning signs. And to their credit,...
What happened to 'Dilbert' One day it was there, in its usual, reassuring place, between "Wizard of Id" and "Curtis." The next day, it was gone, wiped from Dallas nerds' essential reality without so much as an explanatory word. BeloWatch is speaking, of course, about "Dilbert," the popular cartoon chronicling...
Breezy was a beautiful bitch, and Chuck Milner loved her dearly. He loved the way she seemed to float as she walked, the way she held her exquisitely formed, regal head high like a princess. She had perfectly shaped almond eyes, an aquiline nose. She was very well-traveled and a...
In 1995, Dallas' rich musical heritage continues with a new breed of musician--some are young, some old, some natives, some transplants, some keepers of the flame, some creating their own brand of noise. But like the musicians who preceded them--such Dallas music legends as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Red Garland, Aaron...
The latest issue of the Dallas-based bimonthly fanzine Hong Kong Film Connection (which only recently went national) is on sale now at an independent or Asian-owned video store near you, and it includes plenty of thoughtful, well-researched articles worth mentioning here. They include a wrapup of 1994 Hong Kong box-office...
Because I usually enjoy David Letterman's nightly talk show, I wish I could say he did a great job hosting the 67th Annual Academy Awards. I'll admit I enjoyed some of his jokes and all of his filmed segments, particularly the "Would you like to buy a monkey" bit; between...
You may or may not remember that a few weeks ago I went off on a tangent about the State of the Cocktail. I received a little mail from that tirade, and I'll be reporting on the results over the next few weeks--that is, at the slow pace of my...
I notice we're having one of those spates of national concern about how dumb we are. "Nation of Nitwits," "Pervasive Ignorance," fret the pundits. The latest survey of how dumb we are shows that 60 percent of Americans can't name the president who ordered the first atomic bomb to be...
Charitable counter-charge Speaking on behalf of the more than 1,000 volunteers in Dallas, we appreciate the opportunity to inform the community about the American Cancer Society and answer some of the questions raised in David Pasztor's article "Uncharitable Charges" [February 2]. Unfortunately, Mr. Pasztor's article failed to include the facts...
The earth moved at Dallas City Hall last week. But in more ways than you know. On Monday, Dallas lost the race to build an auto racetrack to Fort Worth. Which was a bad thing. On Friday, First Assistant City Manager Cliff Keheley--the City Hall veteran who has orchestrated much...
Made in USA Sonic Youth Rhino Records Nice Ass Free Kitten Kill Rock Stars In the end, there isn't much to get with Sonic Youth. It's noise signifying noise, the songs an almost accidental result of what happens when you put guitars, bass, drums, and vocals in the same studio...
There's a moment on Laurie Anderson's most recent album, last year's portentous and unnerving Bright Red, when her velvety sage's voice breaks out of its cool, ironic mode and challenges the very universe. In "Love Among the Sailors," a funereal piece about the devastation of AIDS, Anderson declares: "If this...
Set in 1817 during the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, Colonel Chabert is about a legendary soldier presumed dead who returns home to discover that life has proceeded without him, then struggles to reclaim his identity, causing intense emotional disruptions all around him. The title character is played by the...
Louise and Philip Elam spent the first Valentine's Day of their 10-month-old marriage poring over yet another daily newspaper story that made their hearts sink. But, friends say, they spent their first Valentine's Day not at a restaurant, nor with wine and flowers--as newly wedded couples like the Elams usually...
Subdued, elegant, and directed with disarming simplicity, I, the Worst of All (Yo, La Peor de Todas) is the kind of historical drama whose resonance sneaks up on you. On the surface, it's an intimate religious drama about a minor figure in Catholic history, a 17th-century Mexican writer and nun...
About 10 minutes into Sam Raimi's Western The Quick and the Dead, his nomadic, gunslinging heroine, Ellen (Sharon Stone), slouches down in a rickety chair on the front porch of a saloon in the middle of Redemption, a Southwestern town so desolate even the cacti look withered, and lets a...
Channel 8 stung at Sunset Channel 8 got stung during an undercover investigation at a Dallas high school last week--and the embarrassing result raises serious questions about the use of hidden cameras and undercover cameramen by the city's leading TV news station. It all began last Monday morning, when security...
It's rare that an independent film manages to survive and thrive outside the realm of major Hollywood distribution companies. Yet that's exactly what has happened with Sankofa, a bold low-budget slave epic currently making its way across North America, city by city, drawing huge and enthusiastic crowds wherever it plays...
Jack Yardley has been waiting a year for the phone to ring. Three weeks ago, it finally happened. "Bob Stimson called me one day," says Yardley, referring to the Dallas city councilman from Oak Cliff. "He said, 'I don't know how much you know about Reunion Arena, but why can't...
The work is painstaking, but Bettie Beets says she likes it. Certainly it beats doing nothing. Every morning at 7, she and three other women settle down in a big room cozily decorated with craft projects they have completed--doilies, afghans, lap quilts. For years, Bettie made toddler-sized dolls, with painted...
