If there’s one universal truth about children’s programming, it’s the fact that the best kids’ shows are the ones created by people who are clearly under the influence of drugs. Sesame Street, Teletubbies, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse—drugs, drugs and more drugs. Judging by the trailer, the creators of The Aqua Rangers fell…
Obsessed with the secret handshake? Interested in what goes on behind the closed doors of a fraternal lodge meeting? Wanna know what’s under those robes? We’re not sure that Ritual, the new exhibition at the Webb Gallery, will offer many concrete answers, but viewers can have a look at the…
Austin is undoubtedly home to hundreds, if not thousands, of conspiracy nuts, but none are quite as passionate as Alex Jones—who frankly puts The X-Files’ Lone Gunmen to shame. Fox Mulder’s friends could only manage one measly newsletter; Alex Jones is responsible for a radio show, two Web sites (infowars.com…
An Evening With Larry Hagman? Just one measly evening? The Hag Man could spend a whole entire night regaling you with stories about Barbara Eden’s navel or cataloging the many fabulous cowboy hats he donned as J.R. Ewing. One single, solitary evening barely scratches the surface. You could spend a…
Toyota’s latest promotional campaign is, in a word, crafty. Trying extra-hard to market their newest car to art nerds, the design-hip, fuel-efficient Yaris disguises its dog-and-pony show in the form of a DIY free-for-all. This Wednesday through Saturday (August 23 to 26), the YarisWorks Roadshow makes a stop in Dallas…
Don’t think of this as an anniversary event along the lines of your grandparents’ 50th—you know, the one where the dinner options included your choice of 17 casseroles and your aunt got hammered on frozen Colorado bulldogs before leading a bevy of girdled asses through the rented hall during an…
Country/Western connotations sure have taken a sharp turn in the American lexicon. Case in point: If a new downtown nightclub was named “Arkansas,” what would your first assumption be? Yup. When did stories of the open range and blazin’ guns turn into the country’s most blatant camp and gay icons?…
Remember the good old days, when people could take nail clippers (and nail polish for that matter) onto a plane and the only people we seemed to hate were those red commies? Unfortunately the fear of Russian nuclear annihilation has transitioned into one of a terrorist-based World War III, and…
So Mary had a little lamb. Who hasn’t? It’s tasty. The only people who have a problem with that are those PETA folks and a couple of vegan kindergartners who run screaming out of the classroom during nursery-rhyme hour. But now things have really gone too far. The Artisan Theatre…
My first piano recital included a mind-blowing rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (complete with vocal accompaniment) that was immediately shown up by some I’m-five-years-old-and-I-practice-12-hours-a-day-for-moments-like-this kid playing Rachmaninoff. So, I can sympathize with the struggle for piano greatness that the characters face in 2 Pianos 4 Hands, by Ted…
When reading materials on Jeff Abbott’s new thriller Fear we couldn’t help but think of My Blue Heaven, the moderately unsuccessful Steve Martin and Rick Moranis comedy. Try out these parallels: the mob, witness protection program, post-traumatic stress disorder, drug scandals. OK, maybe not so much on those last two,…
In my opinion, animal art isn’t the most intriguing. But my interest grew rapidly as I read the press materials for Feral Nature. Nine artists from throughout the country have explored and examined the idea of “the animal” and its relation to that which is human. It all sounded very…
There are some people you just don’t need to spend a whole lot of time with to get their point. Barney the Dinosaur. Paris Hilton. Certainly not Che Guevara, though whoever directed that Motorcycle Diaries movie could have lopped off a minute or 60 and just kept the parts where…
When you think of Chuy’s, two things usually come to mind: the Elvis Platter and the president’s underage daughters getting busted trying to drink margaritas at the Austin location. As Chuy’s celebrates its 18th annual Green Chile Festival, you’ll think of The Cat in the Hat as the chain adopts…
Jugs. Melons. Gazongas. Knockers. Pendulums. Hooters. Honeydews. Nugs. Why, you have all kinds of reasons to head to Gachet Coffee Lounge, 1804 Greenville Ave., and see the latest installment of its Get Reel Mondays movie series. Fine, that’s not fair; we know there’s more to The Best Little Whorehouse in…
If, at this remove, we can imagine Vienna in the late 1890s, we behold a great imperial capital in ferment. Gustav Mahler is not only reinventing the harmonic structure of serious music, he is getting his head seriously shrunk by Sigmund Freud. Arnold Schoenberg takes painting lessons from the eroticist…
Awinning tale of sex, real estate and more or less immaculate conception, Quinceañera, as you might expect from a white-made drama about Latino life in Los Angeles’ Echo Park, threatens at first blush to be all about a pregnant teenager and a prodigal cholo in the ‘hood. Yet this saucy,…
Snakes on a Plane represents the ideal of contemporary major-studio filmmaking–which is to say, major-studio marketing. Who needs word-of-mouth screenings or critics when you can sell the four-word pitch as written on a napkin? It points to a future that takes all the guesswork out of movie-going. A major-studio release…
Funny what a hot day and cold booze will bring out in people. Some hard truths, for one thing. And in James McLure’s paired one-acts, Lone Star and Laundry and Bourbon, now playing for the second time in two years at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, the combination of humidity and…
Like a real war, Chromehounds involves long stretches of tedium, occasionally broken up by a few moments of sheer terror. After what feels like weeks of ponderous marching from point A to point B in your titular “Hound” — a walking tank — combat erupts. The fighting is fast and…
Benito (Lions Gate) Cape of Good Hope (New Yorker) Clark Gable Collection, Volume 1 (Fox) Don’t Tell (Lions Gate) The Hard Corps (Sony) Hong Kong Phooey: The Complete Series (Turner) Hoot (New Line) James Stewart: The Signature Collection (Warner Bros.) Land of the Blind (Bauer) Lemming (Strand) L’Enfant (Sony) Machined…
Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier (Paramount) It’s all here, more or less: the 1979 theatrical cut of Francis Ford Coppola’s harrowing and still-hypnotic Joseph Conrad-in-Vietnam adaptation, the 49-minutes-longer-but-feels-24-minutes-shorter 2001 Redux edition, Marlon Brando’s entire 17-minute “The Hollow Men” monologue, even more “lost” and deleted scenes (including a spooky-shocking one, in…
