At first, there’s something strangely familiar about Dallas Museum of Art’s new “Art Kid,” a savvy cartoon boy/girl who introduces school-age children to the wonders of exploring an art museum. Then it hits you: It’s Pat, Julia Sweeney’s androgynous Saturday Night Live character who could never be trapped into revealing…
Out of the fire sale The grande dame of Dallas commercial gallery owners, Edith Baker, took exception to her year-end holiday exhibition’s being lumped together with Angstrom Gallery’s “fire sale” in the January 6 Blink. Her Masquerade show, featuring works that were smaller than typical Baker fare by 50 gallery…
In the last 30 years, Woody Allen has written and directed something like 28 movies — “something like” reflects the confusion of how to count his contribution to New York Stories. It’s a remarkable productivity record for a major filmmaker, and one that’s even more impressive when you consider how…
Boo hoo! Frank McCourt had a miserable childhood. Honestly, who can say their childhood wasn’t impoverished in some way…or in many ways? That McCourt survived and eventually published his inescapable memoir is nice, of course, and the book is indeed a poignant and crafty piece of work. Nonetheless, it seems…
Children’s programming is flooded with six-month fads and 90-minute toy ads masquerading as films. The odds that writers, illustrators, or directors will continue to create quality work are too risky even by Las Vegas standards. Perhaps that’s why so many of us worship the movies and shows from our childhoods:…
And just what is so cool about…oh, say, a dairy goat display? Or a sheep arena? Or “Junior Heifer registration?” Believe it or not, kids, history is cool. That people today seem willing to free-fall through life with no sense of where they came from is one of the most…
Be Boyd, a recent transplant from North Carolina to the drama faculty of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, left the stage of Allied Theatre Group in tears at the close of Fires in the Mirror. Quite frankly, I’m surprised she didn’t have to be carried off on a stretcher,…
It’s not just legend. David Hockney’s first stab at conquering a new world was as ballsy as we can only hope our best-known artists might be — you might even think it cinematic. But in his own words, the tale of a young North Englander moving to Los Angeles in…
In the Auping What sounds like self-doubt from Michael Auping is really a bad case of overanalysis. The chief curator of Fort Worth’s Modern Art Museum, known for his irreverent wit and self-deprecating humor, is second-guessing his idea for a groundbreaking exhibition of local and regional contemporary artists at the…
Some people really are crazy; then, “crazy” is a relative term. Does it apply to someone who feels he might spin off into outer space and never be able to get back down to earth? Or is it only crazy when you have to cling to the nearest table or…
The War Zone opens with a black screen and the sound of waves gently crashing against the shore. The methodical ebb and flow of the water produce a soothing rhythm and a sense of tranquility. The film’s first visual image is equally evocative — a beautiful section of seashore, buttressed…
The 1995 film Friday is best remembered as the film that brought actor Chris Tucker to audiences’ attention. A modest hit, it would seem an odd choice for a sequel, but Ice Cube — who co-wrote the original with DJ Pooh, as well as produced and starred — is back…
In Cradle Will Rock, his third directorial outing, Tim Robbins takes on an almost insurmountably ambitious project: a re-creation of an era into which characters imaginary, obscure, and famous are woven into a tapestry that represents the texture of the time. It’s a tall order. E. L. Doctorow was able…
It’s easy to see how Play It to the Bone, writer-director Ron Shelton’s latest comedy-drama, got started. Shelton obviously wanted to do for boxing what he’d already done for baseball in Bull Durham, for golf in Tin Cup, and for pick-up basketball in White Men Can’t Jump. But somewhere along…
There is no more imposing actor on television than James Gandolfini, who carries his bulk as though his stomach were full of pasta and the world’s suffering. Never before has so powerful a man been rendered so rickety, so emasculated; he doesn’t breathe so much as he shrugs. Gandolfini, as…
The Harlem Globetrotters are so associated with the 1970s, they could have ended up in flea-market bins beside fondue pots, Saturday Night Fever soundtracks, and Pet Rocks. But they’re what historians refer to as, er, timeless; they’ve existed since 1926, and likely will continue well into the next millennium. No…
“If disenfranchisement is the father of rap,” says one performer in the gospel musical revue Travelin’ Shoes, “then meet its grandpappy — gospel music.” Certainly, you can find threads of black gospel in virtually every popular American musical form; rap and gospel are connected as part of the continuously evolving…
As with most creative forms these days — film, music, writing — it’s nearly impossible to find a work of visual art that doesn’t evoke a work or artist that came before. Pop-culture analysis is bloated with accusations of precedents to the point of becoming a self-perpetuating joke. If we…
Home art invasion Dr. Joseph Kupersztoch recently retired as a professor of microbiology at UT-Southwestern Medical School to pursue his “other passion” — art. He says his family ran Galeria Mer-Kup in Mexico City for 34 years, and after taking early retirement at the age of 55, Kupersztoch planned to…
“Hell is a sort of high-class nightclub,” wrote George Orwell, “entry to which is reserved for Catholics only.” This sentiment is on stark display in the work of novelist Graham Greene, whose adulterous relationship (with the very married Catherine Welston, a wealthy farmer’s wife) propelled him to scrutinize the mechanics…
Magnolia, the third film from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, is a brilliant piece of garbage — mesmerizing, but only because you can’t believe someone has the temerity to put so much into so little. Three hours and eight minutes long, and all it has to say at the end is…
Of the readers who bought four million copies, in no fewer than 30 languages, of David Guterson’s 1995 best seller Snow Falling on Cedars, many have likely been looking forward to the movie version. Others have probably been dreading it. For better or worse, this multifarious story about nativist bigotry,…
