I enjoy movies. You might be surprised how often I have to prove the truth of that simple declarative statement. “Critics are too…critical,” people often gripe. “We go to the movies for escapism, not for art. You never like anything.” Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Oh, most…
thursday january 11 Caroline Aiken: There are musical legends that you see on MTV and Grammy Awards broadcasts, and then there are musical legends you have to be turned on to by friends. Veteran singer-songwriter-instrumentalist Caroline Aiken falls into the latter category. She has performed her brand of smooth, supple,…
If you’re watchin’ a movie and you see a guy droolin’ over a porno magazine, you already know the guy’s complete character description, right? He’s a serial killer who hates beautiful women. Or if you see a guy hangin’ out at a topless bar in a movie, he’s automatically a…
Is the theater really dead? Not in Big D. In fact, a quickie look at area productions in the past year shows that theater in the Metroplex is a surprisingly lively, diverse, and resilient form of entertainment. Consider the options a curious (but not impecunious) boulevardier had to choose from…
Textile art is not new. It’s ancient Turkish rugs handwoven by two old ladies in Hereke, or Flemish tapestries keeping drafts out of the castle while simultaneously recalling the Battle of Hastings. It’s also early Americana: a wedding ring bedspread passed down through generations. It is usually women’s work, functional…
thursday january 4 10th Annual Southwest Boat and Tackle Show: The press material for the 10th Annual Southwest Boat and Tackle Show is rife with references to “the outdoorsman” and “serving the needs of the outdoorsman.” If, in the words of Fran Leibovitz, you believe The Great Outdoors is what…
Like a remorseless killer in a grade-Z slasher flick, The Fantasticks keeps coming back. You can strafe it, bomb it, drive it over the edge of a cliff, but it will not die. Since its May 1960 opening, this small, saccharine musical has run through 10,000 off-Broadway performances, and is…
thursday december 28 Earthly Pleasures: By this time of year, our ears bleed spontaneously each time we hear a “fa-la-la-la-la,” so it’s easy to forget that the Christmas classics weren’t exactly fresh when December rolled around. It’s time for a new set of hard-candy favorites–or, in this case, a set…
Alan Paton’s classic 1948 novel Cry, The Beloved Country managed to be both political and literary in a century of world literature that often tried to achieve greatness through its politics alone. The French had their existentialists, the Germans their realists, but South Africa had scarcely registered as more than…
In an age when the British Royal Family is more of a sick joke than it is a necessary monarchical body, it would seem to follow that many of Shakespeare’s regal tragedies (Henry IV, Richard II, etc.) become noteworthy for their historical significance even as they lose their obvious relevance…
If playwrights and producers would only subscribe to the “Journal of the American Medical Association,” they wouldn’t have to waste so much time worrying about the nature of laughter and what generates it. As the journal points out, laughter is merely a matter of the levator labbi superioris muscle lifting…
It’s comforting to think of leadership as an innate ability among certain men and women, a talent much like any other, such as playing the harpsichord or doing long division in your head. “A born leader,” you often hear, as if no training were involved to demonstrate proficiency at it…
There is a scene from the long-awaited film version of Waiting to Exhale, tenderly crafted by director Forest Whitaker, that will take your breath away. Sitting in a hotel bar after being trounced by her soon-to-be ex-husband in preliminary divorce proceedings, Bernadine (Angela Bassett) is captivated by a man’s love–for…
Terry McMillan and Ron Bass are Hollywood’s hot item, collaborators on the most eagerly anticipated movie of the year, even the decade. Waiting to Exhale, McMillan’s book, has sold about three million copies to date, camping out on The New York Times bestseller list for 38 weeks. And Waiting to…
Our topic today is the Woman of Easy Virtue. Bless her little heart. I’ve been hearin’ a lot lately about the big bad Womanizer. Oooooooooooo, what a piece of scummy crud he is. We’ve got Congressional Womanizers, Big-Business Womanizers, Showbiz Womanizers and, of course, the old-fashioned Traveling-Salesman Womanizer. These are…
thursday december 21 Winter Solstice Celebration: When Dallas Observer ran an item about the Summer Solstice drum celebration, we received angry calls from organizers because the term “pagan rituals” was used. Maybe we should have said “pagan-influenced,” or “paganish in a nice way” instead. Now the Winter Solstice Celebration is…
All right, that’s enough. Let’s stop stealin’ one another’s football teams. I was just gettin’ used to the Carolina Panthers, for God’s sake, and the Jacksonville Jagwires, and now they’re expecting the words “Nashville Oilers” to come out of my mouth? Heck, I still can’t say “Indianapolis Colts,” much less…
Heat, writer-director Michael Mann’s heavy-hitting crime drama, has some eye-catching images, a wonderfully ambiguous mood, and numerous detailed characters ably performed by a great cast. You have to admire the brazen magnitude it’s reaching for, even though the film’s impressive scope ultimately works against it. The central narrative–about the symbiotic…
It’s the old dilemma: Spectacle vs. substance–which do you choose for a movie? Ideally, you choose both–even if in unequal doses. Jurassic Park, for all the backlash it finally endured (ranging from gripes that the special effects dominated the actors to the complaint that there were only 10 minutes of…
White Man’s Burden has a lofty goal: to put the races in the other guy’s shoes. But being released as it is in the wake of O.J. Simpson’s acquittal, White Man’s Burden comes off as a Hollywood knee-jerk take on race–something like those “in-depth,” 300-page “real-story” books released 17 days…
thursday december 14 The Littlest Angel: The Dance Consortium is a troupe for people who don’t like too much of any one dance style, but are turned on by a blend of the best of many kinds. The Consortium mixes classical ballet with modern choreography and, whenever it’s appropriate, tries…
What, the Dickens again at the Dallas Theater Center? You bet your suet pudding. This is DTC’s 12th annual production of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and practice, as they say, makes perfect. With enough dazzling visual effects to satisfy the Andrew Lloyd Webber whizbang crowd, and with an emotional punch…
