Henry David Thoreau’s Walden was published way back in 1854, yet it continues to inspire readers, environmentalists and thinkers over 150 years later with its tale of simple living and the beauty of nature. Dallas photographer Scot Miller had the honor of taking photographs of the Walden Woods (located in…
In moving the hit film to the stage, with dozens of show tunes, the edgy humor of the DreamWorks flicks gets lost in a mountain of in-jokes about other Broadway shows. Now Shrek, Donkey and Fiona seem to exist in a sort of fairytale Shubert Alley, where every character knows…
Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer winner from 1938 is on few critics’ lists of plays they’d love to see again. It’s usually done with heavy doses of quaintness and really bad New England accents. Not so in the new and surprisingly fresh production at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre. Director Terry Martin, who also…
At some point in adult life, things that are supposed to symbolize innocent fun in childhood become terrifying. Or maybe the fear is always there, but only as adults can we finally admit that the clown at a neighbor’s birthday party haunted our dreams or that we didn’t want to…
Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps doesn’t have the clean, fable-like arc of its predecessor. Everything is so much murkier now. The white-shoe “Keller-Zabel” firm employs whiz-kid proprietary trader Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf), a specialist in alternative energy, whose story begins in oblivious, pre-crash 2008, as he sights a…
Published five years ago, Kazuo Ishiguro’s massively praised Never Let Me Go is set in an alternate universe where life has been extended and catastrophic illness eliminated thanks to an evolutionary advance, namely the harvesting of vital organs from specially bred human clones. But that’s backstory. Despite its lurid premise,…
What Hamlet says about mothers and sons, Henry IV says about fathers (and father figures) and sons. Shakespeare’s drama about medieval kings, now getting a handsome, if gimmick-strewn, production at Dallas Theater Center, presents a troubled royal son, Hal, the Prince of Wales, and his uneasy relationships with his father…
I first saw the 1971 film Billy Jack when I was about twelve, while attending an idealistic, socialist, Zionist summer camp in the mountains of West Virginia, so the whole thing seemed probable to me. We were living this idyllic, lefty-pinko life, with peace and love on our brains, much…
Go make some Mexican arts and crafts! It’s a matter of life and death! Really! Well, sort of. You won’t be saving the world, dismantling a bomb or saving a life or anything, but if you go to the “Life and Death” workshop you’ll have the chance to think about…
The best way to spice up a party is to grab hold of a theme and take it as far as you possibly can. Having an animal-themed party? Make the guests wear animal face masks and serve them nothing but cream-cheese penguins. The event chairs of the 2010 Great Gatsby…
Pair the cultured air of John Malkovich with the preachiness of Sean Penn and the looks of former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill (with some serious dental work), and you’ve got an idea what kind of a dinner companion you’ll have in Garrett Oliver, the craft beer guru and…
There are a few childhood characters that people should never outgrow, and Curious George is most likely at the top of that list. The mischievous monkey and his adventures (along with the Man with the Yellow Hat’s awesome ability to fix every situation) have peppered our childhood memories for decades,…
Do you like to think of Jesus as a mischievous badger? Do you like to shake and bake? Is laughing at French people a real good time? Do you think “diablo” is Spanish for “fighting chicken?” If you love Talladega Nights like Kate Gosselin loves stupid hair and paparazzi, imagine…
The Southwest Airlines State Fair Classic pits the Tigers of Grambling State University against the Panthers of Prairie View A & M in a historic contest that is arguably the biggest event of the year for Dallas’ black community. But seeing as how neither team is really challenging for a…
How well-established were you when you were just 25? Remember that year? The year you finally learned not to mix your liquors, that 401Ks might be a good idea, that paying rent is truly better than couch-surfing, and that Friday night is a good night to stay in and decompress…
Yo bro-dawgs, round up that skirt you took home from the Loon last night (or was it Social House?) and iron your best whisker-washed $200 Ed Hardy khakis: it’s time for the All About Uptown Festival. The day-long event showcases the best of Uptown, which according to organizers is food,…
Tired of combing through dozens of Netflix recommendations for fresh flicks, only to be disappointed? Well, launch yourself off the couch and drive down to the Angelika. VideoFest, an annual local film festival showcasing documentaries, independent and experimental films, starts tonight. The Video Association of Dallas says the festival is…
According to my admittedly Looney Toons-influenced impression of how dog racing works, greyhounds chase a mechanical rabbit around a track. I don’t have much more personal experience with human races than I do with dog races, but as far as I know they don’t use a comparable incentive for the…
Glen Campbell is best known as a country-pop singer with a knack for plaintive, almost confessional songs like “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Wichita Lineman.” but he was also a much in demand session guitarist and bassist throughout the 1960s, playing on the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds…
The bigger the show, the smaller the revival. Vintage American musicals keep getting make-unders on Broadway. The trend began with 2005’s Sweeney Todd, a shoestring affair imported from London that forced the cast to double as the onstage “orchestra.” Star Patti Lupone awkwardly blew into a tuba. And thus diminished,…
Elegant opening credits, written like calligraphy on a wedding invitation, yield to a couple in blunt close-up—unhappy, interracial, tearfully celebrating their anniversary in a shopping-mall restaurant. After an unfathomable exchange, he presents her with an antique bowl found on eBay and, after reciting a guffaw-worthy litany of sins, promises to…
Directing himself as a verifiable big-movie lead after some time in supporting-actor Triple-A ball, director/star Ben Affleck models a full line of warm-up suits to play Doug MacRay, a second-generation blue-collar stickup man, brains of his four-man bank crew. The setting is Charlestown, the square-mile majority-Irish Boston neighborhood that shares…
