The English language is full of peculiar words–just ask anyone who’s studied for the GRE or LSAT. Here’s one of recent discovery: dramaturg. The definition is as unconventional as the word itself. It’s a person in the theater whose responsibilities range from casting a play and assisting the director to…
The Eclipse: The Eclipse is a curious Irish ghost story that fiddles with the recipe just enough to produce interesting results. Solidly built and middle-aged, Michael Farr (Ciarán Hinds) isn’t the kind of vulnerable-looking nightgown-clencher usually cast to jump at bumps in the night. Working for a literary festival in…
The Joneses: For a while, at least, a pitch-black tale of our times: Four business partners masquerading as a happy family move into suburbia and sell their friends and neighbors on their early-adopter, newer-than-brand-new layaway lifestyle. David Duchovny, Demi Moore, Amber Heard and Ben Hollingsworth are the client-sponsored grifters; they…
The Perfect Game: Director William Dear now appears to be your go-to guy for forgettable, family-friendly baseball flicks. Following his Angels in the Outfield and The Sandlot: Heading Home is this Downy-soft, by-the-numbers biopic with Christian undertones about nine poor kids from Monterrey, Mexico, who became the first non-U.S. team…
The Secret of Kells: Brendan (voiced by Evan McGuire) is a medieval boy monk who dreams of illuminating sacred books. The carrot-topped lad possesses more imaginative brio than can be contained by the cloistered life he leads under the sternly overprotective eye of his disillusioned uncle, the Abbott (Brendan Gleeson),…
Vincere: According to Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere, Mussolini was nearly as much of a bully in the bedroom as he was in office. Il Duce would eventually get busy with the Pope, but in the mid-1910s, he screwed—and screwed over—one Ida Dalser, who becomes this epic melodrama’s nobly suffering Jeanne d’Arc…
The pretty girl gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop in reasons to be pretty, the third and last installment in Dallas Theater Center’s ongoing trilogy of Neil LaBute’s Beauty Plays. In the first two—The Shape of Things and Fat Pig—the good-lookers have all the power. But in pretty, directed…
Kick-Ass, the Matthew Vaughn-directed adaptation of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s graphic novel, sets itself up as an unadulterated exposé of the teenage mind. Tired of being mugged by high school thugs in a Manhattan that’s notably scummier than the real thing, our hero Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) wonders,…
Instrumentalists are a unique breed. Of course we have all played something once or twice at the prodding of our parents and band recruiters, and some of us thought that we were sure to rock the six-string as soon as we picked up a guitar. But, once we realized the…
There’s a great Twilight Zone episode called “Eye of the Beholder.” In it, for those who haven’t seen it, what is beautiful all depends on who is looking, and even a pig snout can be the height of beauty if the right person is looking…and that’s only one bit of…
Remember playing cowboys and Indians? Those were the good ol’ days. Or were they? From the legend and history of Pocahontas to John Wayne’s films to the ever-popular tale known as The Indian in the Cupboard, culture has always been known to negatively stereotype the relationship between cowboy and Indian…
Late-night happy hour? What the what? That’s seriously the greatest idea someone has had since deciding being a bubbleologist could be a job. Samar by Stephan Pyles recently kicked off a late-night happy hour called “Samar Under the Stars” every Wednesday. From 8 to 11 p.m., guests will enjoy $2…
Everybody’s gotta start somewhere, and these young playwrights and directors are starting with New Visions, New Voices, a spring playwriting festival now in its 16th year featuring work written and directed by undergraduate SMU theater students. Brandon Sterrett directs Pretty, Smart, Poetic by Brigham Mosley, a play about a family…
Whatever happened to good ol’ cheerful propaganda? You know, like in the ’30s when the world was in the shit, and theater gave us dancing gold diggers happily singing, “We’re in the money.” Sure, it was whistling past a graveyard, but that’s better than staring into the graveyard. We say…
Sure as no photographer can forget his first camera, no sailor ever drifts far from the memory of his first dinghy. Years after he sailed competitively, and long after he first began taking pictures, Bob Chilton has produced an exhibition that combines his two longtime passions: a richly colored set…
Since 1989, the Meyerson has hosted countless world-class, high-class events. Usually the symphony plays a lovely concert featuring the classical music from Mozart or Brahms, people sip white wine at halftime and then they leave after the show feeling super artsy and cultured. So when we saw that Kathy Griffin…
When in doubt, just dance. Or at least that’s Lady Gaga’s philosophy. This year’s Dance for the Planet Festival does just that. Whether you can shake it or have no rhythm at all, Dance for the Planet invites the community for a weekend full of pilates, flamenco, hip-hop, salsa and…
There is something about big, bouncy balloons that turns me into a kid again. Not sure what it is about the inflatable bag full of helium that mesmerizes me and brings out my inner child, but thank you, Bartolomeu de Gusmão. He would be the person responsible for the invention…
After a winter like the one we shivered through this year, signs of spring are especially welcome. It’s a good feeling to put the Snuggies into storage, drag out last year’s gladiator sandals, and get out in the warm sun for a little bit of overdue vitamin D exposure. The…
The recently reopened Trees club in Deep Ellum may seem an odd place to hold a stand-up comedy show. After all, this is the historic venue that has traditionally been home to rock shows, including the infamous 1991 Nirvana melee wherein Kurt Cobain and bouncer Turner Van Blarcum traded blows…
The sights and sounds of a guitar show are invigorating for guitarists of all experience levels, and are nearly enough to drive any axe-slinger into a shopping frenzy. But there’s another underrated sense that I’ve always associated with a convention hall packed with musicians and vendors: smell. The tang of…
A district attorney in Wisconsin has threatened to prosecute teachers who follow a new state law that bans abstinence-only sex education and requires sex-education classes to provide age-appropriate information. That’s not exactly surprising coming from a people who call themselves cheeseheads, but then, Texans have nothing to brag about when…
