Inkheart Brendan “Kids’ Choice” Fraser returns to the multiplex day-care as “Mo” Folchart, antiquarian-book-repairman-cum-adventurer. In Inkheart’s opening chapter, he’s identified as a member of a race of “Silvertongues”—those who, when they read aloud, can suck people out of and into the texts that they’re reciting from. Mo has abstained from…
Violet Sherlock’s Last Case Plenty of musicals tell the story of an ugly girl yearning to be pretty. My Fair Lady, Funny Girl, The Apple Tree, Carnival, 110 in the Shade and most recently Shrek the Musical feature ugly ducklings longing for swanhood. How they get there usually requires the…
The world of animated film is in the midst of a paradigm change. Once the domain of kiddie movies, the art form that makes candlesticks sing and seafood swagger has now taken up residence in the world of art-house flicks. And while most of us assume that animated movies feature…
If you’ve ever watched an episode of Austin City Limits, then you’ve no doubt heard Gary P. Nunn’s “London Homesick Blues,” (“I wanna go home with the armadillo/good country music from Amarillo to Abilene/the friendliest people and the prettiest women you ever seen”) which served as the show’s theme song…
Every girl remembers her first love. For some girls it was the boy who lived next door, or the one who gave you your first kiss after a junior high dance. For me it was a little different. Mine was a 34-year-old womanizing, parapsychology professor who vanquished ghosts and lived…
Mike Epps has some huge bleeping shoes to fill. Rising up from 2000’s Next Friday to Resident Evil: Extinction and on to Hancock and Soul Men, Epps has been making his mark on film. His comic relief is easy and natural, but his next role will be far from effortless:…
Comedian Gary Hood is a comedy legend. Not the kind of legend that you know of because he’s been in some dumbass Dane Cook movie that made an astonishing amount at the box office, but because of the people he’s worked with, written jokes for, written jokes with, opened for,…
I’m currently debating the relation of happy hours and spa services. On one hand, I could see that the more happy hours one attends the fewer relaxing services one needs to invest in. De-stressing via intoxication. On the other, however, alcohol–especially high-cal cocktails–do things to the skin and body, so…
American artist Allan Kaprow first used the term “Happening” to describe an art party on fellow artist George Segal’s New Jersey chicken farm, but we all know how that turned out, with hippies co-opting the phrase in the late ’60s to describe just about any place where good times were…
If you’ve ever flipped through a field guide of birds or visited the new Trinity River Audubon Center, then you owe a debt of gratitude to the late, great John James Audubon, the namesake of the Audubon organization and the preeminent wildlife artist of his day. Audubon’s Birds of America…
Every few years, some old-timey crafting skill catches on with trendy young people. Cool kids wore macrame hemp jewelry when I was in school (though this was as much an unsubtle way to let people know you smoked weed as it was fashion statement). Later, knitting needles and a bag…
Before pop-culture guru Chuck Klosterman ever railed against John Cusack and Coldplay for ramping up the expectations in the relationships of actual living people, we had Neil Simon raising the bar. In one little rom-com of a play, he’d create conflict, diversion and some sort of wrap-up to show that…
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, there’s a scene toward the end in which the main character, Dave, is flying through space in a pod, encountering one strange, brightly colored landscape after another. There are no signs of human life, and the scenery seems vaguely earthlike but also very alien, which…
The local art scene this year has been nearly dominated by traveling exhibits. There is no escaping the DMA’s Tut and his accompanying entourage of nested coffins and gold bling, all advertised from every DART bus and lamp-post in Dallas proper. The Kimbell celebrated an Impressionist coup in 2008, with…
Honestly, the only thing I really know about Chris Botti is that he looks a whole lot like Robert Downey, Jr.’s character from Tropic Thunder (pre-surgery). See, if I read the words “smooth jazz” in a musician’s bio, visions of Kenny G playing over a war-torn, post apocalyptic wasteland fill…
Um, brides-to-be? May I please have your attention? Donnie Brown from Whose Wedding Is It Anyway? and Married Away is going to be at the Dallas Bridal Show this weekend. You heard me. Donnie effing Brown. The guy who can keep you and your guy from ripping each others’ throats…
People love or hate the word “metroplex.” It’s easier than listing the many towns surrounding Dallas. But, then those towns lose some of their identity. Your Dallas: Carrollton Connections spotlights our neighbors to the north in an exhibit that includes nineteenth century documents, displays of Josey Rancho and the Blanton…
When young college English majors are looking for a brooding, introspective, poetic prince, we fall a little bit in love with Hamlet. But by the time we hit 29–and have worked through a string of emotionally unavailable, singularly focused, potentially homicidal men–we realize why Ophelia killed herself. Though we haven’t…
Kids are like sponges, soaking up information left and right–especially the bookworms. I’m sure most rued the day they picked up a copy of Animal Farm, expecting a tale of Old MacDonald or something and instead getting an earful about the terrors of Animalism/Stalinism and a distaste for pork. Well,…
We live in a digital world, but there’s still satisfaction to be found in holding a book. Less glare, for one thing. Even better–bookmaking captures and displays personal stories, art and history. Paper Nerds teaches what may become a lost art. At its next workshop, learn to sew a binding…
Enough with the stacks of Disney DVDs and the XBox’ed Netflix. Go out to a movie. Go out to some kids movies. You know, with the kids. Where they can see awesome family flicks with other kids and their families. Where they might discover that one movie moment that lives…
Going to Mockingbird Station is always a joy, whether you’re idling behind a soccer mom in a $70,000 gas-guzzler while she loads up her four screaming reasons for not getting divorced, or buying IKEA-quality furniture at twice the price from West Elm. OK, it’s not so bad–the Angelika is more…
