What a lot of people don’t get about Cheech and Chong is that they are playing characters. I’m not saying that Tommy Chong and Richard “Cheech” Marin have never smoked weed, or that they don’t subscribe somewhat to the culture they helped create, but they wouldn’t be funny if they…
What do you buy a white rhinoceros for his birthday? They don’t really have a sweet tooth–they spend most of their time eating grass–so treats are out. The indignities we heap on our dogs in the form of cute sweaters aren’t an option, ’cause a 6-year-old rhino weighs almost 4,000…
We all have our dirty little secrets. Some people dress up in women’s clothes like J. Edgar Hoover; some people tell their vegetarian children that the cow they are eating is a soy burger. Some people just love Disney stuff. They’ve seen every movie; they’ve been to Disney World more…
If you wondered what ever happened to Mark Curry, star of Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper, he’s been testing an old adage. I don’t mean the one about laughter being the best medicine, though I suppose he gave that one a trial as well. I mean the aphorism on aerosol cans…
It’s the beginning of the holiday season, and a perfect way to start it off is a story of a headless Hessian horseman throwing flaming jack-o’-lanterns at a nerdy schoolteacher. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has to be one of our favorite stories, and luckily the Creative Arts Theater and…
Do you dream about two-headed monsters with hands for eyeballs even when it’s not Halloween season? Talk about a nightmare–but apparently those bizarre images are trying to tell you something. Find out what when Dr. Laurel Clark decodes those subconscious movies that roll in your sleep. The Universal Language of…
Old adventure serials are fertile inspirational ground, as proven by Star Wars and Indiana Jones. They’re also ripe for parody, as in the off-Broadway play The Intergalactic Nemesis. A time-traveler arrives to warn the world of 1933 about an impending alien invasion. He rallies the aid of a Pulitzer-prize winner…
Of all the depressing stories found in the Bible, Job’s tale takes the cake. Literally suffering a fate worse than death, Job goes from prosperous to penniless in one day. The poor guy loses all his livestock, his children, his servants, his health and his wealth. “Curse God and die,”…
Once a year females turn into half-naked sex-pots and males turn into dead creepsters. Sorry, guys, that’s stereotyping: Sometimes the attached man becomes a pimp, to accompany his ho. Originality is difficult on Halloween. Let’s try: Men, you dress up in glorified lingerie with a tear-away can-can skirt, and ladies…
I was 6 years old when I saw my first zombie. Though it was only a 30-second television commercial for George Romero’s 1968 cult classic Night of the Living Dead, I was mesmerized and terrified by the black-and-white images of zombies slowly staggering through a graveyard. Romero’s classic and its…
Is there really a better way to spend Halloween than on a LoveSac watching David Bowie portray the immortal undead? The Inwood Theater is going all out for its midnight screenings this week with a reprisal of the “Vampires for the Hunger” event, which includes a food drive and special…
There’s something about trains that evokes a sense of mystery and timelessness. When a director makes one the focal point of his film and puts Ben Kingsley on board as a Russian detective, the tension and trepidation are palpable before you ever step foot in the theater. Despite this film’s…
If I were a billionaire, I would use my first billion to arrange a boxing match between K.D. Lang and Sarah Palin. This may seem like a waste of money to the common American, but I have good reasons. Hear me out: Palin’s from Alaska and Lang is from Canada,…
On a double bill with L.A. Confidential, Chinatown or just about any film made after 1970 about institutional corruption in Los Angeles, Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, a period drama based on a 1928 Los Angeles missing-child case, would come off as faintly geezer-ish noir lite. As LAPD scandals go, the case…
Pride and Glory doesn’t make any effort to disguise precisely what it is: a barely-held-together string of vignettes lifted from every cop movie ever made, save, perhaps, Turner & Hooch. It serves up clichés bound together by a flimsy, bored-out-of-its-own-skull story about bad cops, black sheep, good sons and a…
No single character represents The Good Negro in Tracey Scott Wilson’s explosive new play, getting its world premiere at Dallas Theater Center before a transfer to New York’s Public Theater. The title is a throwback to an old phrase used by Southern folk for blacks who didn’t threaten the white…
W. may be less frenzied than the usual Oliver Stone sensory bombardment, but in revisiting the early ’00s by way of the late ’60s, this psycho-historical portrait of George W. Bush has all the queasy appeal of a strychnine-laced acid flashback. Hideous re-creations of the shock-and-awful recent past merge with…
A young woman fights off her brutal husband; a gun goes off; a marble spins on the floor where a toddler sits unattended. From B-movie beginnings, The Secret Life of Bees, a family drama set in the civil-rights-era South, chugs along pleasantly like a television special tailored for the crossover…
When Jerry Russell plays the lead, that’s reason enough to see the show, even when that show is On Golden Pond, Ernest Thompson’s soggy 1979 dramedy about the irritations of growing old. Several other actors share the stage with Russell in the current production of the play at Contemporary Theatre…
Last month they took on the Germans, this month they’re taking on the world. Where will Addison strike next? But seriously, those with a hankering for travel and diverse cultural experiences should head on out to the town that brought us a parade of Dachshunds and a Dachshund race just…
Election? What election? Oh, that presidential thingy. Is that still going on? We hadn’t noticed, ’cause we’ve been in a freakin’ coma for the past eight years. Lucky for us, Steve Forbes, chairman and chief executive officer of Forbes Inc. and editor-in-chief of Forbes Magazine, will tell us all about…
Being a Top Chef fan in Dallas, you were forced to make a tough decision during Season 3. With two locals playing for top honors, you had to pick your pony early on; was it going to be Casey Thompson or Tre Wilcox? Well, it’s time to choose once more,…
