Arts & Culture

How do you teach a lesson about giving in today’s society? Include shoes. Perpetuating good shoe karma beats no good karma at all. The Elves and the Shoemaker is a timeless tale about a poor cobbler who gives away his last pair of shoes and ends up with the elf-made…

Art and wine are a great mix. (And, no, I don’t mean pouring your Cabernet Sauvignon on a Picasso.) If you’re a fan of both, check out the monthly art series at the Uptown wine bar Vino 100, 2909 McKinney Ave. Featured in June is the work of Stacy Tomlinson,…

Libby Mae Brown said it best in Waiting for Guffman when she said, “I’ll always have a place at the DQ,” and Catherine Grace Cline would have to agree. As the voice of Susan Gregg Gilmore’s coming-of-age story Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, Catherine Grace’s dream of moving…

A somewhat nasty and ungrateful adage says, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” While this may apply to Catholic school nuns, it cannot be said of Karl Umlauf, an artist who for more than 40 years has been proving that he can, he does and he teaches. His…

Give me a good old-school horror movie over the super-scare tactics of today, and I’ll gladly bring the popcorn. I like a good shock, a good jump in the seat as much as the next sucker, but I’m also a fan of that slight bit of kitsch that makes a…

For independent filmmakers, creating a movie is truly a labor of love. Aspiring directors often exhaust their savings and devote countless hours of work to turn an artistic vision from idea to a movie. After that, would you want to subject your cinematic masterpiece to the judgment of a raucous…

It’s obvious that summer in North Texas is an excellent time to catch a stage production. What better way to forget about the coma-inducing heat, the crushing smog and the legions of pink polo shirt wearing frat boys populating your regular bar than to slide into an air-conditioned theater and…

A lot happens as time spans more than a decade. Hair styles change, people expand and contract, politics sees new faces, landscapes morph. ELLEven not only marks the 11 years Elledanceworks has spent as a company, but it’s also a physical and visual tribute to those experiences and subsequent responses…

Twenty-one was a damned good age, ripe with artistic possibilities, so one would think an art show called Twenty-One might explore some of these classic coming-of-age staples: your first legal drink, college parties, young love, cramming for tests about stuff you’ll forget in a couple short months, young lust, student…

What if you could see the mental plan for Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”? Or a start-to-finish of Picasso’s Blue Period? The notes, snapshots and sketches Hemingway used to create The Sun Also Rises? These three legendary artists and many others used and still use Moleskine journals to chart, graph, lament and…

Taller and pinker than the Statue of Liberty, the gigantic Energizer Bunny Hot Hare Balloon is only one of the dozens of rainbow-colored hot air balloons at the DFW Summer Balloon Classic in Midlothian, Texas, this weekend. The “Aviation Extravaganza” (or so it’s billed) will also feature precision skydivers and…

Anyone who’s taken a leisurely 90-mph drive down Woodall Rogers Freeway recently has to have noticed the bajillion-dollar expansion of the Dallas Arts District. Sure, we’ll always be the Kennedy assassination site and home to J.R. to all the willfully ignorant boors of the world who still think everyone in…

When I was 12, Howard Stern was the morning disc jockey on the local rock station WWDC-101.1 FM. I was 12, and I loved him. Over the next 25 years or so, I would occasionally bump into his syndicated show on the radio and couldn’t help but listen. I don’t…

In Damn Yankees, a fan of the Washington Senators (it occurs in the 1950s) swaps his soul to Satan in return for a matchless baseball prowess. He uses that prowess to conquer the dominating ’50s Yankees and grab the pennant for his Senators. This adaptation of the venerable Faust tale…

For those people who look at art and say “I can do that,” this show is for you. Especially those of you who find comfort in not throwing trash away. The Goss-Michael Foundation will be presenting the works of Tim Noble and Sue Webster, who create mind-blowing sculptures from trash…

If you’re one of those poor, misguided souls who have inexplicably failed to read J.K. Rowling’s brilliant and bewitching tales about wizards — and you know you’ll never pick them up — you should immediately clear your schedule for Tuesday evening. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the film based…

It is certainly an interesting question: In today’s media-saturated environment, with Facebook, MySpace, IM and the like, can one really maintain anonymity? There are countless profiles on social networking sites, free blogging sites where one can record his/her thoughts, dating sites, etc. It really has gotten to the point where…

With the nominees for the upcoming presidential election finally secure, I know we’re all itchin’ to vote. So listen up, because unlike in November (Google: electoral college), your voice will be heard. For the final night of AllGood Cafe’s Wednesday Night Film Festival screening films by Francis Ford Coppola, they’ve…

If someone had told me when I was a teenager that in the future John Waters would be producing family entertainment, I would have laughed in their face like a mad hyena. Back then my favorite John Waters film was Pink Flamingos, which ends with a 300-pound transvestite eating a…

You can’t help but be fascinated with what you’re taught to fear. Maybe that’s why we like brunettes in high heels and too much lipstick. And maybe that’s why kids (and some adults) are so fascinated with snakes. Well, if you’ve got young ones interested in our slithery friends, The…