Confessions of a Superhero (Arts Alliance) As one of those quoted on the package (“A more beautiful documentary you’re unlikely to find”), I can only reiterate my earlier praise: Matt Ogens’ doc, about mortals dressed as superheroes trolling Hollywood Boulevard for tourists’ loose change, is stunning to look at —…
America! The Complete Series (RHI) Barney Miller: The Complete Second Season (Sony) Best Actress Collection (Fox) Best Picture Academy Award Winners Collection (Fox) Blonde Ambition (Sony) Butterfly Collectors (Koch Vision) The Catherine Cookson Anthology (Koch Vision) ER: The Complete Eighth Season (Warner Bros.) The Game Plan (Disney) Hawaii Five-O: The…
Regarding the irrelevance of Untraceable: First of all, torture is so 2007, and just because this drab little thriller with a flashy love of pain imagines itself a “critique of violence” doesn’t make it any less superfluous. Second of all, untraceable? Ha! You wish. While it’s true that the villain…
Persepolis is a small landmark in feature animation. Not because of technical innovation—though it moves fluidly enough, and its drawings have a handcrafted charm forgotten in the era of the cross-promoted-to-saturation CGI-‘toon juggernauts—but because it translates a sensitive, introspective, true-to-life, “adult” comic story into moving pictures. While Robert Crumb only…
Something terrible befalls the title character in Edmond just before David Mamet’s terse little play begins. It’s not important what that terrible thing is. Mamet, as is his way, never tells. Best guesses—that Edmond’s been fired from his big job on Wall Street, that he’s had a nervous breakdown, that…
Note to Velvet Revolver: You are not Guns N’ Roses. Close, but no banana. I feel the need to mention this because your concert ticket prices (ranging from $67.50 to $125) would indicate that you believe yourself to be the reunited Appetite for Destruction-era GNR. For that I would gladly…
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Dallas Jewish LearningFest. His topic? The Difference Between Nothing and Zip: The Mystical G-D of the Jews. In it he’ll take a look at the influence of the Kabbalists and early Hasidism on Jewish spirituality. He will also discuss…
I just might be the laziest birder in Dallas. Sure, I’ve got the field guides, even a couple of feeders. But I just can’t seem to get my ass up and make haste to the great outdoors on the weekends, content instead to sit by my bedroom window in my…
I once saw an episode of MTV Cribs that featured Alanis Morisette hanging out in her Canadian loft, gleefully making a list of things that were ironic to her. The pad had an Asian theme, complete with Buddhas, altars, big temple-style doors and such. She even had a bunch of…
He’s played with faeries, talked to angels, fronted the electro-drag She-Dick and now he’s got an exhibition of original artwork. He’s Dan Paul Roberts, and folks, if someone can do all those things, be called a “wizardly gentleman” by the Magnolia Gallery’s Scott Horn and hail from Wichita Falls, then…
The world’s fascination with Anne Frank, nearly 60 years after her death, can probably be explained by one quote: “In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart.” Anne Frank wrote that in her diaries after giving up her childhood to live in hiding from the…
I didn’t cry when Bobby Brown left New Edition. ‘Cause well, Bell Biv DeVoe kinda had it goin’ on for a while there. Producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and the Shocklees had ol’ BBD bustin’ out with “Poison” (to which I can still sing the lyrics) and the whole…
Oh, to be a person of leisure. To have reason for a chaise or fainting couch and have occasion to lie upon it. To schedule hair appointments at hours that don’t make my stylist want to strangle me. To eat meals seated. To not drink my low-fat yogurt smoothie whilst…
When you were a kid, did you ever suspect that some of the seemingly pointless busy work you were forced to do actually had some ulterior purpose? Those assignments that you just knew the teacher wasn’t grading: What did she really do with those word searches? Were there secret messages…
You have to wonder about the need for Grady Spears’ The Texas Cowboy Kitchen cookbook around these parts. If we want Matt’s Famous Austin-Style Chalupas, we can just head over to Matt’s in Lakewood, and we should all know how to make a proper Frito pie. But if you’re new…
If you love to travel and you haven’t really decided what you want to do when you grow up, here’s one suggestion: Learn photography. You don’t even have to develop an identifiable style. There will always be a demand for pretty landscapes and endangered animals. Last summer, Dallas photographer Tom…
Unreal Tournament III is ideal for overcaffeinated teenage boys with PlayStation 3s, broadband internet connections, extensive online friend lists, hours and hours of time to blow, and — just for good measure — a deep appreciation of the steroid-addled dystopian sci-fi aesthetic. You know, the one where men are 450…
Alex Haley’s Queen (Warner Bros.) Amazing Planet Earth (Questar) The Attic (Allumination) Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (Warner Bros.) Breaker Morant (Image) Extras: The Complete Series (HBO) Dora the Explorer: Undercover Dora (Paramount) DragonLance: Dragons of the Autumn Twilight (Paramount) Good Luck Chuck (Lionsgate) In the Heat of the Night:…
Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest (Fox) As someone with no use for Seth MacFarlane’s potty-mouthed Simpsons rip, I’ll admit to choking out a few giggles during his Star Wars send-up — though, truth be told, it’s slightly less daring than Spaceballs and, sure, Porn Wars. Stunningly faithful to the 30-year-old…
If Diane Keaton were a comer in 2007, she’d likely be stuck in romantic comedies cooked up in movie studio test kitchens. No Godfather for her. No Annie Hall, no Shoot the Moon, no Reds. Filmmakers who now use Katherine Heigl as their go-to girl would be flummoxed by the…
“I do think the writing is pessimistic—all that stuff about life being a tragic experience,” says Angela Stark (played by newcomer Hayley Atwell) early in Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream. An actress talking about the play she’s appearing in at a small London theater, Stark could just as well be describing…
It took nine years for Godzilla to rise up out of the ashes of Hiroshima and wreak his destruction on the good people of Tokyo in 1954. Here in America, it’s taken just over six years for the idea of an escapist disaster movie set on the streets of New…
