Calling all pundits. It’s a baffling caprice of the zeitgeist to have two studio Westerns released in the same month, 30-odd years after the genre basically gave up the ghost. James Mangold’s better-than-competent and highly crowd-pleasing 3:10 to Yuma has provided a harmonica fanfare for something more ambitious and polarizing…
It will no doubt be said time and again of Michael Clayton: best John Grisham adaptation ever. Only, of course, it did not spring from the billion-dollar mind of the attorney-turned-franchise, but from Tony Gilroy, who made his big-screen bow 15 years ago as the screenwriter of the ice-skating melodrama…
“Beautiful” and “cruel”: That’s how director Ang Lee describes Eileen Chang’s 1979 short story about obsessive love and effortless betrayal in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, a tale upon which Lee has based his epic-length Lust, Caution. Writing in the afterword to a recently republished version of the 54-page story, which took Chang…
Need a smile? Say Jeeves. No butler ever butled better than the one British-born humorist P.G. Wodehouse created as deadpan comic foil for ditzy upper-crust bachelor Bertie Wooster. The characters, and several silly companions, come gloriously, hilariously to the fore in the farcical Right Ho, Jeeves, now playing as the…
Billiards is one of the few sports that’s as taxing on a computer screen as it is in real life. It’s played in pubs, after all, and its legendary star was named “Fats.”Unfortunately, most virtual billiard games are behind the 8-ball in terms of quality, with poor physics and convoluted…
The Audrey Hepburn DVD Collection (Paramount)Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Collector’s Edition (Sony)Christmas Television Favorites (Warner Bros.)The Comedians of Comedy: Live at the Troubadour (Image)Criminal Minds: The Second Season (Paramount)Day Night Day Night (IFC)Entourage: Season Three, Part 2 (HBO)Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (Fox)Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on…
We often wonder what it’s like for artists slugging it out on the tribute circuit, dragging out their best versions of songs by dead guys (or guys we wish were dead like, say, Steve Perry). Luckily for jazz musicians/tribute artists Patti Austin, Byron Stripling and Paul Mercer Ellington, the source…
What do you get the 50-year-old that has everything? When it comes to the Dallas Opera, you don’t really get them anything, you go look at all the stuff it already has. Sounds strange, but trust us. The Central Library, 1515 Young St., is helping the ol’ Opsey celebrate the…
At first we mistook Honk Jr. to be a French adaptation of the 1979 autobiography of Bocephus, Living Proof. However, though it would certainly be entertaining to see an actor sing “Family Tradition” in a slight French accent, this was not to be. Instead Honk Jr. adapts the time-honored tale…
If you’d asked me to talk about bluegrass 10 or 12 years ago, chances are I’d have told you a story about my Aunt Velma, sittin’ on the porch of her house trailer in Marianna, Arkansas, slapping her substantial knees in tune to Uncle Bobby’s banjo stylings. But I’d like…
Way back in the early ’80s, there was a magical Puerto Rican band filled with hit singles and pretty boys breaking hearts in shopping malls from San Juan to San Francisco. This band was called Menudo. They were one of the first “boy bands,” destined to stay that way due…
Artist and designer Evan Hecox is largely known for his skateboard work, which makes fine use of the rolling canvases by filling them with bright color and subtle commentary on “the everyday existence of the average person as they traverse the detritus of the modern metropolis.” He’s also shown his…
To refer to Super Diamond as simply a Neil Diamond tribute band is a gross understatement and a disservice to all involved. The San Francisco band faithfully performs a full range of mega-hits from the sequined troubadour’s extensive song catalog, but they do so with the full blessing of the…
After a lifetime of expensive, useless visits to Western doctors, homeopathy is tempting. Researching online, I’ve come across some wild-ass homeopathic meds, like this vial from a first-aid kit: Lachesis (Bushmaster Snake) 9x for “black, smelly wounds [and] disease state when body is thoroughly poisoned, great weakness.” Jeez, my Red…
If Perez Hilton had been around in the 1940s, Citizen Kane’s very existence would have been daily blog fodder, in amongst posts about Bette Davis’ drinking habits and Errol Flynn’s sexuality. I can just see the blue-haired blogger foaming at the mouth to write about William Randolph Hearst’s efforts to…
Attorney Morris Dees is best-known for creating the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization founded in 1971 to protect civil rights while fighting racism. The center provides free legal counsel to victims of hate crimes and has won several landmark cases against white supremacist groups, which have responded in typically…
It’s autumn at the Arboretum and that means it’s time for the Great Pumpkin Festival. I’m glad the Arboretum let us know that fall has come, because since moving to Texas I honestly don’t know what time of the year it is anymore. Apparently there are nine months of summer…
Remember the “girl power” movement from the ’90s? Everywhere you looked, there was a pre-teen girl wearing a “Girl Power!” T-shirt with little mod flowers all over it, and us young ladies were supposed to look up to that lovable band of bra-burning feminists, the Spice Girls. And while I…
I never got into Jane Austen. The idea of corsets, arranged relationships, meddlers and bewitching looks that lead logically thinking folk to throw caution to the wind (in their imagination if not in real life) didn’t do much for me as a teen. I was satisfied to stick with fiction…
From global warming to research on the causes of cancer (everything!), science is a real downer. War, death, pestilence! The sure and quick destruction of all we hold dear! So travel back to a simpler time, when science was about making fun stuff in class with household products. The Arcadia…
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is a force to be reckoned with in specialty cinema, especially since their Magnolia at the Modern series provides Cowtown’s only real outlet for independent film. With all those museums and that resplendent downtown, you would think they’d consider an indie movie theater…
A friend once said that Loreena McKennitt was what you’d get if you sent Sarah McLachlan into the forest for several years to build a mystery. Now, it’s true, both women are Canadian singer-songwriters concerned with various charities, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. McKennitt’s ethereal recordings have…
