The two Boeing 767s that hit the World Trade Center on September 11 were traveling at 400 to 600 miles per hour and, loaded with passengers and fuel, weighed almost half a million pounds each. Only an expert could attempt to analyze the forces that brought down the buildings. Morgan…
Call me crazy, but when I first heard Kenny Chesney married Renée Zellweger, I actually thought they’d last. Not that I put much faith in celebrity marriages, but it just seemed romantic that the Hollywood starlet from Katy, Texas, embraced her rural roots and fell for the “aw, shucks” charms…
Black Cinematheque Dallas is shining a spotlight on black film. And Marilyn Clark, the organization’s founder, is directing the show. BCD wants to dispel negative images of blacks and replace them with truthful, positive images. It does this by presenting black films by aspiring and accomplished artists from around the…
The only Peruvian songstress we’re familiar with is the four-octave legend Yma Sumac. Her mambo/tiki/Les Baxter fare laced with the legend of her royal Incan heritage rotated on Mom’s record player most weekend mornings. Peruvian singer Eva Ayllón, however, was also influenced by an elder’s musical tastes at a young…
Before Goosebumps and Harry Potter invaded every elementary school’s Scholastic book fair, Sideways Stories from Wayside School ruled the K-5 world. The charming, nonsensical stories of 30 weirdo students had little in the way of life-long lessons; boys and girls slept through class, pulled pigtails, talked to dead rats, turned…
An artist can find a lot of inspiration by crossing the Trinity River and heading south. First there’s Oak Cliff. Then there’s Carl’s Corner, the Czech Stop, the Brazos and Austin. Go further and you’ll find the cool, clear springs of New Braunfels and San Marcos, the Alamo and eventually,…
The first indication that something is horribly wrong with Mass Hysteria’s particular brand of sketch comedy is the fact that they bill their show as “comedy sketch.” Second, jokes about online dating and spam e-mails are no longer so much pieces of fresh observational humor as they are case studies…
It’s been called “The Greatest Show on Earth,” and while there are some peep-show dancers in Times Square that might disagree, the circus certainly has a long history of providing family entertainment. P.T. Barnum’s first traveling show began in the late 1800s and rivaled that of James Bailey. Rather than…
Dallas becomes more and more bleak as the summer days wear on. Vibrant gardens fade to crispy brown hay, and those little wiggly lines coming up from the road just magnify the uninviting cement all around. Even people change from pink-cheeked to toast-like. Perfect timing for a blast of color…
It’s almost hump week—that midpoint of summer when all a parent’s best schemes to keep kids busy are wearing thin. Grab your team and channel all that energy into beating the pants off other family teams at Cranium. It’s a combination of trivia, creative problem solving, scavenger hunting, charades and…
In 1997, Britain’s The Full Monty came from nowhere and was nominated for Best Picture and a handful of other Oscars, winning Best Musical/Comedy Score. (It might have snagged more but for the confluence of excellent movies that shoved it out of Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Director:…
With VH-1 and other cable stations broadcasting an endless array of programs offering flighty commentary on pop culture and nostalgia, a new kind of pundit is in demand. Someone who can crack an easy Paris Hilton joke when the latest gossip demands it or unleash a one-liner about Gloria Gaynor…
Singer-songwriter AJ Croce is damn good. And why shouldn’t he be? This guy has enough inspiration to propel him through decades of song. The son of the affable songster Jim Croce (“Time in a Bottle” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”) endured his father’s death and his own sudden blindness as…
My recent move to a renovated East Dallas flat might allow me to fall under the umbrella of “urban living”…I think. It may not be a chic Uptown highrise or a trendy downtown loft, but it’s my quaint spot in the bustling city. However, if urban living means learning the…
Slipped into the summer movie season like acid in your happy meal, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly is a blockbuster of counter-programming. No matter that the dude from The Matrix is its star–or would be, if he weren’t half-hidden under a thick swath of digital paint. Linklater’s return to Waking…
Owen Wilson has moved up in the world: He’s gone from crashing weddings to crashing entire marriages. In the listless farce You, Me and Dupree, his eponymous ne’er-do-well shows up on the doorstep of his childhood friend Carl (Matt Dillon), having lost his job and been evicted from his apartment…
Perhaps no one can pinpoint the exact moment vaudeville died, but there’s a moment early in Strangers with Candy where you’d swear you had just witnessed the death of visual comedy. En route to her first day of high school, a tarty middle-aged jailbird–this is not a Disney Channel joint–tosses…
Set in 1942 and ’43 and shot in 1969, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows follows a small group of French resistance fighters in their desperate struggle to survive the Nazis. The movie, too, has been in hiding, at least in the United States, where, amazingly, it went unreleased for 37…
Mamma Mia!, defying critical drubbings for half a decade, has been called a Twinkie of a musical. But that’s an insult to spongy Hostess snack cakes that have stood the test of time. Think of it as more of a theatrical baklava: layers of tissue-thin story line piled one atop…
Grand Prix (Warner Bros.) John Frankenheimer, as underrated as he was brilliant, made a racing picture in 1966 that’s yet to be topped 40 years later. James Garner suffered through the director’s churlish demands (which Frankenheimer reveals and owns up to, in archival footage on one of the documentaries here)…
From Pokmon to Dragon Ball Z, Japanese pop culture has captured the imagination of American kids. The latest import craze is Naruto. Anyone hip to Harry Potter will find the story familiar: A bunch of otherwise ordinary kids, including titular hero Naruto Uzumaki, study ninjitsu (rather than wizardry) in a…
Basic Instinct 2 (Sony) Bill Maher: New Rules (HBO) Bridezillas: The Complete 1st and 2nd Seasons (Weinstein) Care Bears: Hearts at Sea (Family Home Ent.) Dennis Miller: All In (HBO) Dolla Morte (Grimoire) The Dudesons Movie (Rhino) The Ellen Show: The Complete Series (Sony) ER: The Complete Fifth Season (Warner…
