The art of bodybuilding has been around since the late 1890s, though its athletic roots date back to 11th-century India. By 1904, slathering one’s monstrous physique in baby oil and flexing for the delight of large audiences had developed into a more refined formal sport with the American premiere of…
There’s something to be said about men in skirts—especially if they can toss 100- to 120-pound cabers (those giant, heavy wooden poles) around with ease. Watch what you say, though, because these guys are tougher than you in every way that counts. They’re stronger than you physically (how high can…
Duuuuude. With his roles in American classic films like Next Friday, Friday After Next, How High and All About the Benjamins, comedian Mike Epps has worked to heighten public awareness on an issue still taboo in some households: drugs. On his entertainment agent’s Web site, Epps is touted for his…
It seems that Al Gore may have been underestimated. After defeat in 2000, Gore refocused his energy on saving the planet from what looks to be imminent catastrophe due to global warming. His crusade is captured on film in An Inconvenient Truth, a movie that follows Gore as he brings…
It’s casual dining night. Mom wants Olive Garden and Dad wants Chili’s. Mom decides Dad thinks she’s too fat to eat pasta and that’s why he’s been seeing so much of that neighbor woman. Dad says maybe Mom could stand to lose a few pounds. Mom cries and then the…
A time-traveling dominatrix is pursued through three time periods by a homicidal maniac as she hustles to save the lives of two of his victims, who happen to be the future late wives of the client the hooker was called to service in a hotel room in the year 2014…
The best way to show America how the working class lives, Esther Cohen figured, was to give janitors, cabbies and other low-wage workers cameras to document their lives. The result is a new book called Unseen America, which Cohen will sign 7 p.m. Thursday at Borders West Village, 3600 McKinney…
When kids of all ages discuss comic books and superheroes, there is inevitably one question that comes up time and again: If that one guy and that other guy had a fight, who would win? Comics companies occasionally indulge these debates with special issues pitting Thing against Hulk or Wolverine…
Trotted out like ol’ Trigger whenever there’s a movie with saddles and six-shooters, the term “revisionist Western” would surely be a cliché if there were enough Westerns to warrant its use more than every few years. Fact is, any movie in a genre as depressingly out-to-pasture as the Western is…
There are lots of ways to grow up. The method offered by Somersault is to do something awful and then flee from it. This dreamy, sexy and rather chilly coming-of-age story from Australia captures a teenager’s attempt to escape her past, to build something new atop the rubble of what…
The impassioned new documentary Sir! No Sir! never mentions the words “Iraq” or “Afghanistan.” It doesn’t have to. Unseen and unremarked-upon, those bloody venues nonetheless inhabit the entire 84 minutes of David Zeiger’s film like some deadly, creeping virus for which there’s no cure. Zeiger’s actual subject, which he says…
The Steel Magnolias are in bloom again. Robert Harling’s all-woman 1987 play, full of sap, sass and silliness, is a favorite of regional theaters large and small. Despite its hokey writing and its jolting second-act turn from light comedy to weepy tragedy, it’s a popular, versatile piece. Like Southern women’s…
Boston Legal: Season One (Fox) David E. Kelley’s latest legal drama is nothing more than a TV show about TV shows; hence the casting of Captain Kirk and Murphy Brown, with guest shots by Diane Chambers, Golden Girl Rose Nylund, and Alex Keaton. It’s like a Nick at Night mash-up,…
Yet another Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) has come and gone, and this one was the biggest yet. Exhibitors know all too well that a strong showing at E3 — an event heavily covered by both industry and mainstream press — can turn a great product into a blockbuster and a…
Africa Screams (Image) April’s Shower (Liberation) Back Door to Hell (Fox) Bloodrayne (Uwe Boll Productions) The Closer: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) Deadwood: The Complete Second Season (HBO) The Devil’s Miner (First Run) The Dirty Dozen: Two-Disc Special Edition (Warner Bros.) The 4400: The Complete Second Season (Paramount) Game…
Like many of my generation, my first exposure to the Monkees was through Nick at Nite reruns of their television show, certainly the best program about a surprisingly talented Beatles rip-off band ever to hit the airwaves. Everyone has their favorite Monkee, and personally, mine have always been Michael Nesmith…
If you’re from Texas, chances are you took Texas history in junior high school. And if you took Texas history, you might have learned about Bill Pickett, the famous black cowboy from Taylor, Texas. Pickett’s claim to cowboy fame was his “bulldogging.” After twisting the steer’s head upward, he’d bite…
Somewhere along the line, someone decided that many of Agatha Christie’s British novel titles were “inappropriate” for American audiences. Thus, for example, 4.50 From Paddington became What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!, Lord Edgware Dies became Thirteen at Dinner and Murder in the Mews became Dead Man’s Mirror. And though it may…
Brownian motion? Pshaw, that’s easy. Massive bodies warp space? Tell us something we don’t know, pal. The passage of time is relative to speed? Umm…okaaaay. E=MC2? Look, can’t we go back to talking about Brownian motion? That one we have nailed.More than a century after Albert Einstein’s 1905 “miracle year,”…
One might think that the title of Plush’s latest exhibit, Gunslingers and Slayers, is a misnomer as there are no six-shooters, no dusty duels depicted outside a velvet-curtained cathouse and certainly no tin stars. Likewise, there are no sword-wielding warriors of evil or guitar-ravaging tunes. However, Teresa O’Connor, Eric Pearce…
Polka has taken over. Just turn on the radio. Open a magazine. It’s everywhere. The worldwide polka explosion is about to reach critical mass, and the good people of Ennis, Texas are firmly planted in its nexus, ready to withstand the massive aftershocks. I’m not sure if that last sentence…
I have seen prog metal band King’s X in concert. I’m not saying I enjoyed it, but I am saying I sat on a barstool in leather pants with a freshly applied tramp stamp on my lower back in that smoky club that used to be attached to the Bronco…
