It’s Mother Earth’s day 4/23 Here’s a suggestion for a theme for Earth Day: “Keeping the flame alive–barely.” Or how about: “A clean environment–remember when America cared?” Or maybe: “No, it’s not just a bunch of tree-hugging hippie crap.” Yes, friends of Earth, it’s an SUV-drivin’, Alaska-drillin’, cold, cold Republican…
Go go to the Zoo Run Run 4/23 You may not be able to run as fast as a cheetah or jump as high as a gazelle, but the Fort Worth Zoo’s eighth annual Zoo Run Run gives you the chance to check out the animals as you jog or…
Exploring the optical unconscious 4/22 There’s something undeniably haunting about Kimberly Gremillion’s photographs. Her shadowy depictions of circus performers, ballroom dancers, boxers and actors are exhilarating bursts of energy caught in a kind of disturbing freeze-frame. And it’s in these fanciful still-life photos that we’re forced to re-examine the world…
Get ready for the Disappointments 4/21 If Roxie Hart were alive today (had she ever existed in real life), I’m quite certain that though today’s economic milieu might make her feel right at home, she would bemoan the conspicuous lack of those early-20th-century contrivances: vaudeville shows. Today’s incarnations of vaudeville…
Matthew Parkhill’s Dot the I is the kind of tricked-up mental exercise that may intrigue the most impressionable film school students and a philosophy major here and there. But anyone who’s gotten through sophomore year without declaring him the next great thinker of the Western Hemisphere is more likely to…
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that your moviegoing family is absolutely up to date on every major release this year. Not a Friday goes by that you don’t go see something new. Then you look in the paper and see that the only major release coming up this…
John Ryan Moore: You have no faith in medicine Watching disaster unfold in real time on television is jarring, to say the least, and a force for Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS) syndrome in the worst-case scenario. One word–9-11–brings to mind the power of televised violence and destruction to unravel the fabric…
Professor Henry Higgins, the bossy, tweedy phonetics expert in My Fair Lady, boasts that he can tell any man’s place of birth and social class from listening to his accent. Tortured vowels? Low-born Cockney. Nasal consonants? Eton and Oxford. So what might the good professor make of the many attempts…
Enchanted April The wisteria is in full blossom and so are the late-blooming ladies of this sweetly sentimental British comedy set just after the First World War. Based on a beloved 1922 novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, the play is actually a recent offshoot (adapted by Matthew Barber) of the…
Thursday, April 14 Damn that “aged museum” stigma. It stealthily places blue-haired ladies and dozing lecture-goers where edge-dancing art and youthful activities should reside in the minds of the young and artful. Of course, blue-hairs will always lunch at the Atrium Café, and 80-plus series sponsors will always nod off…
The film doesn’t do great numbers. Does no numbers, actually. Shows at, like, nine theaters. No press cares to review it, except for a few Web sites that don’t treat it kindly. Even here in Dallas, where the director’s from, where the production facility’s based, where, hell, the movie was…
4/15 In a perfect world, a show like Latinologues wouldn’t even exist. Ideally, we wouldn’t need a series of ethnically centered monologues designed to make us think while we laugh. The Majestic Theatre would have to find something else to host on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Utopian thinking…
4/17 The only things gravity-defying about a normal Dallas yoga class are the perky, silicone-enhanced breasts of its participants. That’s different for Tripsichore Yoga Theatre. How different? We can’t speak for the performance troupe’s members’ bodies, but their shows are gravity-defying, with pointed toes, bent legs, curved arms and other…
Spike and Mike are still Sick and Twisted 4/15 There are some things people can’t do that an animated character can always get away with. Shooting a snot rocket out of your nose would be one. Although Puck from MTV’s Real World: San Francisco did it often, that kind of…
4/15 I thank Christian Right protesters for introducing me to the artwork of photographer Jock Sturges. Almost a decade ago, I drove past Barnes & Noble on the day they were picketing, calling for his books to be removed from shelves on the grounds that they contained kiddie porn. Of…
There’s a bit of voyeur in all of us. I’m not referring so much to some pervy desire to watch your neighbors with a telescope but rather a curiosity to see how other people occupy their space. This is particularly true when that space exemplifies over-the-top extravagance or truly fabulous…
If nothing else, give Dana Brown credit for enthusiasm. A documentary filmmaker in name only, he is really the camera- and microphone-equipped president of several booster clubs–among them what might be called the International Society of Beach Bums and, thanks to his latest exercise in hero worship, the Dune Buggy…
Tom Sale strikes an air somewhere between prince and court jester–he is at once a head-honcho healer and dandy snake-oil salesman. Transforming old suitcases and book covers into looking-glass extravaganzas of macabre and mayhem, he breathes new life and perversity into the old tradition of the cabinet of curiosity. A…
Bedtime Stories and Other Night Terrors Tom Sale, Texas’ Liberace of the art world, has graced the city with a parade of wonderment. Sale transforms cast-off books and suitcases into scenes of bizarre allure. Their obsolescence only encourages his imagination. Carving and installing miniature landscapes of biblical tales gone awry,…
Dealer’s Choice Theatre Quorum ups the ante as high-stakes players with their aces production of Patrick Marber’s two-acter about poker. Stephen (Mark Oristano) owns the Italian restaurant where every Sunday night his male employees gather for an intense night of cards. The aloof chef Sweeney (Ben E. Bryant) trades barbs…
Faced with a genius rival and battling his own perceived inferiority, Enlightenment composer Antonio Salieri was a therapist’s wet dream. Love issues, competitiveness, anger, malicious intent, sneakiness–Salieri had it all. But what do you do if you’re up against the one, the only, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, musical prodigy? Though the…
Thursday, April 7 Ah, spring, the season of fun runs and weekend festivals. They kinda balance each other out: Run a 5K and you’ll burn enough calories to have a corn dog or a funnel cake. Too bad charitable jogging won’t cure hay fever, too. Start the season with the…
