The mammoth remodeling project that transformed dominant Oak Lawn nightspot the Village Station into the even larger juggernaut Station 4 was given a much ballyhooed grand opening over the holidays. (Station 4 because it’s the fourth incarnation of the Village Station.) But now that the out-of-towners have gone home and…
The Sea Inside, the new right-to-die drama from Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar (The Others), is a flawed film worth seeing. Based on Letters From Hell, a book by quadriplegic Ramón Sampedro about his 30-year quest to kill himself, the movie favors the emotional over the legal, foregrounding Sampedro’s relationships with…
PARK CITY, UTAH–John Singleton, director of Boyz n the Hood, was all warm grins at the frigid outdoor party on January 22, and with good reason. Hustle & Flow, a movie he produced for 33-year-old writer-director Craig Brewer, was in the process of being sold for $9.5 million to Paramount…
For less than $15, anybody can buy a disposable camera, take 24 shots and pay someone to develop them in an hour. Instant art. It’s understandable why some people refuse to consider color photography as a serious art form. It’s the “works on paper” version of marking a piece of…
Thursday, February 3 Dearest one, How I miss you! I am so excited about your upcoming visit. I bought two tickets for us to see Dear Liar at Theatre Three, 2800 Routh St. on Thursday evening at 7:30. Don’t worry, love, they were only $25 to $30, so I didn’t…
2/5 Humans need surprisingly little to survive: shelter, water, food, the Dallas Observer. As for Americans, we take these natural necessities and then take them to the extreme. Warehouse-sized homes with five bedrooms, three baths, game room–for one lonely occupant. Bottled water from only the freshest streams, pristine valleys, regal…
Taking two steps into the space of an installation by Daniel Roth is more like leaping several miles into the fathomless realm of the imagination. His conceptualist installations invert and explode space, expanding the hemmed-in much in the way the legendary wardrobe did for the children in C.S. Lewis’ The…
Concentrations 46: Zones of Dissolution Escapism can often provide the most direct path to reality. In his three-room installation, Daniel Roth pops the escape hatch, leading us to a reality that is bifurcated–equal parts fantasy and factuality. Roth works in a variety of media, including drawing, photography, sculpture and architecture,…
A Country Life David Mamet updated and rewrote Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya a decade ago. So did British theater great Brian Friel and others. But now Terry Martin, producing artistic director at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre, tries his hand at it, and by golly, he’s come up with a fine adaptation,…
She scoffs at the notion, offered facetiously but sincerely nonetheless, that she is the Paul McCartney to Martin Scorsese’s John Lennon. “I am not the initiator of the concepts and the great simple ideas that make things work,” she says, laughing off the compliment, once more, as she always does…
2/4 Some think the Harlem Globetrotters are nothing more than some corny banter with the kids in the audience and another easy W over the long-suffering Washington Generals. And, yeah, they are, for the most part. That’s the gig. No one wants to see withering defense, hard fouls or constant…
2/8 The key to success–be it in regard to business, art or social situations–is to know your audience, its limitations and how to exploit it. Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding wouldn’t be one of the most revered and accomplished off-Broadway productions if the focus had been on a trip to the…
Hal’s Samples of Dallas 2/5 Should you find yourself at IR Gallery from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, admiring one of Hal Samples’ photographs and on the fence about purchasing said piece, here’s a word of advice. Four, actually: Give until it hurts. Why? Because that’s what Samples has…
When was the last time you lost yourself in a Shakespeare film? It’s a testament to the success of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, the sharp and brooding new version directed by Michael Radford (Il Postino), that we leave the theater without concern for the production. Instead, the response…
In her first stab at narrative drama, writer-director Shainee Gabel has managed to assemble a superstar cast and a seasoned technical team. She spent five years on the project, adapting an unpublished novel written by the father of a friend, working with a clarity of vision and an admirable goal:…
Forget, if you want to, that A Country Life is based on Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (originally subtitled Scenes From a Country Life). Chekhov is too tough to digest, so many long Russian names to swallow and heavy soliloquies to chew on for three or four acts. It’s better to…
Bridges This playwright didn’t know when to stop. John Fullinwider wrote and stars in this talky, often turgid two-act drama about a crisis among Dallas’ homeless in 1984. When the mayor (Bill Jenkins) decides to promote the city as an Olympic site, he and the police are bent on clearing…
Bodies Past and Present: The Figurative Tradition in the Nasher Collection In this succinct array of sculptural pieces now showing in the two main galleries on the street level of the Nasher Sculpture Center, one is not so much challenged by the figure of the human body but carefully taught…
Sure, black-and-white photos are classic, but artworks in color aren’t anything to sneeze at. Think of the allure of a newspaper when, instead of just black-and-white print staring out, there’s an eye-catching color photo or illustration drawing a reader in. Fashion magazines would be far less influential. Atlases would be…
Thursday, January 27 It’s a one-night-only, going-out-in-style all-nighter for one of Dallas’ biggest rock stars. OK, so it’s a reception and book signing for Jesús Moroles, a granite sculptor with an exhibit closing at the Dallas Museum of Art. But that intro is so much better. “Rock star” may sound…
She comes on strong, this Rhodessa Jones. It’s her voice. Mezzo-soprano, rich, resonant. Passionate, persuasive. Thousands of lines of theater dialogue have been recited with this voice; hours of conversation spoken, philosophizing with friends, mentors, students. Her exquisite command of the language is enhanced by the sound of the words…
1/28 There is a myth, propagated by critics and other lost souls, that dancing is difficult. In fact, dancing is as easy as walking, skipping and landing your own reality television show. (Dancing well? Now, that’s another story.) It’s a matter of discarding the stiff mantle of self-consciousness, which many…
