Halfway through Surfwise, a mesmerizingly ambivalent documentary about an itinerant family of Jewish surfer-dude health nuts, we meet the 84-year-old patriarch, “Doc” Paskowitz, at Los Angeles’s Museum of Tolerance, showing director Doug Pray a blown-up photo of a Nazi preparing to shoot a Jewish mother and child at close range…
As soon as Esther, the modest black seamstress at the center of Intimate Apparel, says she’s sewn her life savings into the lining of her quilt, the countdown begins. Somebody’s going to rip that quilt apart and rip Esther off. It’s that kind of story, and she’s the kind of…
It’s been 20 years since Errol Morris made The Thin Blue Line—a found “noir” that served to free an innocent man convicted of murder. Gathering evidence and dramatizing testimony, Morris’ movie circled around a single, unrepresentable event—the death of a cop on a lonely stretch of Texas highway. The Thin…
A man in a Michael Jackson outfit—red shirt, black jeans, white face mask—rides hunched over the tiny frame of a clown bike. Jutting out to his side, attached by a wire, is a stuffed monkey puppet with angel wings. The background is a nondescript go-cart track lined with brightly colored…
Not quite a concert, not quite a bio, not quite much of anything, Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash takes two hours of tunes the rugged “outlaw” country music legend made famous and sends them to musical rehab. Out they come on the other side of the dull-a-tron…
Steven Spielberg may rule Hollywood, but in the video-game biz — the more profitable of the two industries, becoming more so with each passing year — he’s a bikini-clad babe in Jaws-infested waters. Perhaps that’s why in 2005, Spielberg, an avid gamer, signed with developing giant EA Games for three…
CANNES, France—No need for dreaming here. Each Cannes Film Festival generates its own metaphors for a 10-day regimen of visions in the dark. It’s impossible to forget, let alone transcend, one’s unnatural situation here. The opening film of Cannes’s 2008 edition clobbered participants with a cautionary allegory. Regardez: The civilized…
Here’s your hat, Indy, but, really, what’s your hurry? Because 19 years after the Last Crusade that clearly wasn’t, and 15 years after the old man joined Young Indiana Jones on the small screen to recount his glory days blowing horns with Sidney Bechet, it’s almost unfathomable that this hoary…
Some might not consider former baseball player Darryl Strawberry an inspirational figure. Yeah, he punched a few women in the nose. Yes, he may have used cocaine a few hundred times. The prostitute/cop that busted him? That’s entrapment, brother. But in 1996 (after a bulk of his legal run-ins) he…
There is a kinda of ineffable something in Texas that makes it tick. It might have something to do with being in between the two coasts—a sort of both-of-those yet none-of-those and completely all-its-own vibe. Done wrong you get a wannabe syndrome exemplified in Nuevo Rich Dallas. Done right the…
It’s hard to believe, but if JFK were still alive, he’d be in his 90s. His presidency would be a chapter long over, and the day of his assassination, a memory of just another motorcade ride in the 1960s. But, even though his life was cut short, his legacy wasn’t…
Artist Joshua Goode’s current exhibit, Lake of Fire, is billed as “documentation of the artist’s search for spiritual truth, inspired by places of thoughtful reflection and solitude such as the Rothko Chapel and the grand cathedrals in Europe.” Interesting that this introspective exploration of faith is named for the afterlife…
Whatever happened to good old middle class high schoolers getting bombed, having premarital sex and wearing ridiculous fashions? Whither the deviant nobody? These days, pop culture is filled with deviant somebodies whose parents (or handlers, or managers, or zookeepers, or whatever it is people who give birth in Hollywood these…
Comedies are not France’s best-regarded export. No, they don’t even fall in the top ten. Surreal, suspenseful films (and, of course, bread) are more what they’re known for. Yet they do crank out a occasional romcom that American audiences eat up faster than a plate of frites. Hors De Prix…
Two of the best sing-along acts in history are Joe Cocker, who gets by with a little help with his friends, and the Steve Miller Band, who really loves your peaches (and wants to shake your tree.) So, imagine how much fun it would be to see them with a…
For many, an evening watching actors in period costumes hoof it and sing bouncy tunes is heavenly. For others, it sounds like the ninth circle of hell. If you’re in the latter bunch, is The Drowsy Chaperone, a comic musical-within-a-play set to a 1920s beat going to change your mind?…
If there’s one thing we can tell you from looking at tons and tons of art show press releases every week, it’s this: Contemporary art is infinitely more interesting to look at than to read about, especially if there’s free drinks and hors d’ouvres involved. Luckily for you, this weekend…
Being that I’ve lived in Texas most of my life, and I’ve never been to Africa or anywhere that’s even semi-close to Africa, I know you think I know nothing about African food. But when I lived in Austin, I used to go to this awesome Ethiopian restaurant all the…
Back in the 1970s people were naïve and paranoid. They thought wiretapping was a bad idea. I mean really, wasn’t the whole Watergate thing and those subpoenaed tape recordings by Nixon one big misunderstanding? Come on, who hasn’t eavesdropped on a private conversation or bugged a few people’s offices before?…
Go ahead and scramble to sneak a peek at Mylie Cyrus’ so-called side-boob (whatever) in that Annie Leibovitz portrait all over the racks. Dallas has their own artistic exhibition of celebrity upon which to feast the eyes. The Music Hall at Fair Park showcases the work of local photographer (formerly…
Song titles like “When Christmas Was Only A Little Depressing” and “I Don’t Want Your Stupid Salad” tell you pretty much all you need to know in deciding whether Boogdish is up your alley or not. Depending on your mood, a one-man punk band playing poppy guitar riffs and screaming…
For those who just couldn’t get enough of Lorenzo Lamas in Falcon Crest, where he played playboy grandson Lance Cumson from 1981 to 1990, or his occasional guest appearances on The Love Boat (also in his 1980s heyday), Fort Worth’s Casa Mañana Theatre has a treat for you. Lamas will…
