The new exhibit Texas Bauhaus illustrates the Bauhaus philosophy, where “less is more” is the key, as seen through the photographs of three Texas women—Carlotta Corpron (1901-1988), who taught photography beginning in 1935 at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, along with two of her protégés, Barbara Maples (1912-1999) and Ida…
Last spring, a friend invited me to a screening of a documentary about legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the man behind The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. I expected Coppola—who was present for the screening—to be a larger-than-life figure, so when they introduced him, we were shocked that the man sitting…
A great brooding thundercloud of a movie, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood arrives as if from nowhere on a gust of critical acclaim, lowering over a landscape of barren mesas and hot, scrubby hills. Anderson’s epic, no less than his career, is both fearfully grandiose and wonderfully eccentric…
“You don’t meet the book when you meet the writer,” the novelist William Gibson has said. “You meet the place where it lives.” A relatively uncontroversial remark about the people who vent their imaginations on the page — no one should expect Philip Roth to sound exactly like Nathan Zuckerman…
A great moment in theater can be as simple as a beam of light on an interesting face. Or it can come in the spectacle of a stage crowded with dancers whirling as music swells from a full orchestra. Dallas area stages in 2007 throbbed with memorable moments, large and…
Eastern Promises (Universal) David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen are becoming a Bizarro World Hitchcock/Cary Grant combo, and the world is a better (and bloodier) place for it. Chucklehead critics too smitten by Cronenberg’s “messages” dismissed this film — a vicious and brilliant exploration of the Russian mob in London —…
The inevitable challenge faced by Wii developers is this: Can you create a game so spectacularly awesome as to prompt a gamer to even consider ejecting Super Mario Galaxy from his console? The gravy train is over; good luck looking consumers in the eye while offering them another lame collection…
Billy Jack (Image) The Heartbreak Kid (Universal) Indie Sex: A Revealing Look at Sex in Cinema (IFC) Jimmy and Judy (Anchor Bay) Living & Dying (HBO) Resident Evil: Extinction (Sony) Seaquest DSV: Season Two (Universal) September Dawn (Sony) Shoot ‘Em Up (New Line) Solstice (Weinstein) The Tudors: The Complete First…
BLT Steak a new “modern America steakhouse” in Dallas combines “French Bistro with…a stylish, urbane boîte.” Last time somebody called me an urbane boîte, I cut a bitch. But the restaurant’s “Popovers at the Bar” event during happy hour this week might calm my nerves, as they serve the baked…
Allow me to throw out a half-baked psychology theory: Mutilating books is one of the earliest forms of creativity a child will express. Many a parent has picked up a kid’s copy of Goodnight Moon and discovered that said kid has torn pages or blackened the face of every character…
It seems that lunch is out of fashion. With networking lunches, lunches in the office or lunches just plain skipped in favor of an extra hour of productivity, hardly anyone values that midday break. But the break is important, not just for your body, but for your mind. If you…
Adapting a wildly popular, widely familiar work of literature for the stage can be a dicey affair. That’s not to say that it hasn’t been attempted. There was, of course, the ill-fated To Kill a Mockingbird roller disco rock opera, The Diary of Anne Frank as a nude revue and…
Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones performed at a benefit tribute concert in London last month, reuniting Led Zeppelin after almost 30 years of dormancy as a group (if you don’t count a short set during their 1995 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame). Well,…
“You say goodbye, and I say hello.” Everyone from the Beatles to your mom has had a relationship with the dichotomy of greetings and farewells, arrivals and departures. Are you really happy to see Aunt Kay? Or is it better when she and that dog of hers head out the…
Over the past couple of years, I think I’ve schooled you guys appropriately in the fine art of celebrating Chinese New Year. By now you know all about the scrumptious food and the little red envelopes, but what about the performance side of the celebration? With the year of the…
Remember back in elementary school, when in art class they used to have you scatter crayon shavings onto a piece of wax paper, then cover it all with a second sheet of paper and iron it into a masterpiece of blended color? As I recall, it was damn fun. That’s…
I want to marry the Dallas Arboretum. As a whole, I would actually do it. They have wooed my heart by offering a whole week of chocolatey goodness and whimsy. And thus, I would consider a betrothal arrangement between myself and the lovely multi-acreage of fauna and flora. Addicted much?…
In the early ’80s, the pop charts finally seemed to let country music sneak through the back door and onto the car radios of “the masses.” This phenomenon certainly owes a debt to the 1980 “domestic violence musical,” Urban Cowboy. The movie and accompanying soundtrack brought the sights, sounds and…
Question: What is the perfect way to dumb down music and film in one fell SkipperTM swoop? Answer: a ballet o’ boobs. At 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday, if you’re scared of The Arts, take your sheltered child to see a performance of BarbieTM at the Symphony performed by…
1962 was, in fact, a very good year. Marilyn Monroe sang to the president. Ringo Starr joined The Beatles, and they debuted with “Love Me Do.” The Cuban Missile Crisis began imprinting itself into all future history books. OK, I don’t know how good that last part is, but you…
The press release for the Simply Waiting, Simply Hoping, Simply Celebrating art show at CityGallery claims that “our world and our lives often challenge us with complexity and chaos.” Obviously they’ve never heard of throwing on season two of Ghost Hunters, lighting up a big one and pretending world hunger…
Alton Brown is everything that is good and righteous about American television. Yes, he knows you’re a bunch of bloated, lazy squids oozing your fatty ink of capitalist consumerism all over Mom’s good carpet. And yet he wants to educate you with the Mythbusters of foodie shows, Good Eats. I…
