Al Franken: God Spoke (Docurama) Code Name: The Cleaner (New Line) Columbo: Mystery Murder Collection 1989 (Universal) Déjà Vu (Buena Vista) The Documentaries of Louis Malle (Criterion) The Drew Carey Show: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) Flipper: Season One (MGM) .45 (Velocity) Ironside: Season 1 (Shout! Factory) Jean Renoir:…
A game based on 300 has no excuse not to kick ass. Just picture yourself leading 300 Greeks (that’s 1,800 abs) against the Persian empire’s massive armies, led by the evil, pierced, and preening King Xerxes. Since your Spartans are the deadliest soldiers in the world, the Persians’ only chance…
“10 People will fight. 9 people will die. You get to watch.” So proclaims the poster for The Condemned, a movie executive-produced by World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon and starring self-professed “whup-ass machine” Stone Cold Steve Austin and oft-suspended former soccer star Vinnie Jones. So can someone explain where…
You would think that being raised by a Central American father would somehow—if even by osmosis—imbue me with knowledge of the nuances of socc—uh, futbol. Nope. All I learned about soccer from him is that a great header is often followed by vomiting behind the bleachers. We can’t promise puke,…
Holland’s gift to world cinema, Paul Verhoeven, can be a very bad boy and a very good filmmaker. Any of his movies could have been titled Basic Instinct—not least his epic World War II thriller Black Book, in which a Jewish chanteuse who has watched her family massacred by Nazis…
I sometimes look at the kindergartners that I teach once a week—crayons shoved up their nose, dirt all over their pants, Kool-Aid lining their lips—and I think that they are lucky to be so innocent and carefree. But, as the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth points out with their…
One of the best things about films that aren’t made in Hollywood—and this is particularly true of Asian films—is that literally anything can happen to any of the characters. The result of this freedom can be movies that are intense, breathtaking, brutal and powerful. The Korean movie Oldboy is all…
“And you call yourself a Bowie fan?!” This was the reaction I received when it was brought to public attention (and by “public,” I mean a staff lunch) that I had never seen the 1986 children’s fantasy film Labyrinth. Having now seen it, I frankly don’t feel “children’s” is an…
Wilco has been my favorite band since I was about 15, so needless to say I bought Jeff Tweedy’s solo DVD the week it came out, like a proper fanboy. Therefore you probably won’t catch me watching Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Northwest 9 p.m. Wednesday at the AllGood…
Some people just have no shame, flaunting their bad habits for all to see. Like coke ‘n’ roll super-couple Kate Moss and Pete Doherty, who recently started rival scab collections. And Nicole Richie, who went from curvy to scurvy in about two weeks, like we were going to believe any…
Lots of people enjoy Antiques Roadshow, but it’s just too nerve-racking for me. An episode may have 10 heartwarming, diamond-in-the-rough stories, but it takes just one earnest senior citizen finding out that their precious Ming vase is actually an $18 Sears Roebuck reproduction to ruin my night. Luckily, there will…
Starting at 2 p.m. Sunday, spend your afternoon in a dream world of magic at Narnia: The Musical, now showing at Casa Mañana Theatre, 3101 W. Lancaster Ave. in Fort Worth. I would love to see them dropping Hamiltons and visiting Magnolia to munch on some cupcakes, but I think…
If you want to start a fight (not that we’d condone it), head to Denton this weekend and proclaim loudly how lousy the arts scene is there. Be warned, though. You will find yourself receiving the business end of a sausage-on-a-stick mighty quick because The Denton Arts and Jazz Festival…
They’re either lying or just laying a good joke on us. Last time I checked my dictionary, besides the obligatory listing for the “oldest living professionals,” prostitute was defined as a person who debases himself by misusing his talents in offering unworthy goods to the public. Poke your head in…
Here’s an idea: Have an event featuring a couple of days of rodeo topped with a bull-riding invitational. Feature music from Jason Boland and the Stragglers, Kevin Fowler Band, Blake Shelton and many others. Call it the Real. Texas. Festival. This is a great idea from a marketing standpoint, but…
People these days are becoming obsessed with color—in a good way, since it lets you know what part of the body you’re supposed to be caring about. Yellow? That’s for balls. Pink? That’s for boobs. Red? That’s for the whole, head-to-toe shebang, since red is the patron color of HIV/AIDS…
Oh, the sweet smell of the late 1980s. That wet-wool smell that became “grunge.” It bled like a skater-kid’s skinned knee into the early 1990s, and as soon as Nirvana “appeared from nowhere” in 1991, major labels descended upon every band with long hair, a Big Muff pedal and songs…
Remember that weird time in the ’80s when white people doing blues was all cool? What was up with that? Perhaps the most well-known of the top-40 bluesmen was George Thorogood, who was, indeed, quite thorough when it came to diggin’ out some old-school Delta inspiration and even better at…
For decades, the story of my sister learning to drive involved the Freemasons library parking lot in Waco, a giant tank of an automobile and either Uncle Jack or Aunt Donna as the instructor. It was a great package, often told in various incarnations with exaggerated anecdotes, but it always,…
One time, I pissed off a carny. He ran this ride called The Paratroopers with these swings that just went round and round and swooped up and down for what seemed like forever. I thought it would be cool. My motion sickness did not think it was cool. And then…
Once upon a time, photographers shot with something called film, and telephones were for talking on, not taking pictures with. Before digital photography flashed onto the scene, capturing images meant trekking to the store to buy film or flash cubes and even hand-printing photographs in a darkroom. From oatmeal-box pinhole…
A respected television reporter for CBS News for a generation, Bernard Goldberg wrote about a perceived liberal bias in the media in his best-seller Bias. Although the book included several compelling anecdotes that corroborated parts of his premise, Bias read more like a collection of rants to bring up in…
