My colleague said this local artist was pretty good, so I had to see for myself since art is all subjective and stuff. Turns out she is. Of course, all I have to go on is one semester of art appreciation. But seriously folks, something about Jennifer Morgan’s we’re all…
With Victory Plaza taking over downtown and the (possible) reinvention of Deep Ellum, downtown Dallas is poised to be the next big thing. But what about the old thing? We often forget about the past, and the fact that Dallas has so much history is unfortunately lost on a lot…
Germany’s The Lives of Others won the Best Foreign Language category at this year’s Oscars, but in a fair world, it would have won Best Picture over Martin Scorsese’s blood-soaked game of cat and mouse in The Departed. It begins in 1984 in East Berlin when spying by the Stasi,…
Before all you seamstresses and show cowboys get too excited, the DFW Fringe Festival is not a celebration of sewing notions or swaying tassels. The second annual month-long event is brought to you by Shane-Arts and the Dallas Hub Theater and is actually a festival of theatre (try SATERs Shakespeare…
John Ash, a respected chef and wine expert, will be leading a class on how to prepare shrimp at Central Market. It should be a long class. Because apparently, with shrimp, you can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, sauté it. There’s, um, shrimp kebabs, shrimp creole, shrimp…
How come nothing truly awesome gets invented anymore? When do we get the goods? What we really need are TVs that spit stuff out. Remember in Tommy, the rock opera, when the TV gives that lady free samples of all the products being advertised? I want that! But we have…
To paraphrase an old jingle, we love eggs, from our head down to our legs. Scrambled, deviled, over hard—we adore ova. We like to dye them at Easter or make cascarones. This crazy fascination with les oeufs has inevitably led us to those most marvelous eggs, the Fabergés. First commissioned…
We’re sick and tired of Dennis Miller trying to make us common folk feel all dumb by using them polysyllabic turns of phrase and pulling out obscure references such as Lord Theomopharah’s trusty crossbow during the final throes of the historic Siege at Dalamiphius. And we’re tired and sick of…
Ten years is a really, really long time to do almost anything. Want to spend 10 years riding a bicycle? How about a decade of eating nothing but pad thai? Or maybe you’d rather do 10 long ones using the same shampoo and conditioner? No, thank you. The only thing…
I can’t say that I imagined my sweet, innocent hometown of Mesquite would be host to a horror convention featuring nightmarish legends such as Kane “Jason” Hodder, Candyman Tony Todd and guest of honor Tobe Hooper, director of the ultra-scary Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I can’t even imagine that, promoting his…
Even children need a place to call their own. In the best cases, it’s an escape from the daily grind of homework and popularity alliances. In the worst cases, as evidenced in the children’s classic A Secret Garden, it’s a respite from the loss of parents and isolation in a…
It’s probably because my mother happens to be in Vietnam right now for a conference, and also because my mother is a huge Frida Kahlo fan, but one of the paintings featured in Changing Identity: Recent Works by Women from Vietnam, reminds me of a Frida self-portrait. Nguyen Thi Chau…
In 1946, a Brit by the name of Wilbert Awdry wrote a book about trains called Thomas the Tank Engine. The book was set on the fictional Island of Sodor, and every year Awdry wrote another book about Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends, until 1972, when he published…
Violins often imply a sad turn of events. But some violins at the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra signify a very happy turn of events. The FWSO has enlisted 32 artists to jazz up the stringed instruments with paint and TLC (Tender Loving Creativity, that is). The finished products will be…
By Monday afternoon, they had all left Austin—the A-minus-listers who flew into Texas to promote their studio products with encroaching release dates. Among them were Shia “Is He or Isn’t He Indy Jones?” LaBeouf touting the Rear Window redo Disturbia, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Isla Fisher and Matthew Goode talking up…
The space-time continuum smacks the shit out of Sandra Bullock in Premonition, the latest in nonlinear nonsense, but the fun really gets going when she starts to smack back. As Linda Hanson, humdrum mom of Anywhere, U.S.A., Bullock sets things up by doing her thing, effortlessly establishing the girl next…
Finally, Dallas Theater Center does August Wilson. Only took them 20 years to get around to it. That’s about how long Wilson’s work has been part of the American theater conversation. Better late than never. Fences, which just opened in an astonishingly well-acted production at DTC, is one of the…
American Cousins (BFS) Appetite for Deconstruction: A Punk Rockumentary (MVD) Barbie Fairytopia: Magic of the Rainbow (Universal) Bloody Reunion (Tartan) Blood Trails (Lions Gate) The Ed Wood Collection: A Salute to Incompetence (Passport) Favela Rising (Netflix) Fires on the Plain: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) The Gene Autry 100th Anniversary Collection…
Casino Royale (Sony) James Bond gets a stirring shake-up in the best–yeah, Goldfinger fans, the best–film in the series’ 44-year history. Daniel Craig’s 007 has more going on above the neck and below the waist than even Sean Connery’s. He’s a genuinely compelling character–a bruised, fallible, cold-blooded bastard whose mixed…
Whether it’s slaying dragons in Zelda, zapping aliens in Halo, or inserting foot A into ass B in Virtua Fighter, the best games are the ones that offer some level of wish fulfillment. Grand Theft Auto added “Help yourself to a car” and “Drive it on the sidewalk” to the…
Saturday holds one big, slobbering, green option in one hand, and in the other, a later, more culturally sober option in the Fiesta Latinoamericana! Of course the trek to Plano may be disheartening and drive you into the nearest pub for a Guinness, but the reward of poetry from Latin…
I’m Irish (What? Laussade is totally an Irish name. I shortened it from McO’Malleylaussade). Being part of the Irish club is cool. It means I’m lucky, I sunburn easily, and my alcoholism and my inability to cook are genetic. If you’re Irish, or you like Irish stuff or you just…
