Drop-dead hip or cluelessly clueless? Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, a candy-colored portrait of France’s infamous teen queen is a graceful, charming and sometimes witty confection–at least for its first hour. The famously shy Coppola may be an inscrutable personality, but her bold exposé of backstage royalty opens with a big…
he Queen is more fun than any movie about the violent death of a 36-year-old woman has a right to be. It’s also as exotic an English-language picture as the season is likely to bring. Directed by Stephen Frears from Peter Morgan’s script, The Queen is set in the peculiar…
If ever a role called for heaps of bravura, it’s Don Quixote. Errant knight, madman, tilter at windmills, storyteller–Quixote is the blazing sun around which all elements revolve in Man of La Mancha, now playing at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre. Quixote must be a galvanic presence in this piece, someone the…
American Dreamz (Universal) Till this, Paul Weitz had a stellar filmography, a career in ascension: American Pie (good), About a Boy (great), In Good Company (absolutely perfect). But this, er, satire about a dumb American president (Dennis Quaid, channeling whassisname) trying to get smart, a cynical wannabe singer trying to…
Ice hockey isn’t for the weak of heart. It’s a bruising, fast-paced game, featuring large sticks, razor-sharp blades, and far too many angry Canadians. Of course, hockey’s scrappy style is exactly why people love the blue-collar sport. For chrissakes, Stanley Cup winners chug Labatt’s out of the trophy during the…
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Two (Universal) Anytown USA (Film Movement/Repnet) Behind Enemy Lines II: Axis of Evil (Fox) The Big Black Comedy Show (Fox) Big Love: The Complete First Season (HBO) The Break-Up (Universal) Clean, Shaven: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) Feast: Unrated (Weinstein) Frankenhooker (Anthem) Charmed: The Complete Sixth Season…
Have you seen the previews for Employee of the Month—that romantic comedy about discount superstore employees? I can’t guarantee that it will suck, but I’m going to anyway. Does Hollywood really have room for Dane Cook and Ryan Reynolds? I say they should have a fight to the death, and…
Jim Gaffigan has been everywhere it seems. He’s been on all incarnations of Law & Order, in Sierra Mist and Saturn commercials and on the talk shows of David Letterman and Conan O’Brien. He is also incredibly pale. And he has the most bizarre, high-pitched, sing-song, wispy little alternate voice…
Just in time for the frisky fall holiday, Method Entertainment has unveiled Halloween Wednesdays at Club Dada. Instead of dressing as ghosts and ghouls, however, bands disguise themselves as other bands. Usually that’s referred to as a cover band, but hey, ’tis the season. Participating bands are composed of musicians…
Sculpture magazine described Richard Stout’s work this way: “The sculptures appear to explore a space of intimate events—in spite of their rhetorical titles, compiled from grand mythological narratives…Ascetic in appearance, cryptic in connotation, yet free-wheeling, they speak a private language of passions and are hard to penetrate, except intuitively.” We…
Some would say that “wine aficionado” is just a fancy phrase for “wino.” But they do exist, these winemakers and experts who take the lowly grape and elevate it to the highest, most respectable quality. Jefferson Wilkes, of J.Wilkes Winery, is such a person. He’ll be in Colleyville for a…
What’s up Singapore’s ass? Apparently, Cut Sleeve Boys, the feature film by Ray Yeung, was banned thanks to the Singapore Board of Film Censors’ determination that it “[promotes] the alternative lifestyle.” C’mon Singapore! Queer as Folk? The L Word? Will & Grace? Get on the gay train already. Homosexually driven…
British painter Nigel Cooke “combines realism with abstraction in canvases that seem to represent scenes of urban decay.” Need a visual for the artspeak? Well, it’s kind of like that increasingly irritating construction going on at the corner of Live Oak Street and Good-Latimer Expressway…in front of the Latino Cultural…
Some people think it’s sad that Romeo and Juliet died. So young, so dead. But does anyone want a drama queen like Juliet raising kids? They’d be all, “I want the Queen Elizabeth Barbie, NOW!,” and she’d be all, “I can’t take this whining. I’m gonna run over to my…
Some great literature was born amid the social revolution of the ’60s. Whether a utopian society of happiness or one of post-apocalyptic turmoil, everyone had their own ideas of what society should and could become, and a 1964 novella by Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar, gave us a little bit…
I keep meaning to make it to GayBingo, but it just never seems to happen. Why that is, I don’t know. The appeal is tantalizing. Campy drag queen hosts, hunky dudes, extravagant theme nights and opportunities to win some cash—who can resist that? (Well, other than my dad…) But I’m…
You couldn’t have Ozzfest anywhere but the Tyson’s Chicken Zima Dome. It wouldn’t be a hip-hop summit if it wasn’t held at the Exxon Propecia Bennigan’s Sportatorium. So where else would you have the 2006 Frisco Bluegrass Festival than at Pizza Hut Park? Bluegrass is an enjoyable musical art form…
That long hair down past her knees. “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.” Loretta Lynn’s baby sister. “I’ll Get Over You.” The namesake gift shop in Nashville. “Talking in Your Sleep.” Those duets with Eddie Rabbitt and Gary Morris. “Our Love Is on the Faultline.” The One from the…
I recently rented the movie Cabaret and, of course, Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey again knocked my socks off. It’s the part Minnelli was born to play. But I’d forgotten what a fascinating story wrapped around the music. Set in Germany just before the rise of Hitler and the Nazi…
I’m not sure you can judge an art exhibit by its name, but calling a Miami-themed showcase of paintings and collages “say hello to my little friend…” is pure genius. The catch line of Brian De Palma’s classic Scarface has been repeated so often on SportsCenter and the like that…
Everybody’s thinking pink during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so Firehouse is sponsoring a Think Pink cocktail and dinner party with the Dallas Chapter of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. All the food and drink is pink, from pink champagne to pink martinis to pink salmon. Can’t make…
Todd Barry is tolerant: “I like cilantro, but you don’t have to.” You’ll find this quote and others among the “Great Todd Barry Quotes” on toddbarry.com. His tolerance of cilantro aside, this “great quote” and its characterization as such illustrate the kind of funny Todd Barry is: dry, clever, a…
