Her name is Domino Harvey, and she is a bounty hunter. If you've seen even one TV spot or theatrical trailer for Domino, you've heard that message ground into your brain like an annoying jingle. What you may not know is that Domino Harvey was a real person, daughter of...
Shut the gate: For years, Dallas resident and former 89.3 KNON DJ Kelly Cutler acted as tour manager for Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown without knowing the story behind the nickname. In his decades as a premier guitarist in a genre he refused to call "blues" and a favorite of Jimi Hendrix...
I have to watch my words in public. If I'm asked about my job and I answer with anything less than "it's perfect," someone always perks up and butts in: "Yeah, real tough. Must be a pain in the ass to get all those free CDs, you big baby." Always...
1. In the beginning, the devil created heavy metal. 2. And it made white men and women worship him, causing them to eat bats, kill cats and carve pentagrams into their flesh. And the devil saw that it was good but that it had no impact whatsoever on black folks...
There's a scene in the football-bashing film North Dallas Forty in which a doltish offensive lineman sets out to meet some investors who plan to use his name on a chain of restaurants. Before leaving the clubhouse, he's confronted by the comparatively brainy Nick Nolte, who christens the place "Joe...
Over the course of four LPs and one kick-ass live album, Joe Pernice and his rock and roll brothers have produced some of the finest power-pop ever made. One of rock's most literate tunesmiths, Pernice has honed his craft for over a decade now, first with his dour countrypolitan outfit...
Rodney Crowell has long been country music's answer to Paul McCartney. He may have been raised in blue collar Houston honky-tonks, but beneath his twangy exterior beats the heart of a pub rocker. Unlike McCartney, however, Crowell is doing some of his best work in the latter part of his...
In 2001, Jonathan Safran Foer made an astounding literary debut. "A Very Rigid Search," published by The New Yorker, was his hilarious, heartbreaking account of an attempt by a young American man (named, cheekily, Jonathan Safran Foer) to find a Ukrainian woman who had saved his grandfather from the Nazis...
Ah, Wallace and Gromit. Who doesn't get a little lift at the sound of those names? Who doesn't feel the edges of her mouth begin to tickle toward a smile, her heart grow warmer with images of the love between a (plasticine) man and his (plasticine) dog? Perhaps you're not...
These are the Earlies: A band that began with four men tinkering with samples and strange compositions in bedrooms, studios and e-mail songwriting swaps has become a British sensation. More than 20,000 copies of These Were The Earlies, their 679 Records debut, have sold overseas. The group has nabbed rave...
At precisely 2:38 p.m. on December 28, U.S. District Judge Harlin DeWayne Hale officially pronounced Trees dead. With a few dry, muttered words offered after a few moments of silent deliberation, Hale informed the attorney representing the owners of the venerable live-music venue in Deep Ellum that they were to...
It happened almost with the first step off the airplane at the Toronto airport last month. Someone, a friend or merely a concerned stranger, would stop to warn you of impending peril. They would plead with you to avoid the danger ahead in Elizabethtown, the Cameron Crowe film that screened...
Food is the new whatever used to occupy the portion of our minds devoted to culture. Unfortunately, that implies a certain amount of the old "wine snob" mentality. Diners flashing authority in culinary matters expect to learn arcane details when scanning menus, and woe to chefs who fail to identify...
William Betts: Sliver of Clarity The painter William Betts has reconceived the "hands-on" approach to painting, refining the process of this hoary medium down to a few principles: a couple of pecks at the computer keyboard, a click here and there of the mouse working in Photoshop and a flick...
Compared with the well-publicized debacle of the pay-to-play Dallas Music Festival earlier this year, the North Texas New Music Festival is a far superior source of live local tunes. Its intentions certainly are much nobler, as ticket prices are low (free for early birds, even), bands don't pay to participate...
Thursday, October 20 We love peanut butter, and we love chocolate. So it makes sense that we love those peanut-butter-covered-in-chocolate creations such as Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. We hope the same applies for this tasty combination: The Rocky Horror Picture Show plus Young Frankenstein equals Plano Children's Theatre's Frankenstein Follies...
Blue Balled Vice officers under investigation after alleged pimp turns the tables On a late Friday night in May, Dallas vice officers arrived at the windowless corner of a one-story building and knocked on the wood doors of the Acapulco Spa. Tucked away in a run-down strip mall a mile...
About once a year--twice, if we're lucky--a first-time director shows up with something original, electrifying and humane, a film that shows us a new way to see, that presents complex and memorable people in whom we recognize ourselves. Last year, it was Joshua Marston and Maria Full of Grace. This...
It's almost impossible to watch Roman Polanski's rendition of Oliver Twist without drawing parallels between the deprivations endured by the book's young protagonist and the director's own brutal boyhood. A Jew raised in Nazi-occupied Poland, Polanski first tackled the Holocaust head-on in his 2002 film The Pianist, but Oliver Twist,...
"Wake up, Mr. West!" That command, shouted by Bernie Mac at the outset of Late Registration, is fitting--this album is an awakening. Rawer than College Dropout, Kanye West's sophomore release puts his rhymes on center stage and further develops his identity as a socially aware rapper. Sure, he's the still...
No more antes, no more chips, no more green felt. Please. There's little we wouldn't at least consider giving up if it meant we never had to hear another word about poker again. This five-card frenzy has gone on long enough. Isn't Dave Foley supposed to realize that he's wasting...
