The Hotel Joule rooftop pool

The New York Times has visited Big D and lived to tell the tale for its Sunday Travel section. Not many surprises. Glitz, sports bars, Mexican food. High-end boutiques. Skip the reading and just go to the slideshow, you’ll pretty much get the story. And we’ve rarely looked so good — although someone might want to tell the Times that going to artsdistrict.org for a walking tour of the Arts District will get  you a scary ATTACK WEBSITE warning. And it’s done so for months. (You can ignore it, if you like. I’ve done so several times and nothing has ever gpoiuqewpr/*89-29013jrna  with my computer.)

The KERA radio story:

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• The expanded online story:

In the past two years, there has been a wave of new administrators, artists and conductors who have been hired to lead the cultural institutions in Dallas’ Arts District. The Nasher Sculpture Center is the latest, having hired Jeremy Strick from Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art.

But while Strick may be the newest arts director in town, he already calls the sculptures in the Nasher collection “old friends.”

Twenty years ago, Strick was an assistant curator at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. Pretty much his first assignment, Strick says, was preparing Raymond and Patsy Nasher’s sculptures for a joint exhibition at the National Gallery and the Dallas Museum of Art. Strick flew to Dallas, he stayed with the Nashers, he helped install their artworks in Washington, he wrote about the collection for the exhibition catalog.

STRICK: “It was really an important moment for me. The first major exhibition I’d worked on, the encounter with these masterpieces, the encounter with these collectors.”

Read More »

WEAVING A NEW WEB: It’s no secret that opera fans skew older – it’s one of the most classical of art forms and takes a certain level of cultural knowledge to appreciate. But that’s not keeping either of our North Texas opera companies from trying to develop a younger fan base. That thought occurred to me as I was checking out Fort Worth Opera‘s The Scoop Web site. It’s a slick site with an embedded audio player playing some opera favorites, photos from previous shows and video, including the one I’ve embedded above of General Director Darren Woods discussing the opera’s financial position.

The Dallas Opera is doing its best to use the Web to its advantage, too, with its site. It’s got a an impressive collection of video on it as well – all the more to hook the opera newby who’s on the fence about buying a ticket. Additionally, Dallas Opera is reaching out through its young professionals group, Amici di Opera. The group gets together to discuss the next opera on the agenda to better prepare the unfamiliar. On Monday, the group meets to break down La boheme ahead of its Friday opening.

The point is, the better the operas can reach a new audience using the tools the youngsters are using, the better the chance of them developing a fan base that can support them into the future. (Why else would both groups have Facebook pages?) The good news for those considering giving opera a try is: you’ve never had more ways to scout out what you will be in for than you do now.

DTC ADDS A BLOG: Also making strides on the Web is the Dallas Theater Center, which launched a blog this week that focuses on its current production, In the Beginning. Lee Trull posted a collection of some of the funnier comments that audience members have made during the Act II/talkback portion of the show. My favorites:

“I’m disappointed that you addressed all these questions but you said nothing about Cain needing God’s protection from other people. What other people? Isn’t he like the third person ever?”

and

“I didn’t know Chamblee Ferguson was a rabbi.”

“Maybe it’ll be like Team America.”

That’s what Stephen said, a little wistfully, when I told him I was heading to see Coppertone last night. And yes, like Team America, there are puppets who do naughty goofy things – leave the kids at home – that will make you laugh out loud. But this was more fun.

Maybe because the three puppets in this performance are so large, so goofy, yet strangely believable characters, down and out, drinking on the wrong side of Puppet Town to a Screamin’ Jay Hawkins soundtrack. There’s Coppertone (Director Matthew Posey), a losing gambler in trouble with the mob.  Shinickwa (Walter Hardts) is a pregnant prostitute with a fear of dogs. And Monte Habarr (Xander Aulson) is an Eastern European dive bar owner who happens to love Wheel of Fortune.  Posey says they’re a Texas twist on Bunraku puppetry, life-size foam rubber dolls each manipulated by a black-clad, masked cast member.

Maybe the fun comes from the theater itself: Ochre House is part storefront, part living room – literally, since Posey lives in back. Comfy.

Maybe it’s just time for puppet disco and slo-mo, strobe-lit puppet fights. Dunno. But Posey and his “Pioneers of the Suavante-Garde” are cutting some loopy trails, a hoot to wander.

Want a second opinion? Here’s Lawson Taitte’s DMN review.

KERA (Channel 13) is debuting a cool new concert series tonight at 10 p.m. called Live From the Artists Den.  The show is unique because it captures the performers playing in unusual settings. Tonight’s episode features Alanis Morissette performing inside Judson Memorial Church in New York City. Future episodes will include Ani DiFranco at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Swell Season at Good Shepherd Center Chapel in Seattle and Aimee Mann at the Historic Vibiana Cathedral in Los Angeles.

If you’ve been a fan of Austin City Limits over the years on KERA, this show is one you’ll probably want to add to your TiVo season pass.

Click here for a clip from tonight’s episode.

I want to take a second to introduce a new guest blogger, Cindy Schwartz. Cindy is involved in many local visual art organizations: as the founder of her art-advising company Cynthia C. Schwartz Fine Art, as a former board member and docent for the Dallas Museum of Art and as the president of the Dallas Architecture Forum, to name a few. She’s currently working with the Dallas Art Fair to implement its educational components. I asked her to give us an inside look at the fair, which holds its gala tonight before opening to the public on Friday. Here’s what she had to say:

At the Dallas Art Fair, walls aren’t your ordinary trade-show walls. Months before the show was scheduled to open, its founders, John Sughrue and Chris Byrne, made the decision to purchase walls to be specifically constructed for this space. Normally, pre-fab walls are inexpensively erected the week before an art fair. These walls were designed by an architect and constructed for installation four months before they were to be erected on-site, to have muslin stretched painstakingly over them, and to then be painted. The intent was emphatically made that these walls were to be used again for Dallas Art Fairs for years to come. The commitment to our cultural community is not just for this year.

I could see it from my first visit to the space as the dealers were installing their works. The difference in this art fair was immediately evident. There is a human scale that lends intimacy about the space. The booths are located within the former Dallas Power and Light building, now the Fashion Industry Gallery. The ceilings drop to a more reasonable dimension, and the art installs beautifully as a result. With about 35 exhibitors’ spaces to peruse, the casual visitor can manage the entire fair without being plagued by art-fair fatigue. There will be the opportunity for visitors to spend some time with the works of art, to fall in love with the pieces, and to establish relationships with the gallery directors. That is the goal of everyone.

The gallery owners that came to Dallas to exhibit are as committed to this fair as its founders, and there is probably a reason for that. Dallas has always offered a warm welcome to dealers from around the world, and with the co-operative gift of the Hoffmans, Rachofskys and Roses to the DMA, the collecting spirit of Dallas is now legendary. As an employee of the Fair, to plan and implement educational programs with Becky Bruder, I had some lofty goals that the people of Dallas would engage with the art and the gallerists would be happy they committed to our Fair. After seeing the art installed and greeting the exhibitors, I am excited for our city once again. This Fair is good.

Though the Saturday morning symposium is sold out, tickets are still available for the Sunday symposium. All VIP packages are also sold out, but day passes are still available for purchase for Friday, Saturday and Sunday by visiting www.dallasartfair.com.

Brandon Jones (left) and John Venable

Plenty of big-budget films have been shot in North Texas over the years, everything from Bonnie and Clyde to RoboCop. But beneath those Hollywood productions is a steady stream of smaller films made by people who call the area home. Producer Brandon Jones and director John Venable are two of those people. Their latest effort is Karma Police, a character-driven suspense story coming Tuesday to DVD about an IT guy (Chamblee Ferguson) recruited by a secret organization that ensures that good people are rewarded and bad people are punished. Once he gets involved, though, he realizes that playing God has its drawbacks.

During a recent conversation, Venable and Jones discussed their desire to ground the film in Dallas, what it will take to bolster the North Texas filmmaking scene and how the new channels of digital distribution can help out the little guy:

Art&Seek: The film is authentically Dallas. How much of that came from a desire to set it here and how much came from just the fact that you were shooting here?
Brandon Jones: It was a conscious choice. John and I are both from here and we have a local cast and crew, but my personal goal in this was to create a postcard of what you can do with a film of this magnitude shot in Dallas. We knew we didn’t have a lot of money, but we wanted to use big location and big, iconic images. So you have the great shot looking out the 50th floor in that conference room and you see Reunion Tour. We’ve got the Magnolia Hotel, the police station in downtown Dallas.
John Venable: Anytime Hollywood ever does Dallas, there’s always big, dumb cowboy hats and boots and steers. Stereotypical stuff that really has nothing to do with Dallas.
B.J.: To get a big location like a skyscraper or the office tower that has the keyhole cut out of it, we literally had to call in favors. And it was always the guy who didn’t need to help us who came through, saying, “I’d love to help you guys out,” giving us an embarrassment of riches to be able to do that. And it was seriously no big deal to any one of them. And these are guys who have big, important businesses. They were like, “Oh, sure – how many days do you need to shoot in my office?” We had to take pictures of people’s desks in the offices, because we had to clear out stuff that identified them as them. So we’d just spent 14 hours on set and we had to painstakingly put everything back. And it’s not like we had a team of people to do this. After John spends a whole day directing, he’s back in there moving some guy’s picture back.

A&S: There were some funny cameos in the film – from Gary Cogill playing an apartment painter and attorney and AFI Festival Chairman Steven Stodghill in a bit part – plus some very recognizable local faces in small parts, including local actor Nye Cooper and WaterTower Theatre artistic director Terry Martin. How did you get those people involved?
J.V.: Gary comes from the fact that I’ve been a movie reviewer in the past and he and I are friends. Terry was actually cast because he came in and auditioned. I’m a theater actor locally, and our casting director, Lynn Ambrose, brought in all the Dallas actors that she thought would be best for these roles. And probably 50 percent of them were stage actors that I knew and worked with or had seen their work.
B.J.: Which presented a whole other set of issues for John, because he’s worked with these people and now he’s got to cast them in the movie. I know it was challenging for him to balance the direction and the personal relationships, but I think he did a great job. I think that speaks to John’s reputation in the community – that people who could have easily played a bigger part chose to be in this film and take a role where they had one line.

A&S: Brandon, with your company, FilmFrog Productions, you’ve had some pretty good success in producing some small films shot in the area, including Shtickmen a few years back. What was it that you saw in Karma Police that made you think it would be a worthwhile project for you to get involved with?
B.J.: John told me when he gave me the script that he was going to make this movie. We deal all the time with people who say, “I want to make this movie, I just need to raise the money.” Or, “I’ve got people who will give me the money.” John was making this movie, so I had confidence that it was going to get made. When you deal with this all day long, you really don’t believe that most things are going to get made. But John had it in his mind that he was going to make this movie, whether he had 10 cents or 10 bucks or 10 million bucks. This was going to get made one way or another.

A&S: But when producing a movie, part of the job is setting up and making the movie, and part of it is figuring out how you are going to sell and distribute the movie. So when you read the script, it must have sounded like something that would have an audience.
B.J.: Independent films are very difficult to sell anyway. The fact that this has some action and suspense – I felt that we were really going to be able to capitalize on that on the distribution end. Even though the beginning of it starts out really character driven, it does have a dramatic shift in the film where it becomes a suspense-crime thriller almost. So I thought it was marketable just reading the script. And then being a producer who was going to manage the distribution side, being able to help guide things along to specific elements to make sure we had the right elements to hedge our bets was important to me.

A&S: What do you think needs to happen for North Texas to be more of a hub for film and television production?
J.V.: It’s simple: competitive incentives. We took the first step by actually getting incentives now that there’s a 5 percent incentive.
B.J.: There’s a new bill in front of the house this year to dramatically increase that, and the governor’s on board with it. … John’s right, absolutely 100 percent – we need competitive incentives of some type. The second thing I think we need is we need to get the investment community here to realize that you can make films good investments. But my personal opinion is that we need to focus on films that are below the $5 million mark, because it is so hard to make money making movies. We should really be focused on making movies that are $250,000 to a million and a half dollars and make good, quality films that are returning the investment here, so that the investment community sees that as a good investment.

A&S: So were you able to take advantage of any of that incentive money?
J.V.: No, it wasn’t in place when we were shooting, and even if it was, you have to spend a minimum of $1 million on film to get the incentives, and our level of budget was way, way below that.

A&S: So where will people be able to find the movie?
B.J.: We’ve put together a campaign to help raise the awareness of the film, and our intent is to drive all that traffic to places like Netflix and Blockbuster Online. It will be available for purchase at Amazon, DVD Empire, Film Baby. So that will be our initial domestic DVD release. And it will be available at some brick-and-mortars and video stores. But the dynamic of those outlets is changing all the time as well. And the economy has really affected a lot of that. The second step is we’ll be on iTunes and NetFlix Watch Now, so we’ll be taking advantage of digital download and alternative, new distribution channels. And then our third and fourth step is to work to try and get some kind of television deal and then push it out internationally.

A&S: All of those new distribution channels have to be huge for someone distributing an independent movie.
B.J.: A lot of what [digital download outlets] are asking independents to do now with films like this is they’ll make it available online if we can create the demand and the fan base. They almost don’t have to take the risk anymore of purchasing 20,000 units to sit on the shelf.

A&S: John, your frequent writing partner is Channel 11′s Jay Gormley. I know you are just getting this film out there, but have you two started work on your next project?
J.V.: We’re still working on getting $30,000 Millionaires made. That’s a script that we’ve had finished for several years now and we actually started pre-production on it before we started on Karma Police. We had the casting director out of L.A. and had John Gries from Napoleon Dynamite attached to it and Dominique Swain, and then just the money didn’t happen.

A&S.: Sounds like you need to hit up some of those $30,000 millionaires.
J.V.: Yeah, if you could just put that on your Discover card … oh wait, nobody takes Discover.

The Art&Seek Q&A is a weekly discussion with a person involved in the arts in North Texas. Check back next Thursday for another installment.

WHO SHOULD TAKE THE STAGE?: The Dallas Morning News reported earlier this week that George Strait is tentatively scheduled to play the new Cowboys stadium in Arlington this summer. There’s speculation that he might even be the first act to play there. If that’s the case, he would certainly be a fitting opener – he’s a Texan and even a Cowboy. But it got me wondering who the other options might be. Here’s a quick list that I came up with, but if you’ve got other suggestions or want to lobby for one of these choices, drop me a comment:

Willie Nelson – Pros: He’s in Strait’s league as far as his stature in Texas country music. Cons: Is seeing someone you can catch frequently a Billy Bob’s a big enough draw? Willie would serve as a great opener to George, though.

U2 – Pros: The biggest band in the world is solidifying plans for a massive world tour as we speak and have already said they will play stadiums (as opposed to the arenas they’ve played the last two tours). Cons: No real Texas connection

Eagles – Pros: They were the first act to play the American Airlines Center, so there would be some nice symmetry there. Don Henley is from Gilmer. Cons: They might not be interested if they aren’t out on tour.

Bruce Springsteen – Pros: His high-energy Super Bowl show from last week definitely plays well in a huge space. Cons: Do we really want to open the new Cowboys stadium with a guy from Giants and Eagles country?

YOU, TOO, CAN OWN A TONY: Every theater pro dreams of having a Tony Award on their shelf. And now, through the miracle of eBay, someone who wants one but would rather skip all the hard work and creative genius stuff can have one. The estate of costume designer Florence Klotz has put the Tony she won in 1985 up on the site. Minimum price: $10,000 (but you can take it home now if you are willing to fork over $20K). I looked for the bidding today on the site and couldn’t find it. But I read all of this here, so my guess is that it just hasn’t made it up yet.

The Texas Black Film Festival takes up residence Thursday through Saturday at the Studio Movie Grill in Dallas. If you are interested in films that examine the black experience, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more wide-ranging offering – everything from documentaries to features to shorts.

On Wednesday afternoon, I caught up with festival director David Small, who says his budget may be small, but, “I invite anyone to look at our collection of films and compare it to any other festival.”

Here’s more of what he had to say about the festival’s offerings this year:

So is there a particular film or films that you are especially excited to be showing?

There are a few films. One film is Gospel Hill, directed by Giancarlo Esposito. It stars Angela Basset, Danny Glover, Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson and Nia Long. Angela is in a fight to save her community – that’s kind of the gist of the film.
Another film, produced by Dallasite Mark Young – a graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School – stars Louis Gosset Jr. and is titled The Least Among You. It’s a powerful, true story about a young guy who is the first to integrate an all white seminary.
I’m really proud of the fact that our collection of films is certainly the best collection of African-American films in the state, probably in the South.

The festival’s Web site says that the event is “programmed for family entertainment and inspired by the African-American experience.” Is it true that all of the films are family-friendly, and what made you decide to take the festival in that direction?

Most all the films are family-friendly – there are a couple where language is a caution.
Our festival tries to serve a two-fold purpose. From an industry standard, films that are positive depictions of African Americans that otherwise haven’t enjoyed a theatrical release, we want to make them available. The audience as a whole has a very limited menu of positive depictions of blacks in film. We don’t show the Boyz N the Hood genre of film. Rather than say what we don’t show, I’ll tell you what we do show. There are many people who are anxious to see these positive images and great stories. It runs the whole gamut from romantic to comedy to historical narratives to documentaries. We also want to support filmmakers who make those films. The first year of the festival, the best overall film was by a Polish director [Piotr Kajstura's When They Could Fly]. That’s interesting that a Polish filmmaker would win the Texas Black Film Festival. But he did a great emancipation film. I’m proud of the fact that we were the first fest to give that film a shot, and it went on to win dozens of awards. So we were right on the mark.

This year you are honoring AFI Dallas senior programmer James Faust. What about James exemplifies the qualities you like to exhibit with the festival?

Once again, we’re committed to supporting those who break stereotypes. James is committed to those exact same ideals. His impact on the independent films that are shown in Dallas is undeniable. I mean, he programs AFI, and I feel that the films that he determines to exhibit at AFI that depict African Americans do so with great dignity.

Tickets for the Texas Black Film Festival are sold in two-hour blocks for $8 each, with day and festival passes available. To purchase tickets, visit the festival’s Web site.

Looking for something special to get your Valentine (that won’t break the bank)? These two offers came into the ol’ inbox today:

In conjunction with the Free Night of Theater program, Theatre Three is offering half-price tickets to opening night of the farce Don’t Dress for Dinner. The show opens on Monday (Feb. 9), and your ticket includes an invite to the post-party where you can mingle with the actors, have dessert and meet the show’s director, John McLean. Click here to take them up on their offer (and be sure to enter the promotional code SH5PP09).

Next, if you haven’t visited the King Tut show at the Dallas Museum of Art yet, the museum has put together a package called “Tutally in Love” designed for couples (never can have too many Tut puns!). With a purchase of a “King Tut Golden Gift Pack”- two VIP tickets and two audio tours for $49 – anytime between Feb. 2-14, visitors will be eligible to receive a  “Valentine Indulgence Dessert for Two” in the Museum’s Seventeen Seventeen Restaurant.