Dear Robert,

I just ran out of the screening of your new holiday movie, Little Fockers.  I take partial blame here. I volunteered to do the review, knowing none of its agonized background. Your ads on all of the DART buses look pretty great, and I thought your first Fockers movie, Meet the Parents, was silly, implausible, and annoying, but fun. With a cast including you, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Blythe Danner, Barbra Streisand, Jessica Alba, Harvey Keitel, Laura Dern, and ..read more

In part two of our three-part look back at the year in music, the Kessler Theater’s Jeff Liles, Shiny Around the Edges’ Jenny Seman, Old Snack’s Aaron White, and Blixaboy’s Wanz Dover offer their favorites in local and national new music. (Click for part 1 and part 3)

Jeff Liles (Dallas musician, Cottonmouth, TX and artistic director, The Kessler Theater)

Local Music Summary: Local music is once again in transition, this time moving forward in a positive direction and driven by a ..read more

1. The Interfaith Peace Chapel, now opened on the campus of the Cathedral of Hope, was the last building designed by the architect Philip Johnson. Willard Spiegelman writes in the Wall Street Journal:

In at least one way, the chapel is even more spiritually uplifting than the still unbuilt, grandiose cathedral. It is all about intimacy. . . . Like Texas itself, Johnson always had a willingness to make the big statement. . . . Of the chapel (which went through many iterations, after back-and- forthing with the church officials) he said: it “will be built of simple and common materials, which I understand God is rather fond of.” It makes a quiet final statement.

2. We learned last week that actor Cedric Neal, a member of the Dallas Theater Center’s Brierley Resident Acting Company, will head to New York after the new year. On Theater Jones, Neal contributes an essay to the site’s ongoing series of look-backs at 2010, calling his experience “a yearlong Master Class,” staring opposite like Jeffrey DeMunn, Patrick Cassidy, and Randy Moore:

Mr. Moore ALWAYS had a word of encouragement and planted a seed of “Ignorance” in me. He would say, “Cedric, you have got to learn to ignore a lot of what you’re allowing to affect you!” Mr. Moore is also a master of TIMING, and his presence in my life was right on time.

3. As the Art Newspaper aptly puts it, the “Smithsonian row snowballs.” Now, a hedge-fund/art lover/collector, Jim Hedges, has asked for the National Portrait Gallery to return a work he loaned the museum, “Untitled, Self Portrait,” by Jack Pierson.

As Harry Truman used to say, it’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job, a depression when you lose yours.

For most classical music buffs in Dallas this year, it was a recession. News of strikes, bankruptcies, orchestra musicians’ paycuts (as close as just down the road in Fort Worth), and severely curtailed seasons in other places trickled into the newspapers and blogs—as such news has since summer of 2008—while things continued to roll along here.

Budgets were down, and shortfalls ..read more

Although we didn’t have a Burj Khalifa built here in Dallas this year, we had our own 2010 architectural happenings.  Here’s a look back:

The beginnings of an economic recovery—or at least the perceptions of such—were a boon to a hurting architecture and building sector.  Dormant projects were given new life, such as the Fain Johnson-designed Museum Tower, which began construction in the parking lot between the Nasher Sculpture Center and Meyerson Symphony Center.  On the other hand, economic weakness didn’t ..read more

[Ed. Note: To look back at the year in music, Christopher Mosley has compiled an extensive list of local musicians, scene participants, and personalities. Over the next three days, we’ll share with you their thoughts on the best in local music, as well as the music world at large. Click for part 2 and part 3.]

Year-end pieces are tricky. When evaluating the trends and highlights from a year, to look back and take the pulse of a scene, I find ..read more

1. The Denton Record-Chronicle’s Lucinda Breeding looks back on Denton’s best of 2010, including tapping Sarah Jaffe’s “Suburban Nature” as best album and double bassist Tian Yang Liu for “best performance” (during the International Double Bass Solo Competition).

2. The guys and gals over on DC9 at Night have been counting down the best local releases of 2010, and they have arrived at the top ten. Rounding out the list at number ten: Mind Spiders.

3. The art world’s controversy de jour: Jeffrey Deitch, who sits in Jeremy Strick’s old chair at the MoCA (now officially called (only not): The Hot Seat^TM), has created a stir for white washing a mural by graffiti artist Blu (a MoCA commission), which depicted coffins of American soldiers draped with dollar bills . . . all within walking distance of a Veterans Affairs hospital and a memorial to Japanese American soldiers (no one said graffiti artists had to be sensitive). These things are usually entertaining when sifted through the wry, good sense (usually) of Art Fag City’s Paddy Johnson, so that’s where we’ll point you (again):

I know this won’t be a popular opinion, but all this talk about Jeffrey Deitch’s decision to white wash grafitti artist Blu’s mural at MoCA is a big who cares for me. Yes, Deitch shouldn’t have pulled the wall after it had all but been completed.  Blu, though, will still be in the show catalogue, so it’s not like no one will see the piece. If this is the outrageous censorship I keep reading about, it’s pretty ineffective. Plus, let’s keep in mind that the graffiti was never meant to permanent anyway.

The real issue here is that if Blu’s words are true, we have a director at the head of major institution lying in a public forum. That’s a serious problem and worth some discussion.

While the biggest dance sensation of the year was, by far, Bristol Palin flaunting her limited dance expertise on the set of ABC’s Dancing With The Stars, followed closely by the young talents on the hit FOX series So You Think You Can Dance, the popularity of these hit shows has been reflected in local auditoriums. It was wonderful to see the packed house at the newly minted AT&T Performing Arts Center when Texas Ballet Theater performed The Sleeping Beauty and ..read more

In compiling this year in review, I deliberately avoided the word “best.” As a freelance theater critic, the number of shows I’m able to attend is regrettably limited. There’s a good chance that I missed the best performance of the year, or the best show, or the best set. There’s also a good chance that I didn’t pick your favorite performance, show, or set. That’s OK—part of what makes art great is its subjectivity.

So, with that disclaimer out of the ..read more

1. The city council has passed an ordinance allowing the AT&T Performing Arts Center to erect two “jumbtron” style screens to advertise events at the center. The screens will be smartly positioned at two high-trafficked intersections (Woodall and Jack Evans/Leonard and Ross), and will display video and information about the center. Its a positive move to cap the year. Here’s a New Year’s resolution: erect beer taps and espresso machines in Sammons Park. 

2. Continuing on with its series of year-end essays, actor/director – and recent college graduate – Joey Folsom writes about 2010 for Theater Jones:

What I learned: 1) While a classroom setting with an impassioned person leading it is invaluable, so is a group of people playing in their art; 2) a workshop can be enlightening but so can a conversation about craft at a bar with someone who has a real reason for talking; 3) a handful of people who care about what they’re doing on a $50 budget can do just as good a job as 20 people and 50 grand behind them, maybe even a better one; and 4) ultimately, like anything else, you get from your art what you put into it.

3. The Dallas Morning News offers this look back on the year in pop culture and TV, which I mention not to remind you of that wonderfully warm moment when Lady Gag, Usher, and Kim Kardashian stopped twittering until fans raised $1 million for World AIDS Day (can you imagine the restraint?), but rather as a reason for this shameless self promotion: stay tuned to FrontRow all week as we look back at the best of the arts in 2010, from theater, dance, and art, to music, movies, and architecture.