Diesel spins the world in reverse
Diesel is ostensibly famous for its jeans, though some might argue that the trendy clothing label is better known for its off-the-wall ads. Its new spring campaign will keep the controversy burning.

04/13/2001

Rapper Jay-Z arrested for alleged gun possession near nightclub
NEW YORK – Grammy-winning rapper Jay-Z was arrested for illegal gun possession near a Manhattan nightclub early today, police said.

'Oh My God' - they've ambushed Amber!
And Amber waves of pain. Amber Brkich, the resident Li'l Debbie Cakes, got pink-slipped Thursday night on Episode 11 of Survivor: The Australian Outback.

Man held in shooting death of Drifters singer
Dallas police have charged a 19-year-old Garland man with capital murder in the shooting death of a member of the singing group The Drifters almost a year ago, police said Thursday.

Cartoon friends share the holidays
It's not always easy for younger kids to understand the spiritual significance of Passover and Easter. And that's where perennials such as the 1974 It's The Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown and the 1991 A Rugrats Passover help.

Almost focused: 'Love letter' to rock wanders in subplots
You know you've accomplished something when you make Roger Ebert want to hug himself.

04/12/2001

Sciutti dies at 68
Soprano and stage director Graziella Sciutti, a frequent performer with the Dallas Civic Opera in the 1960s and '70s, died of cancer Monday in Geneva. She was 68.

Full-blown
Everybody knows about that clapping rule at concerts: No applause between movements. But what do you do when Arturo Sandoval is onstage, playing in one trumpet concerto practically every genre of music known to man – including jazz improv?

Actors unions schedule talks
LOS ANGELES – With a potential strike by Hollywood writers looming, two unions for actors have agreed to start negotiating next month for a new contract with hopes of averting back-to-back walkouts.

Lone Star improv gorges on 'Funniest' fodder
The comedy club Upstaged claims fame for "smart comedy, smart cocktails." But it's not the upscale drinks that get folks laughing. Lone Star Comedy put this place on the map and keeps it thriving. The troupe proved it again at the new revue Survivor of the Funniest, which opened last weekend.

Festivities planned
Dallas is celebrating architecture month through April 28 with tours, talks and seminars throughout the city.

Sir Harry Secombe, British entertainer, dies
LONDON – Comedian Sir Harry Secombe, whose gift for the ridiculous made him one of Britain's best-loved entertainers, died Wednesday. He was 79.

Changing their tune
SAN ANTONIO – In this Tejano music capital, a strange thing has happened to those once-enduring, accordion-driven oompahs: hip-hop. The generational soundtrack of young America is now the top radio format in a city where seven out of 10 people under the age of 18 are Latino.

A record label for 'poets'
Lost Highway Records is taking the back road to success, with artists who don't fit into categories easily and certainly don't fit into today's rigid radio formats.

Hot tips

DJ Merritt puts his vast experience in the Dallas club scene on record
While there is no official lifespan for a club DJ, it's definitely unusual to find one who's been at it for more than 10 years.

Heat index
What's hot in pop music

What's in the changer?
Here are five discs that The Dallas Morning News staff and guest critic Jason Lytle of Grandaddy are listening to this week.

Hot bite

04/11/2001

Beatrice Straight dies at 86
Beatrice Straight, who earned the best- supporting-actress Oscar in 1976 for playing William Holden's estranged wife in Network, has died. She was 86.

'Millionaire' empties bonus jackpot
Knowing who invented the first mass-produced helicopter netted environmental engineer Kevin Olmstead the largest game-show prize in TV history Tuesday on ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

Box of Hooks
Rob Thomas and his Matchbox Twenty bandmates opened their sold-out Reunion Arena show Tuesday night with a one-two punch – "Crutch" and "Bent."

Due South: Blount, Bailey craft good ol' humor
As an unrepentant Northerner, I admit I remain mystified as to the supposed comic appeal of Jim Nabors or Don Knotts.

Casa's 'Fosse' a tribute of distinction
FORT WORTH – If seeing Fosse doesn't convince you that Bob Fosse was the greatest choreographer ever to hit Broadway, go see it a couple more times.

Horrors! New sci-fi on UPN
Whatever the reason, sci-fi on television – even as it proliferates – seems to be retreating from any connection to the real world. Two new offerings on UPN cement the trend. Both Special Unit 2, premiering Wednesday night, and All Souls, bowing next Tuesday, are clearly designed with the niche network's young male audience in mind.

Comedic highs and lows
Every once in a while, nostalgia inspires more than an updated trip down memory lane. In the case of Josie and the Pussycats, it has provoked something refreshingly new and unexpectedly interesting.

Meet opera's latest luminary
Good acting and good singing are often isolated virtues in opera. So it comes as a special pleasure when they are united in a single artist, as with the rising American soprano Elizabeth Futral.

Hot corner

Why Carnegie's new chief is playing it cool
After Mr. Ohnesorg's Sturm und Drang, the board went for a change of pace, a calming Andante Gracioso. Mr. Harth, 44, was selected from among the more than 100 candidates interviewed. But it would be unfair to consider him a safe choice.

04/10/2001

Eminem gets two years' probation for carrying concealed weapon
MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. – Rap star Eminem was sentenced to two years' probation Tuesday for carrying a concealed weapon. The charge carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison, although Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga said earlier that he would seek no more than six months.

Fidel Castro joins Kevin Costner at screening of movie on Cuban Missile Crisis
HAVANA – President Fidel Castro sat next to actor-producer Kevin Costner as Cuban officials joined Hollywood heavyweights at a private screening of "Thirteen Days," Costner's movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Writers Guild, studios plan talks
The Writers Guild of America and Hollywood movie and television studios said they will resume negotiations on a new contract April 17, about two weeks before the union's contract is set to expire.

Saucy jam
With so many pop music groups created from casting calls and whole cloth these days – say TV darlings like Eve's Crush, Harlow or O- (as in 'Oh, whatever') Town – it seems that bands that reflect any sort of actual flavor are in danger of being marginalized, if not ignored.

Sides clash over Frank diary rights
HOLLYWOOD – Anne Frank's diary of her years in hiding before being seized by German soldiers is the most enduring and widely read Holocaust document, an intimate diary of remarkable optimism in the face of evil.

Cliburn adds film festival
This year's Van Cliburn International Piano Competition will be the first to be held in Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth. But a new adjunct to the quadrennial piano extravaganza will take place in a nearby movie theater.

Fervent Broadway-hit producer Cantor dies at 81
NEW YORK – Arthur Cantor, the gentleman impresario with a showman's flair who worked more than 40 years in the theater, on Broadway and beyond, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 81.

Briefs
• FW's Angeluna among top Texas restaurants
• PEN/Faulkner award winners announced
• Ballet leaders named in Houston and Boston

Correction

Playwright tags identity issues
Even before writing her acclaimed play Stop Kiss, about two heretofore heterosexual women who find themselves falling in love, Diana Son was fascinated by human mutability.

Pilot's projects
Craig Cosgray has a vision. It's the kind that can drive a man to spend nearly all of his free time – not to mention a good chunk of his own change – working to make it come true.

04/09/2001

NBC to absorb its money-losing Internet subsidiary
NEW YORK – NBC is shutting down its loss-ridden Internet subsidiary, acknowledging that any hopes of it becoming profitable had vaporized along with the online advertising market. Many of the 300 jobs there will be eliminated as the unit's assets are integrated into NBC.

Fleet of foot
LEWISVILLE – Complain, complain. The stage is too low. The music is canned. The sets are dreary. But did it matter? No.

Chewing (and guzzling) the scenery
No more drummer jokes. Not after the bravura "performance" of Dominic Weir, the hard-drinking, womanizing, schmoozing, self-centered drummer of Dallas-Fort Worth rock band Flickerstick on episode two of Bands on the Run.

Flamenco dancers pound out Greco tribute
Conté de Loyo's Flamenco Theatre offered a high-voltage performance at the Dallas Museum of Art's Horchow Auditorium Sunday afternoon. The program was part of the weeklong festivities surrounding the III Dallas International Flamenco Festival and was offered in tribute to the late José Greco.

'Spy Kids' stays on top
LOS ANGELES – Spy Kids remains under close surveillance: The family flick about pint-sized secret agents was the No. 1 movie for the second straight weekend despite a flurry of new films.

Bach chorale a beauty
Among the acknowledged masterpieces of music that receive short shrift around here are the large choral works of Bach. The shrift would be much shorter if it weren't for the Dallas Bach Society, the one performing organization that can be counted on to delve into this material with any regularity.

Hip-hop wizard
Darrell Johnson found success in radio the old-fashioned way: He took any job he could find and worked his butt off. At the hoary age of 18, Mr. Johnson's hard work paid off with his first program-director's gig.

Hollywood's history lessons aren't the whole picture
Mel-watchers know the stories: The unsinkable Mr. Gibson played Fletcher Christian in 1985's The Bounty and William Wallace in the Oscar-winning Braveheart.

Film on drugs traces line between fun and disaster
Ted Demme is in town to promote his new film, Blow. More specifically, he's here pitching the film to college press with a screening at Southern Methodist University and interviews to follow.

04/08/2001

Pouring for Perez
Veteran Tejano vocalist Jay Perez must be thinking about that "When it rains it pours" cliché: After years of Tejano Music Award nominations and no wins, he finally took home his first trophy in 2000. A mere 12 months later, he sweeps the event with three TMAs, for male vocalist, entertainer and crossover song of the year for "Señorita Tequila."

Gliding 'Swan'
There are many ways of seeing Swan Lake: as a dramatic tragedy, as the epitome of romantic classicism, as a tone poem. Fort Worth Dallas Ballet's new version, staged by Bruce Simpson, chose the tone poem. Emotional intensity was minimal; lavish costumes and chiseled perfection in group work dominated the event.

Entertainment notes
• Met Opera broadcast remembers critic Ardoin
• Danny Gaither dies at 62

Horn made to measure
ADDISON – Never judge a concert by its start. A case in point: Shirley Horn's headlining show Friday night at the first North Texas Jazz Festival – a set that began like a train wreck in slow motion.

More entertainment news

CDs in brief

Colossus and chameleon
Chameleon and cultural pack-rat, priest and prophet, genius and liar: Igor Stravinsky bestrode the turbulent straits of 20th-century music like a big-nosed, bespectacled colossus. Thirty years after his death – the anniversary was Friday – he looks unrivaled in staying power.

CD highlights

DiFranco CD suffers from surplus of gloom
An hour and 40 minutes into Ani DiFranco's new double CD, she sings "How sick of me/Must you be/By now." She's addressing an ex-lover, but listeners might be tempted to nod in agreement. Even with an artist as gifted Ms. DiFranco, it's possible to have too much of a good thing.

A monument to heroes
Rusting steel, chunks of concrete and blacktop, badge numbers reflected on the pavement – these are the images that greet visitors to the new Dallas Police Memorial. And they are emphatically urban images, derived from the mean streets where police officers spend much of their lives. No bronze statues, classical inscriptions or other conventional commemorative devices.

Critics' notebook: Thanks ... whoever you are

The charts

Gesualdo recording befits madrigals
Most recordings of Gesualdo degenerate into a freak show. This one actually makes music.

Singing from the shadows
The sudden death of Eddy Shaver, son and musical partner of Lone Star legend Billy Joe Shaver, forever alters the songs on Shaver's The Earth Rolls On. Eddy Shaver, a fiery guitarist whose bold, rock-style riffs gave Shaver its stinging country sound, died Dec. 31 of an accidental heroin overdose. His death delayed the release of this album, which was finished and originally scheduled for a March street date.

Come and get it
The Nashville promotion machine will hype Texan Charlie Robison as the genre's great new hope to put gritty, honest, story-spinning country back on mainstream radio. He may very well be, if only because the Bandera native remains the antithesis of the polished posers who clog the airwaves.

Al Brumley: Arbitron faces scary numbers of its own
It's been a bad week for Arbitron. The radio ratings giant went public Monday, the same day reports emerged that Clear Channel Communications would no longer subscribe to the service.

Lone Star strider
FORT WORTH – Bruce Wood is an original. The former horse roper is one of the best contemporary choreographers in the country. And he has no intention of leaving Texas for greener pastures. The Lone Star State is his muse.

Opening Renée's diary
Actress Renée Zellweger has had some tricky roles in the past – a Jewish woman experiencing a crisis of faith (A Price Above Rubies), a small-town waitress suffering a break from reality (Nurse Betty) and the girlfriend of pulp-literature bad boy Robert E. Howard (The Whole Wide World). But she really stuck her neck out as the title character in the film adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary.

Arts mail

Modern dance set overstays welcome
Modern dance is a hard sell. Nowhere was that more evident than at the South Dallas Cultural Center, where Nova Dancing Company held forth Thursday night. There were more dancers – 14 – than members of the audience – eight.

'Miss Lydia' has plenty of charm to let
FORT WORTH – Don Evans' A Lovesong for Miss Lydia is all about people who are supposed to be "nice and mannerly" – gentleman boarders, sweet old ladies – but turn out to be more complicated than that. The play itself proves as unpredictable as its characters, which made Friday's opening at Jubilee Theatre consistently absorbing and surprising despite its conventional trappings.

04/07/2001

On the Web: Surreality shows are just a cool click away
One of the ironies of technology is that in the universe of content-providers it has made possible, there is precious little content worth providing.

Hot tips

Hot corner

Playing the market
Buy. Sell. High. Low. Trade talk fills the headlines in these stock-obsessed times. So it's not surprising that every day (every hour, even) investors use the Internet to check pricing trends, market volatility and other factors influencing the value of their portfolios.

Hot bite: Pasand

04/06/2001

Nick, the man who wasn't there, is gone for real
Nick Brown's departure leaves a malnourished skin-and-bones sextet to cope with depleted food supplies.

Texas star Colby has it all under control
As the hardships - and the competitors - ripened, a hungry Colby surrendered his flag but picked up his first immunity talisman.

03/05/2001

Ed Bark: Winners and losers
All of the great big bets, including Bette, have failed to pay off. But Survivor II, Temptation Island and even The Mole have made their respective investors happy. Which opens the door even more for cost-efficient "reality" TV as a hedge against likely writers and actors strikes in the next several months.

01/15/2001

Walk on, 'Texas Ranger'
PASADENA, Calif. – No longer a karate kid, 60-year-old Chuck Norris is finally ready to kick back and kayo Walker, Texas Ranger. Envision him bicycling through Italy with his wife, Gena, this spring. That's his immediate objective after the show officially ends production on April 5 in Dallas.

06/13/2000

The Wuntch 100
Here are the top 100 movie comedies of all time, according to Dallas Morning news film critic Philip Wuntch.