| | | | | More Money, Dumber Kids Texas school districts are in state court in Austin telling a judge they need more money because the Legislature has boosted standardized testing and curriculum requirements. No they haven't. Texas standards have lowered, thanks to teachers' unions and test opponents. more >> | | | | | | | | Armoury D.E.'s Csavargó Proves Sandwiches Can Still Surprise by Scott Reitz  Just behind the massive, unmarked door of Armoury D.E. is a look at where many restaurants in Dallas will be headed over the next few years. Peter Novotny (co-owner) and Abram Vargas (chef and co-owner) used to work at the Fillmore Pub before they got the crazy idea to open a place of their own. These next-generation restaurateurs have new ideas of what constitutes a good bar or restaurant. They ask hard-hitting questions, like, “Why are there Hungarian restaurants in Chicago but none in Dallas?” That’s the kind of poking around that can have a meaningful impact on a city’s food scene. more >> | | | For Garden Cafe's Mark Wootton, Slow, Steady and Local Wins the Race The farm-to-table movement has catapulted chefs Graham Dodds, Matt McCallister and others into the national spotlight, and certainly affected the way we eat in Dallas. But not every move toward a more sustainable, local food culture has been in Dallas’ fine dining restaurants. At Garden Cafe, chef Mark Wooten is committed to providing hyper-local (think in the backyard) food in a casual, diner-style environment. more >> | | | | | | Black Mass Is Stronger than Depp's Performance by Stephanie Zacharek  Black Mass is a tightly wound piece of work, and Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace) keeps its many small parts moving with ease. He’s skillful at merging telling, minute details with bigger, looping schemes. We see Whitey Bulger sitting down to play cards, circa the mid-’70s, with his senior-citizen mom (who’s shocked when he won’t take the opportunity to cheat) and working his treacherous wiles on one of his childhood pals, now grown up to be FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton, who plays his character as likable, believable, and just slightly pitiable). The only performer I couldn’t wholly buy is Depp. With that prosthetic balding scalp and strange glued-on eyebrows, he looks less like the real Whitey Bulger than like a bulb-headed alien from an old Twilight Zone. more >> | | | It’s the Chess Master vs. His Own Mind in Pawn Sacrifice Pawn Sacrifice clicks along with crisp efficiency. Zwick, the director behind movies like Glory and Blood Diamond, is old-school in his attention to craftsmanship, alive to telling details. A flashback showing Fischer as a kid in a cowboy shirt, trying to get the attention of his radical-lefty mom (Robin Weigert) at the party she’s hosting in the family’s Brooklyn flat, suggests a little boy lost from the beginning: When he finally retreats to bed, we see the chess set standing loyally on a table nearby — it’s easy to see how an extremely bright, lonely kid would find solace in the logic of the game. more >> | | | | | | | | Diedrick Brackens Unravels Life's Narratives In Fabric With every stitch or every tear in the fabric, Diedrick Brackens is creating or, more aptly, unraveling a much larger cloth. In a new exhibition at Conduit Gallery, hearts, hands, and other members, of his latest textile works, Brackens continues his exploration of issues of race, tradition and gender, but with a new, looser hand. more >> | | | | |
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