Despite the obvious themes of power and faith, PT Anderson's vast, visionary epic There Will Be Blood isn’t primarily about oil, or about religion, or about extremism. Rather, it’s a thorough excavation of the foundation of American identity. And on top of all that, it’s the best film of the year....

Image from Arthur Miller Collection, Harry Ransom Center Rehearsing the American Dream: Arthur Miller’s TheatreSeptember 4 - December 30Harry Ransom Center (21st & Guadaloupe)free, hours vary[info]Sometimes we think we could spend a lifetime sorting through the treasure trove of historical documents and materials in the Harry Ransom Center. From the Gutenberg Bible to the Watergate papers, from the first-ever photograph to love poems written by Ernest Hemingway from the trenches of World War I, the......

One man’s hapless journey through life is documented in the new exhibit, Mike’s World, a performance and video installation at the Blanton Museum of Art. Tonight's edition of the monthly B Scene at the Blanton Museum of Art will offer a sneak peek at Mike’s World, which won't officially open until September 11. Short video performances shown on flat screens throughout the exhibit space will give viewers a focused look in to the life of......

Kurt Vonnegut was the little booger hanging on the up-turned nose of literature. He kept the sci-fi and fantasy genre from getting too one-dimensional, and he helped reel the “literary world” back in from too much self-aggrandizement. For decades his cynical humor and desperate energy pulled at the spindly awkward adolescent us, and gave us something we could claim as our own. He got us to suspend our disbelief and see the same-old same-old......

Could there be a better emblem of corporate "zaniness" than the Segway? You know, the two-wheeled "personal transporter" device that, while marketed as a solution to traffic congestion, is in fact a really annoying adult toy that gets in everyone's way? To filmmakers Hunter Weeks and Josh Caldwell, however, the Segway scooter embodies the American Dream. Or something like that, because they decided, after purchasing a Segway "on impulse" (note: the things cost 5 grand......

One of the films we're most excited about seeing at this year's South By Southwest Film Festival is Laura Dunn's The Unforeseen, a documentary look at the controversy surrounding Austin's real estate development and its impact on the Edwards Aquifer and on Barton Springs. Co-executive-produced by Terrence Malik and Robert Redford (who reportedly learned to swim at Barton Springs), the film explores the unseen relationships between our natural environment and our urge to destroy it.......

Two years ago LB Deyo and Buzz Moran first gathered the faithful for a unique festival of intellect and revelry called The Dionysium. Tonight, we're all invited to celebrate that event, with "another scintillating monthly installment of cerebral stimulation, cultural enlightenment and ill-advised drunkenness." Here's the line-up for the June Dionysium: Owen Egerton of the Sinus Show will read his short story "Waffle," while someone else sits in the front row and makes jokes over......

The Dionysium is back tonight and this month's debate is to resolve the very hot topic of whether or not outsourcing American jobs to lower-paid foreign workers is good for the United States. So if you're up for a stimulating and "unique program of debate, lecture, declamation, theatrical presentation and music in a salon-like atmosphere," this one, as always, is for you. They also often play a short film and finish off the night......

[from Publishers' Weekly] Men 25-34 with Bachelor's degrees today are making just $6,000 more than those with high school diplommas in 1972. Pretty shocking, right? Or maybe not at all. In her excellent book Strapped : Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead, author Tamara Draut examines the battles young people face in trying to join the American middle class and her ideas for reviving the American Dream. This morning, she joins Diane......

In an almost unprecedented move (not since “Mystic Pizza”), AMC Entertainment is offering refunds to people who go see “Cinderella Man” and leave with a sour taste in their mouths. The Ron Howard film starring notorious hothead Russell Crowe has underperformed greatly at the box office. The film has not come close to making back its $88 million production costs, so far making only about $50 million in its first month of release. In......