Real Housewives Recap

Real Housewives of Dallas serve up Frito pie and side eye

Cary Deuber of the Real Housewives of Dallas

Brandi Redmond, Cary Deuber, and Stephanie Hollman of the Real Housewives of Dallas.

Photo courtesy of Bravo

Sondheim’s “Ladies Who Lunch” may drink as many cocktails as the Real Housewives of Dallas, but that’s about all they have in common. Our local ladies aren’t lounging in caftans, planning brunches on their own behalf. No, they’re wearing “Goth State Fair” couture to eat greasy Frito pies in a swanky house.

They mix with other moneyed swells in their hifalutin “charity world,” as lead Dallas housewife LeeAnne Locken always refers to it, but the main women on this version of the Bravo series don’t pretend to act high class. They regularly cuss like bouncers and backstab like high school mean girls. They put fake dog poo on luncheon hats and swap stories about which of them once got drunk enough to foul her own trousers.

In this week’s seventh of 10 episodes, the housewives still act trashy while doing some nice charity things. Viewers elsewhere who don’t know better must watch this show and think women in Dallas do nothing but drink, curse, reapply blusher, and attend charity functions.

At one event, we finally get to hear housewife Tiffany Hendra’s cute musician husband Aaron sing with his band in a fundraising concert at House of Blues. It’s a Tiffany-planned benefit for Light Up Tomorrow, which provides lighting and solar power in schools and orphanages in East Africa. (Aaron knows he’s a straightening-ironed ringer for Keith Urban. His Twitter handle is @MrKeithSuburban.)

To discuss charity parties yet to come, LeeAnne meets Tiffany at Toulouse bistro on Knox Street, where she introduces her to art collector and designer Heidi Dillon. In her to-the-camera confessional, LeeAnne talks about Heidi with such reverence, it’s as if she’s arranged a papal blessing for Tiff.

We see Tiffany and LeeAnne shop for used dresses at the Clothes Circuit consignment shop in Preston Center. Contrast their bargain-hunting with Cary Deuber being given yet another skintight Roberto Cavalli gown by her indulgent (second) husband Dr. Mark, who says the latest dress “cost more than my first car.” He makes her model it for him (and the camera) and then rushes to get it off of her.

Every word Mark utters to Cary alludes to sexual activity he’d like to be engaging in. Is there such a thing as marital sexual harassment? We get it, doc, you’re hot for your (second) wife. Every conversation doesn’t have to sound like a letter to Penthouse.

Last week’s RHOD featured uncomfortably real marital discord between the red-haired couple, Brandi and Bryan Redmond. She feels neglected during his long business trips. He walked out on dinner. This week he apologizes over drinks at Whiskey Cake Kitchen.

“If you give me attention, I will love you,” Brandi says to Bryan. This explains everything about Brandi and Bryan.

Cut to Brandi back at the Redmond mansion helping her ginger-haired kids with vocabulary words. “`Could,’” says Brandi, looking over her daughter’s spelling homework. “I could have some Jesus juice right now.” Brandi giggles, but she means it.

Making a splashy cameo in this episode, Heidi Dillon hosts the aforementioned Goth-themed Frito pie soiree that brings all the ladies together for some passive-aggressive hugging and side-eye throwing. Clueless giraffe Stephanie Hollman blinks blankly at Heidi, who has gossiped to Tiff and LeeAnne that Cary first met Mark “under his desk.”

Heidi, sly minx that she is, taunts Cary to do orally suggestive things to a corndog. Cary refuses and then makes like a banana and splits.

LeeAnne gobbles Frito pie (she grew up a carny kid, remember) and gives big face at Heidi’s dinner party. She’s “branding” her over-use of fuchsia blusher, by the way, by coming out with her own called “Cheeky.” Saw it on Twitter.

If there’s one thing a Bravo “housewife” loves to do it’s build a brand. Hello, Skinny Girl, Tipsy Girl, and Ramona Pinot Grigio — all spin-off brands from cast members on RHONY. RHOD’s main sponsor, we notice, is a bladder leakage-control product. Don’t see any of the ladies rushing to get their names on that.

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Real Housewives of Dallas airs at 9 pm. Mondays on Bravo. You can also watch episodes online.

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Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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