WORK IN PROGRESS: The Video Association of Dallas sends word of a new film series it is putting together that will screen works in progress. “This is your chance to see work before it is finished and have a real impact on how it turns out,” Bart Weiss says in the VAD’s current newsletter (You can join the e-mail list here). The series will be co-produced with the Magnolia Theatre, the Lone Star Film Society and the Dallas Film Society. The first screening will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 16 at the Magnolia.

MUSIC BITS: The members of Eleven Hundred Springs decided to self-produce the band’s latest album, This Crazy Life. And frontman Matt Hillyer says producing your own record is, “harder that you think.” (dfw.com) … Dallas advertising exec Brice Beaird talks about how he reconnected with music in his late 40s to record an album, only to wait nearly a decade to record its follow-up. (dallasnews.com) … Fort Worth singer-songwriter Naxat (a.k.a. Alex Atchley) says he prefers songs sans lyrics. (fwweekly.com) … You’ve read plenty in the last few weeks about how Smile Smile‘s upcoming album explores the duo’s romantic breakup. But if you don’t know the story of how Ryan Hamilton and Jencey Hirunrusme met, made music and called it quits, Quick spells it all out … in a comic! (quickdfw.com)

BUCKLEY BACK IN NEW YORK: The New York Times’ Stephen Holden reviews Fort Worth resident Betty Buckley’s return to New York for a four-week engagement at Feinstein’s. Although her show is called “For the Love of Broadway,” the singer’s material actually manages to reconcile “the two sides of Ms. Buckley — the Broadway traditionalist and the post-1960s jazz-infatuated rebel — in the most satisfying way imaginable. … From the spirited Rodgers and Hart medley that opened the show to a triumphal rendition of “Home,” from The Wiz, there was also plenty of joy: not the smiley-face cheer that passes for bonhomie in show business, but a real feeling of happiness.”

QUOTABLE: “After last year, it’d be OK to be the invisible man.”

– artist David Bates, whose work was represented at last year’s Dallas Art Fair by both Dunn and Brown Contemporary and San Francisco’s  John Berggruen Gallery, in an interview with dallasnews.com. For more on the Dallas Art Fair, which opens Friday, take a listen to today’s KERA radio story.