DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR: The Dallas Opera has created a a $20 million Cultural Renaissance Endowment Fund, designed to “increase the Opera’s artistic quality,” according to a statement. That’s all well and good, but funds have to be, you know … funded. Enter an anonymous donor, who has issued a $10 million challenge grant. It’s up to other opera fans to pony up the remaining $10 million by Oct. 31, 2011. If you’d like to chip a few bucks off of that goal, you can contact the opera’s Director of Development, Cynthia Young ([email protected]).

SXSW MOVIE PANELS ANNOUNCED: If you’re planning on heading down to Austin next month for South by Southwest, you’ll have some fun movies panels awaiting you. Among the highlights are: “A Conversation with Michel Gondry,” “Directing the Dead: Genre Directors Spill Their Guts” (featuring Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino, among others) and “Filmmakers in TV: A Case Study” (featuring David Gordon Green, the Richardson High School alum who directed Pineapple Express). You can read about all the panels here.

FEATHERS RUFFLED IN BURLESON: Beginning last month, MTV began airing a reality show called My Life as Liz, about a teenage girl who attended Burleson High School last school year. The show follows the well-tread arc of a girl at odds with her hometown. And, this being a reality show, you have to wonder if the truth is sometimes (often?) sacrificed for the sake of the story. That’s what some Burleson residents claim in this dfw.com story. If you want to tune in to see if you can tell fact from fiction, My Life as Liz airs Mondays at 9:30 p.m.