6/22 Every member of the 200-strong Turtle Creek Chorale will be a spectacle unto himself during the lusty throng’s summer concerts on June 22 and June 27. Bespectacled in outlandish homage to Elton John, TCC members will revel in the pop culture icon and consummate musician’s body of work with…
There is one character in Ad Wars, Fran Wheatly, who’s a feminist grad student, fresh-faced and ready to get her career started in advertising. The play in no way revolves around our Fran, and most of her lines are intended solely for laughs, but you kind of pity her. All…
Having seemingly exhausted all permutations of the sports comedy formula (Bull Durham, White Men Can’t Jump, et al.), Ron Shelton has now moved on to another obsession: the Los Angeles Police Department. Earlier this year, we got the uncharacteristically somber Dark Blue, a “what if” tale of the alternately corrupt…
The hero of Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen is an isolated teen-ager mired in a gray Scottish slum with only a vague dream of family life to sustain him. Like previous Loach heroes–the impoverished boy who finds hope training a falcon in Kes, say, or the downtrodden working stiff struggling to…
The first question on the minds of most potential viewers of Owning Mahowny is probably something along the lines of “What’s up with that spelling? Who spells ‘Mahoney’ with a ‘w’?” Do the marketing people think we somehow won’t get that it rhymes with “owning” if there isn’t a “w”…
Here’s another stranger-in-a-strange-land yarn, but Matt Dillon in his feature directorial debut delivers loads of atmosphere to tart up the threadbare paradigm. Playing a slick nobody insurance broker on the lam from the FBI, Dillon journeys from Big Apple ennui to Cambodian exotica in search of his mentor, the typically…
You need not leave the house to know what’s playing in movie theaters in coming weeks. You’ve already seen these films, with titles consisting of letters followed by numbers. There’s no surprise in the dark, just the bumping into of familiar faces, legally blond or largely green, and furious franchises…
Lovers meet each other coming and going in The Last Five Years, a poignant and inventive two-person musical now onstage at Plano Repertory Theatre. Writer-composer Jason Robert Brown uses just 14 songs and 90 minutes of brief vignettes to dramatize the romance between ambitious New York writer Jamie Wellerstein (Ric…
Real men don’t eat quiche. Real men don’t cry. Real men don’t ask for directions. Real men don’t use clichés. We’re clear on what “real men” don’t do, but we have a bit less information on what bastions of manliness do do. Apparently, this is the fourth year that Real…
6/16 Considering that we here at the Dallas Observer concern ourselves with nothing but the cutting edge of pop culture, we have no idea what’s going on in the world of professional wrestling. Ever since Vince McMahon’s WWE released its headlock on the top cable spot a few years back,…
6/14 Think you’ve got mad blowing skills? To clarify, that’s bubble gum bubble blowing, and kids under 12 get to find out if they’re up to par when Wal-Mart stores nationwide host the fourth annual Dubble Bubble National Bubble Blowing Contest. Kids compete to see who can blow the biggest…
6/12 It’s kinda flawless what they do-o-o-o over there on Swiss Aveno-o-o-o. Many are singing the praises of the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, and why not? It’s an art- and artist-advocacy Mecca, with a tireless, committed board; a devoted executive director; and nearly 500 artist and patron members who…
6/12 Dance still may be a hard sell in Dallas, but it’s all the rage on Broadway. Last year, Contact, a plotless dance show with recycled pop music, memorably Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible,” won Tony awards and filled the seats. Why? Amazing dancing. This year, Billy Joel’s music and Twyla…
Thursday, June 12 One of the current great mysteries in our life is why that car dent repair kit sold on the TV infomercials comes with a free glue gun and glue sticks. It’s sad, we know. Even sadder, though, is that we don’t really care. They’re free, and everything…
Everybody knows David Brent. We’ve worked with, under or over someone like him, and it’s nothing other than excruciating. He’s the boss who points to a “Billy the Big Mouth” fish plaque and says, “You can’t put a price on comedy.” He’s the guy who warrants an unflattering PhotoShop job…
6/14 In the not too distant past, we scoffed at what we called “indulgent pet owners,” people who outfitted their furry friends with premium treats, name-brand apparel and high-end accessories. (We’re talking the Burberry dog coat and the Swarovski crystal collar.) That was, of course, before we adopted a dog…
Whenever the stars of the adolescent street-racing fantasy 2 Fast 2 Furious were feeling balky or temperamental on the set, as movie stars are wont to do, the cure was probably easy–an oil change and a tune-up. John Singleton’s adrenaline-spiked sequel to the surprise summer hit of 2001, The Fast…
Credit the quality of a superior educational system. Or the native wit of two quick thinkers with a gift for understanding the human animal. Or the power of happy collaboration. In any event, Lawless Heart, the second feature co-written and co-directed by the young Brits Neil Hunter and Tom Hunsinger,…
If we can glean any trend so far in the feature films of Icelandic actor-turned-director Baltasar Kormákur, it would be his ability to offer up utterly unsympathetic characters who are difficult to identify with, while somehow managing to keep us interested in their fates regardless. His feature directorial debut, 101…
In November there will arrive on newsstands a music magazine edited by Alan Light, who left Spin to embark on his endeavor of publishing a journal devoted to that long-ignored audience: the over-30 CD-buyer, the old fart for whom “new music” is a mystery left to be fathomed by The…
In the parlance of Harlem circa 1943, an “old settler” was an unsettling term for a woman of a certain age who had no children, no husband and no prospects. With so many men in uniform overseas in those years, there weren’t a lot of single gents on the home…
We’ve always wanted to travel on a passenger train. A lifetime of watching Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, North by Northwest and Strangers on a Train (the list of Hitch’s films with train scenes could go on), and we’re completely wrapped up in that seduction and mystery that roll along two…
