It’s hard to know what’s more concerning about what happened on Election Day: the fact that so many naive people believed that Donald Trump, a man who espoused racist, sexist and economically reckless policies and views, couldn’t win or the fact that so many people looked past all that and…
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, written as an original screenplay by author J.K. Rowling, is an expansion of her Harry Potter universe, and a test: Without lovable, adolescent leads Harry, Hermione Grainger, and Ron Weasley, or the elaborate narrative backbone provided by Rowling’s novels, can the wizarding world…
Tom Ford has entirely overstuffed his nesting-doll domestic drama-cum-thriller Nocturnal Animals, and yet I spent much of the film worrying that it might not have a point. Its aesthetic footprint is huge, but its impact decidedly small scale. That’s not always a bad thing; there’s a perverse elegance to so…
Anna Biller’s ripe, vibrant The Love Witch is an act of reclamation — and love. In this out-of-time extravaganza of feminist-satanist serial-killer erotica, the writer/director/producer — plus editor and set and costume designer — has crafted the best kind of homage or parody, the kind that honors every thrill and…
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a small film burdened with the epic, thanks to both its subject and its setting. Based on Ben Fountain’s 2012 novel, it depicts a day in the life of a young soldier (Joe Alwyn) briefly returning from Iraq to be honored with his squad…
The Amazon series Good Girls Revolt, centered on a landmark 1970 gender discrimination case at Newsweek, is the kind of period drama that’s more interested in commenting on the present than recreating the past. The storyline, about professional journalists, plays fast and loose with the facts, and creator Dana Calvo…
“It’s time to get a little sympathy for women,” says filmmaker Anna Biller from her California home. “Women are great, even when they’re awful.” We’re chatting about her latest work The Love Witch, a technicolor kiss blown toward female-centric thrillers like Repulsion and Marnie — the kinds of films that…
A few years ago, the Observer began a series calling out what we thought were some of the area’s ugliest buildings. The AT&T office building at Bryan Street and Haskell Avenue, the Dallas World Trade Center, the Turley Law Center on Central Expressway, Irving’s convention center, Dallas City Hall. (That…
Courtney Hamilton: Kickin’ the Tire 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday Eastfield College — H100 Gallery 3737 Motley Drive, Mesquite How do we decide what is worth keeping and what is disposable? Like most of us, artist Courtney Hamilton’s answer is equal parts aesthetic preferences and fuzzy sentimentality. Influenced by an…
A purple hue hovered above a stage as hundreds of North Texas youth gathered to have their say. Some danced, some sang, some cried and some scrawled their names across a wall. Others recited original poems before a standing-room-only crowd at DaVerse Lounge. Spilling from a dance floor, a young…
Ben Younger’s workmanlike but nevertheless rousing Bleed for This accomplishes something that’s a tall order for any boxing movie: It makes the inspirational training-montage sequences weird. Those are generally the most requisite and unexciting element of the genre, but Bleed for This freshens them thanks to the strange and disturbing…
Sure, teen comedies make stars of their leading ladies and fellas, but what about the authority figures? Eugene Levy’s nameless dad in American Pie is peripheral but memorable as a bumbly guiding force. Tina Fey’s Ms. Norbury in Mean Girls is a motherly but revelatory mess of a teacher. Harry…
Brazil might not want you to know it, but Aquarius is something special. Writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s follow-up to the similarly exceptional Neighboring Sounds was notably not chosen as its country’s submission to the Oscars this year, a decision that may or may not be linked to a protest the filmmakers lodged…
Ask any actor and they’ll tell you technical rehearsals are hell. The process of syncing every moment of a play to lighting and sound is exhausting for everyone involved. It usually means hours of starting and stopping and lots of sitting around. But often those long stretches of boredom can…
Tue 11/15 Pulling up to the intersection you see a person holding a cardboard sign with a message written in thick markered letters. It asks for a food or monetary donation. Sometimes these signs explain something about the person holding them — they’re a veteran, they’re a mother of three…
Cuba was a forbidden fruit for nearly 50 years — closed to tourism and trade, the collective American imagination relied on photos of 1960s models Volkswagen beetles and hot rods, and people sitting on porches fanning themselves while puffing on Cuban cigars and listening to old transistor radios. Now people…
Dear Stoner: Will secondhand pot smoke get me high? Rudy Dear Rudy: Thanks to advice from Casanova (the 18th-century Italian adventurer/author/player), oysters are renowned as an aphrodisiac — a natural Viagra, if you will. But while oysters are high in zinc, which increases testosterone, and dopamine, which stimulates the brain,…
A surge of online booksellers has left some brick and mortar bookstore owners wondering whether old school words on paper are down for the count, but a counter surge of independent thinkers and bookstores around Dallas are hellbent on preserving open thought and culture. Wild Detectives 314 W. Eighth St…
When former Dallas Observer Editor Joe Tone left the paper in 2015, he told us it was to work on a book about how a young FBI agent helped take down the Zetas drug cartel. Turns out, he wasn’t kidding. He not only wrote a book, due to be published…
Some Louis C.K. fans may have been dissuaded from buying tickets to his back-to-back shows at Music Hall at Fair Park this week by the $50-per-head price tag and the fact that the shows are on weeknights. But one factor made the shows worth the sacrifice: The first of the…
Let me ask you a question. Who can change the world? In the year 2016 the odds are your answer to that question would be conflicted. Certainly not politicians. Definitely not corporations. But how do we really feel about individuals? About nonprofit groups? About the potential for artists to transform…
People say money can’t buy love or happiness, but it can. We have proof, and it’s in the Neiman Marcus Fantasy Gift Guide. Hillary Stonger, who handles corporate public relations for Neiman Marcus, tells us about half of the Neiman Marcus fantasy gifts are sold each year. In fact, two…
