Director Alex Gibney’s choice to follow this spring’s Scientology slam Going Clear with the fascinating portrait Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine might seem like an about-face. The first documentary clinically eviscerated a religion that everyone loves to loathe. Apple CEO Steve Jobs, however, is adulated to an incredible…
Working in ballet for nearly 50 years, Texas Ballet Theater’s artistic director Ben Stevenson is a modest legend who has always focused on telling a story with his art. Dracula: Dangerous New Terrain was first performed in 1997 in Houston and has now become a seasonal ballet, like The Nutcracker…
A sense of humor will take you far in life, even along a daunting stretch of the Appalachian Trail. In his hugely popular 1998 book A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson chronicled his attempt to hike the full length of the trail, from Georgia to Maine, accompanied by an…
Here’s a brief history lesson: in the 1950s, there was a little French magazine called Cahiers du Cinéma. It was written by film critics, for film critics, which the general public ate up because it taught them the theory of film and what was good and bad at the local…
It is seriously about to be September, you guys, which means one thing and one thing only: being able to spend as much time as you want without dying of a heatstroke. The mercury may not seriously drop for a few months to come, but you can at least pretend…
First of all, it’s important you know what you’re doing next August. Or January. Or both. Specifically on Wednesdays. Make reservations now. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like Elvis Presley…or his music. The spectacle that is an Elvis Night during Elvis Month at El Ranchito in Oak Cliff is…
As much as we love to complain about Dallas, most of us love living here. And it is, for the most part, a pretty awesome place to live. We have good sports teams (most of the time), good theatre and art, and a cost of living that doesn’t make us…
Narcos, Netflix’s new drug-war docudrama, is nearly as ambitious as its central character, Pablo Escobar. Over the course of 10 dense, sprawling episodes, the series tells the 20-year history of the narcotrafficker’s rise and fall in relation to Colombia’s blood-soaked history and the U.S.’s escalating drug war, from Richard Nixon…
Remember when you used to love summer? It meant freedom: no homework, a later curfew and plenty of warm nights by the pool with your friends. Well, that’s what it was supposed to mean. I was always grounded. Some things about growing up aren’t so bad. But I do miss…
Violence affects people in different ways. Some become shut-ins, others are drawn to work with people and create social change. Fifteen years after a stranger was shot and killed in front of her home, artist and Pulitzer Prize winning writer Karen Blessen is still spreading peace through art with her…
Last year one of the best American revenge tales Blue Ruin, funded through Kickstarter, went on to play the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the prestigious FIPRESCI Prize — the same award Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, and many great filmmakers of all time won once upon a…
Professior R. Mutt and his Duchampaphones It’s impossible to pinpoint where an idea comes from. What compels one person to creatively rethink something that’s come before? Why would a guy masquerading as” Professor R. Mutt” would look at the bicycle wheel sculpture by Duchamp – in homage to whom he…
Remake The Graduate today, and an adult might corner Benjamin Braddock and whisper, “Startups.” Debut director Max Joseph gives that a good shot, though the result — the EDM-fueled, drug-laced dream-crusher We Are Your Friends — is so sweaty and silly people may not notice. Like Mike Nichols, Joseph wants…
This mean and vigorous men’s adventure pulp throwback has everything going against it. It’s a late-August release whose leads, Owen Wilson and Lake Bell, tend to be the best things in movies you otherwise regret seeing. The trailers, teasing the story of a toothsome American family hunted by peasant-rebels in…
Brooke, Greta Gerwig’s latest Manhattan creation, is a hurricane gobbling up lives. She’s a singer, restaurateur, interior decorator, math coach, spinning instructor and self-described autodidact. When 18-year-old admirer Tracy (Lola Kirke), Brooke’s sister-to-be following their parents’ Thanksgiving wedding, squeaks that she wants to write short stories, Brooke devours that idea,…
There’s steady, scary thrill in the final third of Meru, the latest attempt to conquer the climb-and-tweak-the-nose-of-God mountaineering documentary, a genre that has yet to reach its apex. The terrible beauty of the Shark’s Fin point of northern India’s Mount Meru is enough to make this worth seeking out on…
Comedian Josh Johnson has made some great strides in his life and not just as a comic. His progress shows as he talks about Tabitha, the first album he’s set to record on Thursday at Andy’s Bar in Denton. “For the most part, I have to tell myself that it’s…
Dude, remember that time the entire arts district was filled with light sculptures and art? I don’t mean some pansy, boring event that says it’s going to blow your mind but then because it’s set such high expectations inevitably lets you down. Aurora is the bi-annual art event that puts…
Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice, along with Amy Nicholson of the LA Weekly, run down the worst and best of the movies they saw this summer, which as summers go, wasn’t so terrible! Among the best performances were those by Sam Elliott, wonderful in two movies,…
Longtime filmmaker/podcaster Kevin Smith returns to town for a Q&A and a live podcast recording on Friday night at the Texas Theatre. He loves to do these kinds of events, as they are part storytelling, stand-up act and fan interaction, all in one. He’s done them his entire career, from…
Robert “Breaking News” Wilonksy has been running some pretty stellar coverage of the Lakewood Theater re-do, getting scoop right and left. He just shared a juicy tidbit about the space’s would-be operators, and it’s something straight out of our moviegoing dreams. He reported a while back that Kinney, the Lakewood…
Summer’s on its way out, fall is coming, and even though we may not measure our lives in semesters anymore, I have a goal for you to make with me, a leaf to turn over. Let’s see more theater this year? Whadya say? There’s something really great stuff hitting the…
