Last night we weren’t about to miss the screening of I Am Chris Farley at the Texas Theatre. Now we have lots of thoughts and feels. Here are a few of them. It was good, not great. (See 9 through 12.) Bob Saget and Chris Farley were friends?!? “Yep, they…
Please remove your ignorance blinders and wake up for a second because what you witnessed on Sunday night’s second season premiere of Bachelor in Paradise was not real. In a somewhat elaborate ceremony to announce Dallas native Marcus Grodd and his BIP sweetheart Lacy Faddoul in holy freakin’ matrimony was…
During this week’s meeting of the Voice Film Club, Alan Scherstuhl and Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice, along with Amy Nicholson of the LA Weekly, discuss the Marlon Brando documentary Listen to Me Marlon. Our trio of film critics then move to The End of the Tour, the film…
Until self-driving cars come along and you can freely brush your teeth, drink orange juice, and choreograph a dance while in the driver’s seat of a car, Uber is a necessary evil. Because, safety. Plus the fact that DWIs and DUIs are a real bummer. Also, being driven around Dallas…
Some of the best love songs are those whose lyrics perch precariously between “I adore you, let’s be happy forever” and “I’m miserable without you, where have you gone?” Together, the melody and words of Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash’s 1943 ballad “Speak Low” take the shape of a vaporous…
“This conversation is the best one I ever had,” David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) tells us as The End of the Tour wraps up, and the movie, a pleasantly talky chamber piece, gives us welcome bursts of it. That long chat, with a David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) abashed by the…
Jonathan Demme’s rock ‘n’ roll dramedy Ricki and the Flash exists in a wormhole where the last five decades of pop culture are a blur. There’s 66-year-old Meryl Streep, playing a broke singer who ditched her family to dominate the stage with the whiskey growl of Janis Joplin, the jangly…
The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was a boon to comedy, but the comedians who feasted then look gouty today: A small group of white, male millionaires — one of whom would later confess to having multiple office affairs, perhaps to distract from sexual-harassment allegations — collectively decided to call Lewinsky, then a 22-year-old…
Anecdote #1: Chris Farley made a habit of pouncing on Mike Myers — at the same exact time each week — during the early- to mid-1990s era in which the two starred on Saturday Night Live. The elfin Myers deliberately took showers at a fixed, quiet time, but each week,…
Liz Cook is a tattoo artist. But not in the traditional sense. She doesn’t tattoo tribal designs or Old English lettering. A dagger driven through the heart or “Born to Ride” emblazoned on a banner is not the kind of ink she’s slinging at Rebel Muse, a small tattoo studio…
At some point Friday, a Dallas Morning News headline started popping up on my Facebook feed. It contained a magical four-word phrase: “Daiso Japan dollar store.” After further investigation (i.e., reading the article), I discovered (i.e., someone else discovered and I just got super excited when I found out) Daiso…
In the local retail landscape, there’s a lot of same-old, same-old. Even some of the boutique spots tend to stock similar merchandise, which can leave you at a loss when you’re looking for something truly unique. You might have to look off the beaten path just a little bit, but…
Jason Segel didn’t tell his book club he’d been cast as novelist David Foster Wallace in James Ponsoldt’s biopic The End of the Tour. “I didn’t want to sound like Fancy Pants McGee,” admits Segel over lunch in Los Angeles. (Especially since the 6-foot-4-inch comedy actor is famous for dropping…
Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and musicals go together about as well as milk and stomach problems. Or at least that’s what you might think. Somehow, though, a Dallas Comedy House troupe made it work. And it’s hella funny. On Friday night, Law and Order SVUiscal premiered to a…
At this point, we’ve all sort of adjusted to this oppressive heat. It’s just a fact of life, and we can no longer wallow in our air-conditioned homes pretending that it’s going to get cooler outside. Once you’ve made the decision to step out of the air conditioned paradise that…
WaterTower Theatre in Addison has trouble getting musicals right and just about every aspect of its current production of Sweet Charity is wrong. That’s being charitable. Actors who can’t sing. Dancers with no sense of rhythm. A set better suited for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. So much dark lumber…
Some musicals are plot-driven, with a few numbers interspersed here and there, but a musical about one of the most beloved record labels of all time and its founder should have lots of them. In that sense, Motown: The Musical surely delivers — perhaps even beyond what is desired or…
For three weeks in July, Undermain Theatre’s co-artistic director, Katherine Owens, was shuttling between a rehearsal hall and a luxurious mountain home, where she roomed with a handful of nationally renowned theater artists. Owens was there as part of Sundance Institute’s Theatre Lab to work alongside Len Jenkin in the development…
What has 54 legs and flies? Catch Me if You Can, the 27-person musical now cruising along at high altitude at Uptown Players at Kalita Humphreys Theater. What a show! What a cast! What a way to close out the strongest season yet for the little company out-producing the Dallas…
It’s a scientific fact. Somewhere in the world, there’s at least one screen showing an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. It doesn’t matter if it’s an old person watching a rerun on USA because they mistook it for Matlock or a serial downloader watching an illegally obtained episode…
Thursday, July 30 The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams did reality TV before Survivor was a glimmer in Jeff Probst’s eye. He didn’t live his life on stage, but he did sneak a large portion of said life in the play, The Glass Menagerie. In it, Williams is Tom, son of…
On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast: The Vacation reboot disappoints, as does Adam Sandler’s Pixels (but it can’t be near as bad as critics are describing, says the Village Voice’s Alan Scherstuhl). Meanwhile, the ’40s noir melodrama Phoenix might be one of the year’s best, says Voice film critic…
