Saturday morning I woke up to a lovely, little Facebook message from an artist by the name of Loris Gréaud. The week prior he’d given the media a tour of his exhibition at the Dallas Contemporary. Much of the art he’d shown us that afternoon was destroyed during a performance…
Mixmaster presents “100 Creatives,” in which we feature cultural entrepreneurs of Dallas in random order. Gina and Dustin Orlando are two cool cats. A few years ago, these two gallerists opened up Circuit 12 Contemporary, which quickly became a go-to space in the Design District, and their programming roster continues…
Last Friday afternoon, I stepped into the Dallas Contemporary galleries with select members of the press to get an early view of Loris Gréaud’s The Unplayed Notes Museum, an exhibition meant to fill the mammoth warehouse space — roughly 26,000 square feet of emptiness for the artist to play in…
Dallas Medianale, an experimental film festival programmed by the Video Association of Dallas, has been going on at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary (3120 McKinney Ave.) since January 9. I went to the opening night, which featured screenings and a series of intermedia performances, including an awesome display by a duo…
Mixmaster presents “100 Creatives,” in which we feature cultural entrepreneurs of Dallas in random order. Since Will Power arrived in Dallas he’s been busy. With a background in performance, writing and education, he’s not just creating his own work but he’s investing in the work of future generations. Originally commissioned…
Fighting my aging body there’s an ungrown child who still wishes for magic of fairytales and superheroes. Although I’ve admittedly never been a comic book fan – I fell into the realism camp of childhood fantasies, with the likes of Nancy Drew/Encyclopedia Brown or Choose Your own Adventure books – I…
Sometime this weekend, in between your rush to catch up on the Oscar nominations, we’d like you to take a minute to notice how much live theater is happening in Dallas. And most of it is worth your time and attention. Stagger Lee, a brand new musical at the Dallas…
Mixmaster presents “100 Creatives,” in which we feature cultural entrepreneurs of Dallas in random order. Janeil Engelstad is an artist. A photographer. A curator. An educator. A producer. A former Fulbright Scholar. A tea drinker. One of the busiest people in town. And she’s turned that “busyness” into an asset…
Most of us can’t imagine having a disease that tugs and tears at the very threads of who we are. When we wake up in the middle of the night with outlandish fears, we strike reassuring bargains with ourselves: If I lose my sight, I’ll still have music. If I…
The world needs fewer tasteful movies about distasteful things. It definitely doesn’t need J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year, in which Oscar Isaac plays a nouveau-riche heating-oil baron in early-1980s New York, striving to maintain his principles amid industry corruption and generally scummy behavior. Isaac’s Abel Morales skulks through most…
Each year, screenwriters kill off enough off-screen children to fill a Chuck E. Cheese’s. A dead son or daughter gives a movie the illusion of depth plus an easy explanation for whatever the script ladles on the surviving parents. Binge-drinking? Nymphomania? Sudden bouts of breakdancing? Blame the wee coffin. In…
The most pleasurably ludicrous highlight of The Boy Next Door comes half an hour in, before the sex and murders and something’s-in-the-mirror-behind-her! jolts that stud the film like Flavor Crystals. The high school English teacher played by Jennifer Lopez is dazzled by a gift from the handsome student (Ryan Guzman)…
In the opening moments of Two Days, One Night, a working-class Belgian woman named Sandra (Marion Cotillard) wakes from a midday nap, takes a phone call, removes a tart from the oven, pops a pill, and begs herself not to cry. With a sense of having arrived in the middle…
There’s something bracingly honest about The Humbling, Barry Levinson’s movie about a 67-year-old Shakespearean actor, played by Al Pacino, who, after being struck with crippling anxiety, gets his mojo restored — some of it, anyway — by a manipulative muse (Greta Gerwig). Based on the 2009 Philip Roth novel of…
Mortdecai is creeping into theaters with the flushed shame of a debutante who expects to be pelted with tomatoes. It’s a pity. In 1965, Mortdecai would be the hit of the year. Director David Koepp whips through this pop-colored caper about crooked art dealer Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) — one…
Comedian John Mulaney’s single life goal is to make everyone laugh — and not just the people in the audience. Mulaney worked on Saturday Night Live for a few seasons, and he helped create Stefon, the deranged nightclub reviewer played by Bill Hader. He worked on scripts with Hader before…
Swing, Sister! In the mood for a little nostalgia? Hide your cellphone and put in your pin curls or dust off those wingtips: “In the Mood” will help you escape to a time when text was a noun and necking was a thing. This Thursday, you and your main squeeze…
When I think of westerns, I think of sitting in front of my grandpa’s oversized television, chowing down on delivery pizza and watching John Wayne, or Poppa’s favorite, Bonanza. He had an unparralled love for the drawn-out fights between cowboys and Indians, and the melodramatic love stories of a handsome…
It’s Kenny mother effin’ G. He can melt your panties off with his smooth saxophone sound. He’s a god among jazz musicians. He was an original investor in that unknown coffee chain called Starbucks. OK, the jury is still out on all of that — except the Starbucks thing, that’s…
Some events are so horrific that time can never diminish them. This is particularly true in the case of the Holocaust, the worst genocide in history. Though we are nearly three quarters of a century removed from the unthinkable fates of six million Jewish men, women and children at the…
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra settles into form with a program stacked with beloved classics. The evening begins with Bach’s legendary Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 and closes with Beethoven’s relatively conventional Symphony No. 1, which grants a subtle glimpse into the composer’s radical and ambitious middle-period, while revealing his many debts…
Something that is awesome about Annie Get Your Gun: the music. Irving Berlin’s original songs are some of the most enduring in Broadway. Even if you’ve never seen the show, you know most of the songs: “Anything You Can Do,” “They Say It’s Wonderful” and “There’s No Business Like Show…
