Gwyneth Paltrow loves Dallas. She probably dreams about us. She’s borderline obsessed with us. Why are you so obsessed with us? After her brief stint in Highland Park Village with her pop-up store, Goop, Paltrow went back to her blog to give all of her loyal readers this Dallas Guide,…
You’ll need to stop slacking now. There’s nothing left to think about. The weekend is here and if you want to party with us, you’ll need a ticket. And you want to party with us. Trust. Click over to ticketfly.com and buy that Artopia ticket now. We’ll wait. Need to…
Mixmaster presents “100 Creatives,” in which we feature cultural entrepreneurs of Dallas in random order. In the 1980s, Vicki Meek made her way to Dallas as an artist in residence for the City Arts Program, but she soon found that her calling lay in the administration side of the arts…
I’ve not always been good at museums. Raised by a mother who understood the value of sticking her kids into artistic experiences in a family who liked to travel, I was more often the daughter piddling around the museum shop with my Dad, looking for a good souvenir to show…
Artopia 2015 Do some laundry, you’re going out this weekend! If you only make it to one art party a year, make it this one. Because if the Observer knows how to do one thing, it’s long form journalism… oh, and throw a bombass party. You’ll hear music from favorite…
The end of a movie marks the start of Annie Baker’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Flick, now on in a fastidiously directed and beautifully acted regional premiere at Undermain Theatre. The movie is The Naked and the Dead, a 1958 Raoul Walsh action film whose soundtrack throbs with the…
Twitter is double-stuffed with check-your-privilege messages for entitled men, but I’ve rarely seen one as potent as this singular line from Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s out-of-time masterwork Winter Sleep, a Chekhovian drama of marriage and class and the way both can inspire insulated cluelessness. “Just once, I’d like you to defend…
Anyone who loves Michael Mann movies, or even just the idea of Michael Mann movies, accepts that film style is a language and something more, a way of thinking, feeling and looking that goes beyond basic plotting, dialogue, or character motivation. I can tell you pretty much everything that happens…
Smarter Than the Average Emerson argued that each flourish and tendril of a work of art has its exact corollary in the mind of the artist, that creative expression is always, in its way, a sort of autobiography: Want to know the person? Look at their works. But Ralph Waldo…
Here’s the pipsqueak who has hauled himself up into a sharp-dressed leading man. Here’s the comic who’s boundlessly inventive in his swearing but also suave and commanding in pursuit of love, the motormouth horndog who yawps about like a puppy on fire but can melt your mother’s heart with his…
Alcohol and literature have a long, cozy history. It hasn’t all been fun and games (see: Hemingway, Williams, et al), but at times it has been a mutually beneficial relationship — like when you finished that Flannery O’Connor book and headed straight to the bar. Tim Federle understands that great…
Think way back to New Year’s Eve. Did your plans involve putting on your best clothes — the ones you usually reserve for funerals or Mad Men cosplay? Do you wish you’d done something truly memorable? Are you into drag? If you answered “no,” “yes” and “yes” to the previous…
Artist Bruce Nauman’s neon art piece “One Hundred Live and Die” lists — yep — 100 ways to live or die. Among your options are “speak and die,” “feel and die,” “stand and die” and “think and die.” Luckily, you can speak, feel, stand and think in total safety at…
Motels are a destination for tourism and relaxation, but sometimes those functions are at odds with the land a motel occupies. CentralTrak explores this idea in its latest exhibition, Gallup Motel Butchering. The four-channel video installation by artist collective Postcommodity follows Navajo women preparing a family feast in a motel…
We want you to be at Artopia this year, truly. We want you to witness the splendor of music duo French 75 and the shape-shifting madness of George Quartz. We want Confetti Eddie to magically transform your evening before you explore the “Dr Gorilla” Interactive Art Forest by David Rodriguez…
If your last ‘Murica-induced chill-down-the-spine was on the Fourth of July, you’re due for a fix. Forget all of our domestic troubles — the ugly politics, inequalities, hardships and Toby Keith songs — and let a wave of patriotism wash right over you during the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s latest ReMix…
Which came first? The social media followers or the fame? Nowadays, it’s probably the former. We’re gonna say it: Justin Bieber paved the way for future musicians. Future generations won’t know how people became famous without the help of social media, like Vine, YouTube and Instagram. Make a music video…
You know her as the comedian who does a spot-on impersonation of a Vietnamese nail salon worker. (The one who speaks to you kindly in English, but turns to her co-workers and begins speaking Vietnamese, while looking you up and down.) Or you know her as the MadTV comedian who…
Tap dance is the great unifier of the performing arts world — seamlessly marrying the visual with the aural, peppering the air with rhythmic raps and claps and generally being the life of the arts party. There’s no such thing as sad bastard tap dancing. It’s lively even when the…
Everyone’s got a story to tell, even if it’s one of those cautionary tales that makes listeners thankful for their own pathetic existences. That’s the gift of hearing someone’s personal experience. You can learn an important life lesson, without enduring the pain firsthand. Every month, some of DFW’s most gifted…
No one is quite sure what the Marvel Experience is. Radio ads have billed it as seven domes of “fully immersive hyper-reality” at the Cotton Bowl in Fair Park, where you can partner up with characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor and Wolverine to do … something. We’re not sure…
The proverbial good old boys club is a pain in the ass, stymieing ladies in endeavors both personal and professional for eons now. It’s a place where slaps on the back are currency, and tradition is nine-tenths of the law. As a society, we’d like to think we’re past its…
