There’s no joy to be found in adventuring through the McDonald’s playscape. Just suspicious smells and discarded french fry evidence. But those magical tubes at Neiman’s? Well, that’s a different story. Tonight you can become a human hamster and journey through the things, while simultaneously being a generous adult who…
“It’s funny to me when I see films of parades and there are people standing on the sidewalks waving. In New Orleans,” Ben Jaffe explains, “everybody is in the parade. There is nobody watching because they are just in it.” Ben Jaffe knows a thing or two about New Orleans…
The harmonal balance is way off among the quartet of singers in One Thirty Productions’ Plaid Tidings, the holiday musical now doing matinees at the Bath House Cultural Center. But does it matter? This is writer Stuart Ross’ terrible sequel to his awful show Forever Plaid, which was about a…
Bronx-born filmmaker Abel Ferrara considers all of his fiction films to be documentaries: What you see is what happened in the moment that was shot. That mentality informed the making of Ms. 45, Ferrara’s characteristically complex 1981 rape-revenge drama. In the film, a mute teenager (Zoë Lund) copes with being…
Elves snore, it turns out. Their maidens make teensy-peen jokes and pine for the hottest of dwarves. And Bilbo Baggins, so concerned about his doilies just three hours of screen time ago, now punches his sword right through the trachea of a goblin — and then looks rather proud of…
Some movies come barreling out of their caves like armies on the sociocultural warpath, self-consciously defining themselves as psychographic events, marking The Way Things Are Now and becoming part of history in the process. Given the ambition, we should embrace these rare explosions when they happen, even more so now…
Beneath the groaning puns, audience singalongs and glow-in-the-dark puppets, Theatre Britain’s annual Christmas “panto,” The Three Little Pigs, offers some cunningly subversive comedy. Good pantos always do. It’s taken 16 years for Theatre Britain, now based at the Cox Building Playhouse in Plano, to educate the audience about this style…
Another Hobbit movie means Tolkien-heads will emerge from their Dallas shires to see the latest installation of this quest. The Alamo Drafthouse in Richardson couldn’t resist the chance to offer fans the ultimate Hobbit experience before the premiere of Peter Jackson’s next big-screen J.R.R. Tolkien adventure. This time, the Drafthouse…
It’s Dallas, so ice skating outside isn’t really a thing. Every year the Hilton Anatole rights this egregious wrong with Sparkle!, a mega-holiday-evergreen-lighted-smitten-mittens event. If you have a sugar or a booger or a sugarbooger, head out to the festivities from 8 to 10 p.m. Friday for Date Night-Skate Night…
Christmas is a time of giving and loving. Burlesque is a time of teasing and seducing. Mix the two traditions and the alchemy creates Iggy’s Fourth Annual Christmas Extravaganza: Babes in Toyland! By paying a $5 cover fee and bringing an unwrapped $5 toy, you get a night of sinful…
Winter brings many reasons to party and, as it is every season, beer is a big one. The second annual Dallas Winter Warmer celebrates winter beers, like stouts, porters, barleywines, barrel-aged beers and winter seasonals. Come rain or snow or whatever gross in-between slush, Main Street Park, 1902 Main St.,…
You just don’t see 200 slutty Santas doing shots and hopping DART every day. Just once or twice a year, thanks to start-up fun-makers Santa Rampage. The bar tour has become more than a drunken Dallas tradition, it’s an excuse to go jingle balls-out with the old hot-glue gun to…
Small-town Christmas is the best. Of course, the big city has its perks during the holiday season — ice-skating rinks, ballet productions and shopping meccas chief among them — but it almost seems that the Christmas spirit looms largest in the tiniest of hamlets. It’s the places where the local…
We can all agree that Die Hard is more than just an amazing holiday movie: It’s also the greatest action film ever made in which an off-duty New York cop becomes ensnared in a high-stakes heist disguised as a grand act of terrorism in a glass office tower on an…
One of the more frustrating parts of walking through a museum and finding something amazing on display is the nagging thought that follows through the rest of your visit: “Dammit, I want that.” You know that even if the Dallas Museum of Art would let you make an offer on…
Unlike other comic-book obsessed stand-ups who try to turn their collections into stand-up shtick, comedian Brian Posehn has nerd cred clout to spare. He’s got bylines on best-selling graphic novels like his post-apocalyptic Christmas tome The Last Christmas and Marvel’s Deadpool series. He’s also got a couple of best-selling comedy…
Observer theater critic Elaine Liner knows a thing or 30 about what makes a play exceptional. (Lord knows she’s done her share of research.) That’s great news for you because Liner has recently switched teams — artfully speaking — to write a one-woman show called Sweater Curse, A Yarn About…
This Sunday, World Wrestling Entertainment’s pay-per-view, TLC — also known as Tables, Ladders, and Chairs — will feature one of the most exciting lineups in the history of the franchise. Long-time rivals John Cena and Randy Orton will face off in the main event with the winner walking away with…
There’s not much that can be said about It’s a Wonderful Life that hasn’t been said before. Even the most cynical among us are drawn in by the story of the suicidal George Bailey and his journey through what life would have looked like had he never been born. It’s…
Scripture states that someone shoved mescaline fruitcake into the manger’s VHS player and nine months later the Everything is Terrible! Holiday Special was born. Now, let us all give thanks. This Chicago-based video blog tours its tripped-out seasonal offering through Dallas on Wednesday night, stopping for one screening at Texas…
To those naysayers who said acrylic fibers couldn’t save the world, listen up. Thursday, we’ll gather around Dallas’ favorite fireplace to drink, munch on snacks and generally look like dorks, trussed up in ugly Christmas sweaters, and we’ll do it — dammit — because it’s our civic duty. The Ugly…
The holiday season can be a bleak time of year, caused just as much by bare trees and gray skies as it is by family drama. The story of the child returning home for a confrontational holiday has a long pedigree, so when one comes along that sounds fresh and…
