The set was a staged scene out of 1960s Miami, with slender tropical trees and full-length mirrors fencing in Joan Rivers’ six-piece orchestra. The supper club vibe carried a timeless quality, easily projecting an era when audiences left dinner reservations at The Palm to see the circuit’s biggest names in…
If you saw CK play the Majestic last year, there will be some familiar material; he taped this on the same tour. But if you saw him play the Majestic, let’s be honest: You’re watching, even if you have to steal your parents’ HBO Go login, which isn’t stealing anyway…
I wasn’t expecting much walking into last night’s State of the Arts: Art and Technology lecture at the DMA. I was worried it might be a little boring — you know: all circuits, no emotion. Wrong. So wrong. What a fascinating panel of art cyborgs humans. We got three speakers:…
Early 90s in Dallas, you could creep to the train yard in Oak Cliff and see tags from Kaws and Barry McGee, a ghetto gallery-on-wheels for street art. For the Donjuan boys — three broke brothers from the hood — it was the seed to survival. Before the brothers became…
There’s a distinctive meter to a Joan Rivers routine. A gap-filler, she’s quick to follow-up a joke or talking point with a rhetorical question. It’s a job most famously held by her “Can we talk?” catch phrase, tossed in to extend laughter until she pins it down with a punch…
Preach on, Joan. Preach on. (The Ed Sullivan Show, 1967) She’s always been bold and brash, and she hasn’t softened with age. See for yourself when Joan Rivers brings her stand-up to the Winspear on Sunday. That’s not all: Local street art crew Sour Grapes has an Open Studio session…
Every Thursday we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. Joan Rivers at the AT&T Performing Arts Center The Queen of the Red Carpet, the lady with the last word, the most foul-mouthed female of her generation (and maybe mine), Ms. Joan Rivers…
Twenty minutes into the first full-length movie based on L. Frank Baum’s most beloved novel, a duck pukes into the face of Larry Semon, the star and director. Semon’s 1925 flop, titled The Wizard of Oz, opens and closes with a Geppetto-esque toymaker reading to his granddaughter from a well-loved…
It’s a bad omen when, early on in Oz the Great and Powerful, we learn that the full given name of its wizard is Oscar. That, of course, is also the name of the awards ceremony that star James Franco once presided over as calamitously as he does this sagging…
We can speak of climate change with a fair amount of certitude: shrinking Arctic ice cover, rising global temperatures and increased frequency of extreme weather events. Most of us acknowledge that things are getting worse faster than previously predicted, and that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have likely played a major…
We’ve entered a period when technology isn’t only revered, it’s considered kinda sexy, a sentiment that trickles down and factors into even less obvious fields, like art. While 20 years ago, science and art were rarely caught in bed together, in 2013 we see them as a sort of power…
His work has been collected by the Guggenheim, the Tate Gallery, the MOMA and pretty much every other major institution worldwide, and yet we get a chance to see the work of Boston University professor John Walker in the Carillon Gallery of Tarrant County College South (5301 Campus Drive, Fort…
While the Dallas Stars and the rest of the NHL were in the midst of a lockout, the Fort Worth Brahmas were kicking hockey butt and building up a local following. One of the top teams in the Central Hockey League, the Brahmas have been on quite a roll, and…
Ever pull up a You Tube make-up tutorial? Those instructional snippets promise to level the cosmetics playing field, giving you the ability to create movie star looks. I tried that once. It assured flawless smoky eyes. The result: I emerged looking like a cracked-out pageant mom. Now I rely on…
While it might seem that we’re buried under a haystack of feathers, beads and tassels in the bombshell bomb shelter that is Dallas, there are a few burlesque performances that manage to rise up and demand attention. Take Saturday’s unconventional twist on the art as Whiskey Tongue Burlesque and Frausun…
Undermain Theatre is currently in its “Season of the Myth,” and will be taking over the Dallas Museum of Art (1717 N. Harwood St.) for a one-off afternoon reading of The Conference of the Birds. The Persian poem, originally penned by Farid ud-Din Attar, follows a flock of birds as…
You bought a house. You survived a variety of slumlords, paid off your credit cards and saved like a mofo. You moved the couch in, set up the TV and spruced up the paint — and then realized that your decorating and remodeling expertise is limited to posters that have…
Piece of Work, the 2010 documentary on Joan Rivers, is a little more heartbreaking than you’d imagine. In it, we see Rivers, in her mid-70s, still struggles to get work, to pay the bills, to stay relevant, and it’s that determination to stay in the spotlight and not keep her…
On its surface, Dallas appears to be a polished city. A bustling community full of investment bankers and aspiring professional cheerleaders. Beneath that veneer lies a lusher and more intriguing ecosystem. I’m speaking, of course, about you: our elaborate, and highly necessary, network of nerds, dorks and geeks. Evidence of…
Remember Half Baked? Just barely? Perfect. Harland Williams played Kenny, the guy who gets thrown in jail and ignites 120 minutes worth of weed-filled shenanigans and catch phrases. Then there was 2002 Sunday hangover classic Sorority Boys. More recently, he played God in the severely underpromoted 2011 film Dahmer vs…
If you’re a women’s college basketball fan and you know that the Big 12 Conference is actually made up of 10 schools, then you’re already spending this weekend with the concession workers of American Airlines Center, because the Phillips 66 Big 12 Women’s Basketball Championship is coming to town. Let…
This weekend, the world get another lesson in what makes Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs so darned wonderful. A prequel of sorts to the MGM classic, Oz the Great and Powerful gives us a Sam Raimi look at the genesis of the man behind the curtain,…
