Dear Romantics, I’d like to apologize in advance for this list of amore-rich dating ideas. You see, I’m an overextended writer who forgot what love was ages ago. My heart is actually made of diamond now, and not the naturally-occurring timelapsed compression of carbon that you’re most familiar with –…
Dallas science fiction lovers, you officially upped your game at this year. Maybe you pushed it to 88 because Christopher Lloyd was a special guest — or perhaps we got collectively dorkier since 2012’s Sci-Fi Expo — but however it happened, we all won. You guys suited up as Fresco…
I wanted to hate last night’s episode of Girls, which begins with Hannah and Ray discussing the origins of the word “sexit,” defined by Hannah as two people leaving a party to have sex. After following Joshua (Patrick Wilson) — a customer who complained about the coffee shop Ray and…
Wowsa! This year’s Dallas Burlesque Festival featured an especially talented cast of superstars — I mean, this aerial dancer alone leaves me speechless. Here’s our first round of dispatch pics from photographer Mike Brooks, who took one for the team by capturing all of the seduction in action. Picking our…
Fifty entered. But only 16 were chosen to seek romance, a hot meal and tickets to see The xx. This Sunday, we’ll watch things get awkward as those eligible single people compete in the Sundown at Granada’s xx Dating Game. If you, like most, were not selected, come closer. I…
Have you guys looked at the line up for this year’s Dallas Burlesque Festival? You know, that giant production happening this weekend at the House of Blues? It looks astounding. You’ll get en eyeful of local talent, like danger-vixen Black Mariah and those ladies from the Ruby Review, just to…
Inside Comedy, Showtime’s series of interviews with big-name comics, returns Monday with the premiere of its second season. It’s an impressive roster of funny people: Will Ferrell, Betty White, Bill Maher, Steve Martin, Tina Fey and others. Their opening punch is their strongest, though: Louis CK, who explains in the…
In Death by Microphone, local Brit and barbecue blogger Gavin Cleaver attends stand-up comedy classes at the Dallas Comedy House and reports back for our amusement and education. Check back next week to revel further in his failure. After the success last week of appealing to the lowest common denominator…
This weekend, February 9-10, fans of all things sci-fi will descend upon the Irving Convention Center for this year’s Sci-Fi Expo. Major guests will be in attendance, including comic book artists and actors from popular sci-fi films and TV shows. The roster includes stars from Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead,…
In The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, the 1985 play performed by Lily Tomlin and written by her longtime partner, Jane Wagner, Tomlin inhabits a host of female (and a few male) characters: Trudy the bag lady; prostitutes Brandy and Tina; socialite Kate; feminist Lyn; Agnus…
This totally bitchin’ documentary about fan films, Backyard Blockbusters, is playing at Thin Line. Art lovers and party lovers, listen up: This is a great weekend to meet each other. There are events all over town simply overflowing with complimentary drinks, and if I’m not mistaken, those are your favorite…
I dropped out of UNT’s ceramics program in early ’98. I’d started studying work by heavy-hitters in the field and then, Ken Price. I knew, looking at his intuitive, almost galactic-summoning shapes that I was just an off-key karaoke singer in a world of legitimate musicians. I immediately switched my…
Every Thursday we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. Chris Porter at Hyena’s in Dallas Spreading his drunk and stoned Midwest musings around the country is what Chris Porter does best. This Kansas City native has been making his way around the…
If Side Effects, an immensely pleasurable thriller revolving around psychotropic drugs, really is Steven Soderbergh’s final big-screen film, as the director claims it will be, then he has peaked in the Valley of the Dolls. Scripted by Scott Z. Burns, who also wrote the screenplay for Soderbergh’s Contagion (2011), Side…
Just a week or so after the Pentagon reversed its ban on allowing female soldiers into combat, here’s another breakthrough, of a sort: The funniest scenes in the confused and shaggy comedy Identity Thief are of Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman beating the hell out of each other. McCarthy —…
To watch Melissa McCarthy as lovable chef Sookie St. James on seven seasons of the Gilmore Girls was to see an actress perfect the art of playing a sidekick. As best friend of the show’s protagonist, Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham), McCarthy dutifully provided comic relief and a shoulder on which…
“I’ve been lucky in that I’ve always worked with writers whose voices are so specific that there really isn’t any way to recalibrate things without them being intimately involved,” says Steven Soderbergh as he swivels in a chair in the happily cluttered Flatiron District loft space that doubles as his…
Good actors are doing their level best with a not-so-good play and a sub-standard production at African American Repertory Theatre in DeSoto. The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years — whew — is a dull period comedy that deals…
Sometimes it’s worth it to wait and catch a show at the end of its run rather than on opening night. By the third or fourth week, actors have it down. No stumbling over dialogue. No loss of focus. So it is with the ferociously good production at Theatre Three…
In the world of American horror stories, Don Coscarelli is a king. The man behind the Phantasm series, Bubba Ho-Tep and The Beastmaster has been producing horror favorites for more than 30 years, and his latest film, John Dies at the End, is sure to join the list of classics…
Creating your own basic print publication isn’t a simple undertaking. Taking that idea further by sculpting one with a visually stimulating layout that defines and illuminates the topics at hand, and things become even more interesting. But what if you went even further? What if you built the publication around…
Synergy is the name of the game at Friday’s Artful Musings event at the Dallas Museum of Art (1717 N. Harwood St.), as photographer Nic Nicosia and novelist Philipp Meyer talk influence and inspiration. Dallas-born Nicosia’s new book, simply titled Nic Nicosia, is a definitive collection of three decades of…
