All’s fair in love, war and the quest for the Shiva, or at least that’s the takeaway from the FX’s series The League. The semi-improvised comedy focuses on the dysfunctional lives of six friends who spend more time sabotaging each other than actually learning about their fantasy football rosters. Season…
Do you ever find yourself missing horror movies that had psychological and intellectual weight to them? Do you weep at the current slasher film scene? Today, horror movies seem like a publically held contest that is judged by: – A quantitative calculation of fake blood by the gallon – Amount…
My kid was being a handful last night — or, as Louis CK would put it, an asshole. He was being an asshole, screaming indiscriminately at some hour that looked really blurry on the clock. So there I was, back in bed after sedating the asshole, when I saw an…
We live in a world that is drowning in equal parts beauty and unoriginality. Look around. There are at least 10 items within your immediate reach that have been created by a graphic designer. The beautiful often comes from a successful graphic designer: one that has taken client needs in…
When Dallas Contemporary first contacted the Trinity Groves boys, asking if they’d consider letting Fairey dress up the empty walls of some West Dallas locations, the vision wasn’t fully realized. “My partners had no idea who Shepard Fairey was,” said Larry “Butch” MacGregor, who owns the property along with Phil…
We’re in the middle of an aisle in Half Price Books on Northwest Highway, and Steve Jay Crabtree, the comic whose multiple personalities grace the Pocket Sandwich Theater this weekend, is cycling in and out of his Dysfunctional Divas like a patient with multiple personalities. Customers stop and browse book shelves…
In Ink Spot, Amy Price stops strangers in Dallas to shoot, and learn about, their body art. Needles, blood, piercing flesh and beautiful body art always remind me of my favorite Dallas piercer, 28-year-old Steven Haddad at Last Angels. And while he is a phenomenal peircer, he can make any…
There are types of people in this world: those who game, those who don’t, and those who used to game, until they got jobs and wives and kids and life started crushing down on them, although sometimes they think they should just say screw it and leave it all behind…
Oh, Bugs. You’re such a card. Whether you’re in the mood to shake your can, or to gently park the thing in a chair, there’s tons going on this weekend. We’ve got Bugs Bunny and his gang of cartoon hoodlums taking over the symphony. Red Arrow and Circuit 12 have…
Every Thursday we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar.Steven Jay Crabtree’s Dysfunctional Divas at Pocket Sandwich TheatreHey Judds, if you’re thinking of making a comeback, stop. Just stop. Sound advice from Trayla Park, lip-syncing super diva and just one of Steven Jay…
This exhibition is “Pretty Much Everything,” by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, veterans of Vogue, W, and V magazines, as well as several visually dazzling advertising campaigns for products I cannot afford. This exhibition is the antidote for grief over the departure of last year’s Jean Paul Gaultier show…
In his filmmaking debut, journalist David France assembles a thoroughly reported chronicle of ACT UP’s most vital era, from the direct-action group’s founding in 1987 (six years into the AIDS epidemic) through 1995. Expertly compiled from hundreds of hours of archival footage — depicting fractious meetings, infamous demonstrations like 1989’s…
The Revisionaries director Scott Thurman didn’t set out to make a movie about the Texas State Board of Education’s attempts to roll back scientific thought and rewrite the historical narrative of the United States. In the beginning, he was simply planning a short film about a local biology teacher, but…
Ever since Mars Attacks!, Tim Burton has mostly been in the adaptation business, rendering dark and becurlicued Sleepy Hollows, Alice in Wonderlands and Charlie and the Chocolate Factorys. With Frankenweenie, he adapts his own work — the first animated short he ever produced for a major film studio, and the…
In Freud’s Last Session, the smart one-act now on view at Theatre Three, novelist and Oxford don C.S. Lewis utters this snappy line: “The greatest problem with Christianity is Christians.” It sounds like something he might have written. The play uses a great many lines that Lewis, most famous for…
What will you do when those herky-jerky gnawers of braaaaaaaains come calling? You’d try shooing them away with a broom, wouldn’t you? You might as well open the doors and flash the lights. You need a class in strategy. Human Max Brooks has your answers. He’s been researching and documenting…
Patios are holy places in Dallas. They are spots for communion with friends (boozing), absolution from sins (brunch confessions) and sometimes, if we’re really lucky, they’re places to learn about our culture and history (stoner comedies on the big screen). One of the best patios in the city is the…
Anyone who has ever been to the State Fair of Texas knows that with all of the lights of the Midway, all of the fryers bubbling and all of the custodians gathering up visitors’ cast-off corn-dog sticks, it is far from functioning off-the-grid. But just across from the fairgrounds at…
It’s the biggest show to hit Broadway since…who knows? It’s tough remembering theater before Mormon came knocking. The South Park/Avenue Q love child tells the story of two eager young missionaries who just can’t wait to save souls. The only problem? They’re sent to an AIDS-soaked African country where people…
Sometimes retrospective exhibitions are tough to get excited about — sort of like flashback episodes in a television series. But with the influx of new technology available, institutions are able to dust off those old goodies and make them seem fresh and new. Yeah, there’s an app for that. Those…
The Sundown’s rooftop deck was packed with well-wishers last night. We piled up to congratulate the Granada’s crew on eight great years in Dallas. What nobody predicted before arrival was that a tiny cluster of girls would require much of the available space. Yes, Courtney Loves Dallas was filming during…
At some point in the near future, a feeble, and impoverished Romanian child will be trekking along the Carpathian Mountains in a free pair of piss-sticky rain boots, all thanks to Dallas. Not all of the rain boots donated will be drenched in human runoff, but a few pairs were…
