See also: A guide to the Asian Film Festival. Last night marked the opening of the Asian Film Festival of Dallas, which has showcased films from China, Japan, Korea and the rest of Asia for 11 years. While it’s becoming harder for Asian films to find success in the states…
Find more theater events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. The monthlong Festival of Independent Theatres, redundantly nicknamed FITfest, opens at the Bath House Cultural Center this weekend. Eight plays, each shorter than an hour, are performed in rotating repertory, Thursdays through Saturdays, over the next four weekends (July 13-August 4). It’s the fourteenth…
Find more theater events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. Brent Barrett has played almost every great Broadway musical leading man role either in New York or on national tours: Tony in West Side Story (his Broadway debut in 1980). The title character in The Phantom of the Opera. Frank Butler in Annie Get…
See also: Will Ferrell’s visit to SMU. If you’ve watched any TV of late you’ve likely caught the above trailer for Campaign, the election-season send-up starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis as rival congressional candidates in the South. The movie opens August 10, and to promote it, its stars will…
Somewhere off the coast of Malta, Oliver Francis takes a moment from caviar eating on his yacht and agrees to talk a call from us about a surprise pop-up exhibition set for Saturday night at his Dallas gallery. Mid-conversation, he cuts out for a moment and then returns, grumbling that…
Hold onto your fishnets men and ladies, it’s going to be one hell of a weekend. Now that we’re back to the usual five-day office beat down, we’ll need to turn this thing out proper to really feel our souls again. No problem. We’ve got Bastille on Bishop (complete with…
And it looks, I must say, rather awesome. Read Jamie’s preview of the fest, and get details on the festival web site…
Find more photography exhibits at dallasobserver.com/calendar. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, and unless no one came and knocked on your rock and asked you to go to breakfast at Oddfellws, than you’ve likely noticed that Oak Cliff has been in a cultural and business transition for several years…
Distribution companies for Asian cinema have been in steady decline over the last decade, often citing illegal downloads and lackluster international market response when they fold. For lovers of the genre, this means fewer funds are being put toward the creation of new films, making it tougher for innovative talent…
What do you do with a B.A. in English? Learn to make lattes? Live with your folks? Or buckle down and create something fresh, funny and smart like Avenue Q? If you have it in you, do it. If you’re still in college and think you might have it in…
Take This Waltz, director Sarah Polley’s second feature, is much like her first, 2006’s superb Away From Her, in that it thoughtfully probes the pitfalls of coupledom and third-party threats. Five years into their marriage, Torontonians Margot (Michelle Williams) and Lou (Seth Rogen) have regressed fully into sexlessness, heat and…
Not to knock films as fantastic as his Rachel Getting Married, The Silence of the Lambs and Something Wild, but there’s something wilder — or at least, more directly stimulating and pure — about Jonathan Demme’s live-performance docs. The 68-year-old auteur immortalized a Talking Heads show (and David Byrne’s oversized…
Ashley North Compton says it right on her website: “I make a mean cocktail.” It’s wedged under her one million other jobs — including beekeeper — but hey, it’s there. And soon, she’ll be here, at Oil & Cotton teaching your bumpkin ass how to make a proper drink. Lucky…
The Asian Film Festival of Dallas opens its 11th year on Thursday, July 12, and will include one world movie premiere, seven North American premieres and numerous filmmakers in attendance. It kicks off with the opening-night party at the Stoneleigh Hotel & Spa for desserts, drinks, cocktails and a special…
The good people of Nexxus have, among other attributes, impeccable timing, scheduling their Endless Style Bar event right at the point in summer when we give up on putting ourselves together. It’s those days when our carefully blended makeup slides off our faces and our smoothed-out hair goes rogue as…
As the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death approaches, The Sixth Floor Museum will play a central role in the proceedings, trying, with help from the city of Dallas, to keep the debate within what it sees as the rails of reasonable doubt. But the questions can’t be ignored, so as…
Being in the hospital sucks, but being in the hospital as a kid sucks harder, at least until Musical Angels show up. Founder Dr. Gustavo Tolosa’s network of teachers uplifts and empowers with piano lessons for hospitalized children at centers such as Children’s Medical Center, Our Children’s House at Baylor,…
As you sit there, making out with that sandwich, there are people taking flight in Fort Worth. The Modern Dance Festival runs through July 21 and is filled with magnificently angular people doing explosively choreographed performances, and today you can see one of the best things of all: the local…
Bring out the wine, pop on a beret and a broadly striped shirt and celebrate like the French — trust us, they really dress that way — at the third annual Bastille on Bishop Street Festival at Oak Cliff on the 400 block of North Bishop Boulevard (at Bishop and…
Alison Marie Welsh creates a unique type of art. Macabre and beautiful, seductive and restrained, her ink-based images tell tales of curious ladies. They’re dangerous gals, be certain of it, and they’re the types of sketchy women Dali or Escher might have fallen in lust with. A self-taught creative, Welsh…
The men of Dallas should consider avoiding the front row when April Macie comes to town, lest their penis, its size, or its invariably disgusting use(s) become one of her punchlines. Macie, who found success on NBC’s Last Comic Standing in 2006, exploits and exposes gender-driven double standards by pushing…
Turns out Ryan Cabrera is from Dallas. Who knew? I know what you’re thinking: “That guy with oversized Sonic the Hedgehog hair who once dated Ashlee Simpson?!?” YES. That guy. He’s from here! And so is Chip Jordan, founder of Real Industry People Entertainment, or RIPE, and apparently they used…
