“Did I want to shoot comedies?” asks Brandon Trost, director of photography on two of this summer’s funniest films, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. “It’s funny — not at all.” But then came MacGruber, Jorma Taccone’s 2010 SNL film.“The director wanted me because I wasn’t…
In 2013, a 22-year-old Palestinian named Mohammed Assaf won the second edition of the Middle Eastern singing competition Arab Idol, a spinoff of the same popular British Pop Idol franchise that also gave us American Idol. Mohammed had snuck out of Gaza and crashed the auditions in Egypt before making…
It’s a feat to out-idiot TMZ culture. In achieving that, the fake-doc white-rapper satire Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a breakthrough for studio comedies, which here at last catch up to the metabolism and meaninglessness of the internet age. In its generous, frenetic first hour, Popstar’s jokes and parodies…
“It’s just messy right now,” a character in playwright Steve Yockey’s The Thrush and the Woodpecker states defensively early in the play. If only it were just messy right now. Steve Yockey is a Los Angeles-based writer whose play Blackberry Winter is currently receiving a National New Play Network (NNPN)…
Through August 21, visitors to the Nasher Sculpture Center have the chance to visit one of the most poetic uses of Renzo Piano’s light-filled gallery in quite some time. American sculptor Joel Shapiro rose to prominence alongside Frank Stella, Carl Andre and Tony Smith as part of a movement in…
The Real Housewives of Dallas Episode 8 Recap “Birthday Bashed” We’re back again for episode 8 of The Real Housewives of Dallas! And it’s Travis’ birthday! You know, Travis. Stephanie Hollman’s husband who gives her a list of chores and doesn’t trust her to check the mail, much less plan…
It’s so hard to get into the swing of things when the week starts out with a holiday. You skip all that Sunday night dread, relish not being in the office all day, and then the rest of the week somehow feels that much lighter. Even if your job still…
Do This! The National Polka Festival has been around for 50 freakin’ years and this year it’s expected to attract 50,000 people to downtown Ennis for its parade, 5K and 10K Polka Runs, musical performances and kolache-eating contest. Recent polka hall of fame inductees Brave Combo are among musical guests,…
Comic conventions have become snarling, hungry beasts that can never be sated. Every year they get bigger, with more parties, famous faces and costumed fans ready to declare their love for their favorite movie, show or comic book franchise. If this metaphorical beast was itself a comic book character, it…
Deep Eyellum at Epocha Shoe Gallery2540 Elm St. Native Texan graphic artist and painter Miguel Ibarra will paint one of his extraterrestrial flora murals onsite and exhibit his latest series of small “Eye-bud” paintings. Ibarra’s “green” mural series and paintings are inspired by nature’s potential to both revitalize and destroy…
Something troubling is afoot in Westeros: The heroes are beginning to outnumber the villains. The sixth season of Game of Thrones has already seen Jon Snow’s return from the dead, Arya Stark’s vision restored and — courtesy of two Stark children’s long-awaited reunion — the show’s first-ever tears of joy…
There was a time when the summer movie season was a season, sandwiched between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. By the 21st century, the start date drifted back to the first weekend in May. This year, the superhero flicks started arriving with Deadpool’s release on February 12. Only two…
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has built an empire on tech money and professional games. Now he’s eyeing another expansion — into the digital universe of the game Minecraft. In an unprecedented move, the Mavs have announced a partnership with Mineplex, one of the largest Minecraft servers in the world, to…
The Lone Star State is a fascinating place when viewed from behind the windshield. Ask anyone: What’s the wildest thing they’ve ever seen from the highway? And their answers will range from the bizarre to the terrifying to the sublime. We know because we asked Texas drivers on social media…
The guiding principle of Lewis Carroll’s classics Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass is that logic does not exist. You tumble down rabbit holes and into mirrors willy-nilly, and you try to survive, feeling what you feel, having fun when you can — oh, and try not to drown…
Maybe we’re crazy. Maybe we’re just grasping for any kind of hope. But maybe — just maybe — it took a guest star on The Real Housewives of Dallas to finally get things going. It’s Heidi Dillon. Or as Tiffany Hendra calls her — Heidi Effin’ Dillon. And what we’re…
If you’re planning to attend a production of Steve Yockey’s Blackberry Winter or The Thrush & the Woodpecker from Kitchen Dog Theater, plug in directions to Undermain Theatre. For more than a decade, Kitchen Dog Theater was housed in the bright blue building on McKinney Avenue known as The McKinney Avenue…
As Dallas continues its gradual and mostly awesome slide into the slightly unpleasant and less awesome days of summer, we’d encourage you to soak it up while going out doesn’t yet involve pitting out your shirts and burning yourself on the steering wheel. Maybe you’ll need an umbrella here and…
Everyone hold on. More reality TV is coming to Dallas. Kind of. Sort of. Not really. But you remember JoJo Fletcher, don’t you? She is the Dallas native who went on The Bachelor last season and fell in love with Ben Higgins. He totally blindsided her by saying the big…
Comics are a cynical breed. Their goal is to make an audience laugh and one common way to do that is by pointing out holes in our beliefs and behavior. Ryan Singer uses a different technique to get guffaws from the crowd. He thinks a sense of humor is necessary to…
Do This! If you’re looking to pamper the cute little dependents in your life, this is a good weekend to do it. At 9:30 a.m. Saturday at The Wild Detectives (314 W. 8th St.), local actress Katherine Bourne will regale your kiddos with a selection of storybooks illustrated by Garth…
Kurtz Frausun and Scott Alan Wilcox are chatting in a corner of Glass Half Full, the bar inside the Alamo Drafthouse, on yet another night of expected hail and thunderstorms in North Texas. Only a few weeks prior, on May 4, a five-minute short film they made called The Balance…
