In a September interview with GQ, Constance Wu, star of NBC’s Fresh Off the Boat, observed of the HBO series Togetherness, “It’s a show about white people.” She’s not wrong: Created by indie-film luminaries Jay and Mark Duplass, along with the actor Steve Zissis, Togetherness is a low-key look at…
Media creates a spectacle and a dialogue. To compete with other spectacles, art may have to embrace the spectacular. And social practice is a great way to create a dialogue. Art tries to pursue things that are not yet fully understood, often pushing boundaries. It can certainly help to have…
The centerpiece of Hail, Caesar!’s mid-century Hollywood satire is the eponymous film-within-a-film itself, an overwrought biblical epic in which a skeptical Roman centurion played by George Clooney has a literal come-to-Jesus moment. Risen, whose plot can be described in exactly the same way, never inspires one of its own. Co-writer/director…
There is precisely one attempted coup de cinema in the Jesse Owens biopic Race, which otherwise defaults to the backlot handsomeness of other Great Men tributes from Hollywood. In 1935, Owens (Stephan James), a freshman sensation on the Ohio State University track team, returns to the locker room after practice…
Do This! The Pin Show is one of the most beloved fashion events in Dallas. Dreamed up by local designer, Julie McCullough, the event is dedicated to independent designers who work in everything from swimwear to jewelry. Sneak a peek at the endless sartorial creativity in our backyard. If you…
Like many entertainers before him, Dustin Carlson shed his real name. The tall 25-year-old with long red hair and thick-rimmed, black glasses chose a different path, and with that path came a new name, a tag – DentiSSBB. Denti is a professional video game player. So when he plays –…
Benicio Del Toro has the basset-hound look of a beast you can trust — or, at least, he’ll happily admit when he’s lying. He’s the right man for a rotten world, with heavy-lidded, handsome eyes made for giving any tough spot an appraising squint. Recently, he’s played a string of…
A laugh comes at last just before the end credits of Robert Eggers’ lit-class horror-bummer The Witch: a boastful note attesting to the documentary truthfulness of the dialogue in the movie we’ve just seen. Over 90 minutes that prove shriekiness is no impediment to ponderousness, we’ve beheld the harrowing of…
In 1922, Buster Keaton, one of the reigning film comedians of the day, applied his deadpan, rubber-limbed genius to the creation of one of the masterpieces of silent cinema, The Goat. Mistaken identity, cop chases, train-top sequences, tangled dog leashes, stairway and elevator stunts, and a bit of boy-meets-girl romance…
Familial dysfunction and tales of addiction reign supreme on two Dallas stages currently. I’m Gonna Pray For You So Hard a 2015 two-hander at Kitchen Dog Theater owes a lot to Long Day’s Journey Into Night the classic Eugene O’Neill play at Undermain Theatre. Similarly both plays feature star turns…
If you’re looking for a rowdy night out, there’s one more weekend to catch Ochre House Theater’s latest Brothers’ Harvest. Writer and director Matthew Posey’s off the wall comedy digs into the life of a small town girl named Indigo Sue (an irresistible Cassie Bann). It’s a musical romp through…
Listen: James Franco has come unstuck in time. In the TV-MA debut (there are many, many excellent F-bombs) of 11.22.63, the Hulu miniseries partly shot in Dallas, James Franco is bouncing back and forth between present day and 11:58 a.m. on October 21, 1960. Chris Cooper is there, coughing. A…
Endless plays have been written about the brittle matriarch; the woman whose vulnerability intertwines with a vitriolic instability. Many, many playwrights it seems struggle with the mother-child relationship, or perhaps more accurately, the mother-son relationship. But as the work of female playwrights reaches more stages, it follows that new dynamics…
J.M. Rizzi and his eight-year-old daughter love to look at graffiti together. In the car they will slowdown to take a look at something or watch it go by on a train. But as much as she enjoys the art his daughter is sure that he would never do graffiti…
When the Out of the Loop Fringe Festival hits stages at WaterTower Theatre February 25- March 6, there will be numerous shows to choose from. A particularly interesting production at this year’s festival arrives via Brooklyn from the minds of Daniel Robert Sullivan and a handful of New York teenagers…
It’s tempting to spend your week tucked in amongst your Valentine’s floral arrangements and clearance chocolate, but don’t even. Delkus has foretold a week full of cheerful (though probably apocalyptic) weather: patios await you—and once the sun goes down, you can springboard into any number of engaging arts events dotting…
Eric Bogosian does not suffer fools gladly. The theater veteran from New York City commands a room like few others. He has a tremendous confidence and loose delivery that only comes with serious chops. Occasionally he glanced stage side at a list of characters unique to each particular performance; he…
The annual pop culture convention Fan Days brings together fans of all genres and media and gives them a forum to discuss and celebrate the TV shows, movies and comics they’ve loved for most of their lives. So it provides a natural segue to meet someone who shares similar passions,…
On the surface, there isn’t much to object to in How to Be Single. Look, it says! No matter how fabulous their lives may seem, everyone wants to be happier and more fulfilled. Everyone is looking for something more, just like you! And really, Christian Ditter’s film (based on the…
Marie Reyes opens her front door to her Preston Hollow home and welcomes her 10-year-old daughter home from school. “Hey, there. How was your early Valentine’s Day?” Sofia, who was picked up from school by the family’s housekeeper, trots in wearing her Hockaday School uniform and carrying her Valentines. A…
The first Zoolander, Ben Stiller’s dopey, fitfully funny fashion spoof, was released less than three weeks after the September 11 attacks. Its sequel shows the extent to which another kind of nefarious plot — the cynical quest for world domination through cross-brand synergy — has proven impossible to eradicate on…
HBO’s Vinyl is the latest in a series of cultural hard-ons for the rough-and-tumble world of pre-Koch NYC: From novels like Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers and Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire to online photo galleries of graffiti-splattered subway trains and can-you-believe-this-juice-bar-used-to-be-a-crack-den slideshows, there’s a hunger for what Manhattan looked,…
