The party’s over. You’ve welcomed the New Year with a glass of champagne or with a big dose of vitamin sleep. For some of you, it was just a typical Thursday night. So maybe you’re asking, now what? Well, here’s what. Plenty of things to do this weekend to keep…
If you’re interested in emerging talent, Dallas is teeming with it. Just stop by a show at 500X Gallery, Kettle Art Gallery, Random Art Gallery or Beefhaus and dig through the names on the walls. It’s amazing how much work is being made in this city at any given time,…
Here’s to Quentin Tarantino’s cussed perversity. The Hateful Eight, his intimate suspenseful Western splatter-horror comedy, has been shot at great expense in the long-gone 70mm format, but the movie itself is set almost entirely in cramped interiors. He’s hired Ennio Morricone to score the thing, but don’t expect rousing new…
What’s been missing for years in Hollywood’s adventure films? Verisimilitude. Correspondent with the rise of the computers, and the ability to show us any place that filmmakers can imagine, has been the fall of immersiveness — that sense that the actors are in a place you can’t go yourself rather…
Sure, they’ve cancelled the city’s big event in Victory Park, but that doesn’t mean you need to sit on your ass. And sure, partying with strangers isn’t always the best way to start a new year, but nothing’s perfect and you never know who that stranger will turn out to…
You will think you know what Target in the Night is when you begin reading it, but you’ll be wrong. Ricardo Piglia — the author of this latest release by Dallas’ Deep Vellum publishing house, seamlessly translated from Spanish by Sergio Waisman — sets you down in 1970s Argentina. A…
If, like me, you’ve devoted an unhealthy portion of your life to attempting to make sense of the Dallas Cowboys, you’ve probably been frustrated by conversations about the team with your family. You may have realized a long time ago that your closest relatives have had their minds made up…
The week after Christmas always seems to move at a glacier’s pace: it’s a weird transition period between holidays and a return to the real world—school starts back up, work suddenly expects you to stop taking days off and do something, and the glitter and gold fade into the gray…
All the world’s a stage, but theaters have the most flattering lighting. Into the amber-gelled glare aimed down on Dallas stages in 2015 stepped hundreds of productions big and small. This remains a busy and constantly churning theater town. Seasons overlap. New shows open every week. Here’s a look back…
Panther Island Ice If you want to feel festive and do something designed for the winter we don’t have in Dallas, head to Fort Worth and skate on real ice at Panther Island Ice. On Christmas day, the rink is open from 2- 11 p.m. Admission is $11, which includes…
Here’s a challenge. Gather some friends, pour some drinks and announce to everyone the premise of Daddy’s Home, the new family comedy about dads competing to be pater superior. It won’t take long: Will Ferrell is a doting schlemiel of a stepdad to suburban moppets whose biological father, played by…
In most of his eight films and especially since The Fighter (2010), choreographer of chaos and screwball scion David O. Russell has assembled boisterous, buoyant casts. His manic ensemble players, like those in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, carom off one another, their high-pitched energy keeping the movies bustling…
Was 2015 a strange year for anyone else? It seems this year sucked a lot of the city’s mojo dry. Maybe it was all the rainfall that filled the Trinity River. Maybe Mercury never came out of retrograde. Maybe we’re all just overworked and underpaid. Whatever went wrong, the tone…
Concussion isn’t much of a movie, but it’s a fascinating bellwether for where the National Football League currently stands on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain disease associated with many of its former players. As it happens, the brain isn’t supposed to whip against the skull like humans are…
Fueled by impotent, blustery outrage, Adam McKay’s The Big Short, about the grotesque banking and investing practices that led to the 2008 financial collapse, is about as fun and enlightening as a cranked-up portfolio manager’s rue-filled comedown after an energy-shot bender. Based on Michael Lewis’ 2010 bestselling book of the…
Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin’s sweet nectarine of a jazz standard “Easy Living” figures, in a glancing yet potent way, in Todd Haynes’ Carol, adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt. Even though the lyrics speak of contentment — “Living for you is easy living/It’s easy to…
Gilmore Guys is a comedy podcast with a devoted following reminiscent of the TV show it chronicles. Kevin T. Porter and Demi Adejuyigbe are dissecting all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls, devoting a podcast for each episode. Hundreds of thousands of listeners tune in each week and live recordings have…
Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots This one is obvious. Seriously, though, there have been too few exhibitions of this caliber, both in curation and in work on display. Each of these pieces warrant a bout of serious looking at the piece. Particularly in some of the later works in this exhibition,…
It’s here! Finally, Christmas is upon us — which means that the hard work is almost over: Booze will be flowing, gifts will be given and the love will be palpable. At least for a few precious hours. As for the rest of the week, you should give yourself the…
Lurid, muscular and unafraid to look at turn-of-the-century Manhattan’s rotting guts, The Knick has distinguished itself in the crowded antihero-drama landscape through its mosaic portrait of a city on the verge of implosion and epidemic — detailed with an extraordinary visual expressiveness (courtesy of Steven Soderbergh, who directs every episode)…
If there’s a running theme in this year’s entries in N47 Theatre’s A Very Nouveau Holiday mini-fest at the Margo Jones Theatre in Fair Park, it’s that Christmas just isn’t the same after Mom dies. Or if you’re stuck at the airport with the Abominable Snowman. Or if a comic…
If Joan Davidow’s name sounds familiar, it’s likely because of her tenures as the director of the Arlington Museum of Art and Dallas Contemporary. She’s one of the city’s go-to experts about art and she has an eye for up-and-comers. These days she imparts her insight in segments for KERA,…
