This time of year, everything just feels a little more boring. We’re all waiting around for fall television premieres and football that these last few weeks of August can feel a little empty. You could do something productive like figure out how to pay off those student loans or repave…
Joe M. Nanez’s family found out he died in World War II when they saw him killed on a Dallas movie theater screen. His brother-in-law, Regulo Vasquez, saw i t on a newsreel after a film as a teenager. He stayed for the next showing and watched the film again,…
On this week’s Voice Film Club podcast: We love Guy Ritchie’s stylish, charming The Man From U.N.C.L.E., while LA Weekly film critic Amy states her case for American Ultra. We move onto Lily Tomlin’s memorable performance in Grandma (be sure to read our interview with Tomlin, too). Later, Village Voice film editor…
Here at the Dallas Observer Arts and Culture section, we are proud, sort of, we guess, to announce Another Former Bachelor Contestant Hosts A Thing And You Can Go If You Want. It’s art and culture, baby. For this edition, Dallas guy and a former Bachelor himself Sean Lowe and…
Thursday, Aug. 20 Spelling Bee You’ll never forget the moment when it all came crashing down. You made it through the classroom trials, passed the grade-level competition with flying colors, and advanced from the school finals to the district spelling bee. “Soliloquy”, no problem. “Puerile”, you got it. And then,…
“True always trumps clever,” says character actor and podcast raconteur Stephen Tobolowsky at the top of his one-man show The Tobolowsky Files, playing through the end of August at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. Speaking directly to a crowd of about 50 in a small corner cabaret bar at…
It’s better to be lucky than smart, the saying goes, but being both is best of all, if you can pull it off. The first season of thinkspeak, the summer lecture series produced jointly by KERA and AT&T Performing Arts Center, managed to do that, wrapping up earlier this month…
The business model is not, sadly, unique: Come up with a novel idea to sell something, perhaps a rock. Pick an item and sales pitch that a distressing number of people find humorous. Get press (like this story). Pray to the Internet gods that the idea goes viral. Collect cash…
In a city that is appearance-focused and occasionally shallow, no one is likely to be surprised to learn that many Dallas daters lie about their particulars on their dating profiles. When you’re trying to score a date, it’s easy enough to gloss over that five (or 15) pounds you’ve gained,…
If you make less than $3 million per year, then you are familiar with the rough part of NorthPark Mall. You know, the dark side. The wing where there aren’t gowns you wear to the Academy Awards and the basic white T-shirts don’t run $75. The side without the contraption-pond-thing…
Nima Nourizadeh’s American Ultra is a bloody valentine attached to a bomb. It’s violent, brash, inventive and horrific, and perhaps the most romantic film of the year. Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart star as Mike and Phoebe, two West Virginia stoners blissed out on weed and each other. “We’re the…
Is it in honor of its subject that the high-flying doc Being Evel indulges so often in hilarious overstatement? “He opened the door and invited people to buy a ticket to watch truth,” one talking head insists, somehow keeping his face straight. Another speaks of how in the early 1970s…
“You could make five different N.W.A movies. We made the one we wanted to make.” That’s director F. Gary Gray during an audience Q&A after a recent screening of Straight Outta Compton, the long-awaited N.W.A movie. In our review, Amy Nicholson writes that there’s much more to the group’s story:…
Few names from pop culture can draw as much joy and pure glee out of people than “Weird Al” Yankovic. He’s like a walking antidepressant. Just bringing up his name in conversation or mentioning one of his songs can perk up even the lowliest soul. Telling friends you’ve personally crossed…
Believe it or not, summer is actually, finally going to grind to an end someday. Sure, we’ve got a few more weeks of oppressive heat to come, but that only means we’re finally making our way into the best time of the year in North Texas — fall. When you’re…
Every tattoo is different. This art form is permanent and personal, especially for the people who create it. On a mission to ink our own skin, we researched and tracked down some of the best tattoo artists in Dallas for an ongoing series. Clint Cummings doesn’t need the title of…
We are so, so close to the time of the year when Dallas is actually a very lovely place to live, but we’re not there yet. Once this damn heat finally subsides, most of us plan to get back out there, and stop sitting on the couch swiping right on…
Benedict Cumberbatch may be getting heavy ink for his Hamlet at London’s Barbican Theatre. But 400 miles north in Edinburgh, Lake Highlands High School grad David Carl, 34, is playing all the roles, plus one, in his hit solo comedy Gary Busey’s One-Man Hamlet as Performed by David Carl at…
When we heard Exxxotica was coming to town, we imagined a cross between Willa Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and the Playboy Mansion. Lights would be low, porn stars would be just as attractive in person, walls would be draped in velvet and around every corner we’d find a Champagne fountain. (Basically,…
In a world gone mad for superhero movies, what chance does the light spy caper have? Audiences will put total faith in a guy wearing a red metal suit, but the soft woolen folds of the bespoke kind barely register. When a whole city can be blasted to smithereens thanks…
Thursday, Aug. 13 God of Carnage After their grade-school sons fight in a public park, two pairs of parents have what is intended to be a quick, friendly meeting to discuss the matter. But the conversation is drawn out and the parents start behaving childishly, fighting among themselves and with…
For the life of me, I can’t remember what the word was that tripped me up. I just remember it was embarrassing because prior to taking my turn in the preliminary run of the trials for something that might have been the National Spelling Bee, I had been talking to…
