The children are indeed the future. Local preteen KJ Takahashi is competing in a video contest, Marquese Scott’s Shut Up and Dance: Dance Among Dragons, in which he’s currently ranked third. This isn’t a kid-specific contest. KJ’s competitors are grown-ass adults, and he’s closing in on the second- and first-place…
Pianist Hélène Grimaud has just finished a mentally and physically demanding rehearsal of the first two movements of Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto. Wearing unremarkable dark street clothes and no makeup, she still somehow pulls off that chic, effortless beauty that only French women can. She settles on the couch in…
Magician Edward Ruiz takes a classic approach to magic from the illusions he performs on stage to his physical appearance. It’s no accident that he looks exactly like one of caped madmen straight from the pages of an old kids’ magic book. “As a kid, I wanted to be that…
“Having a gallery in Dallas is great,” says Red Arrow Contemporary co-director Elissa Stafford. “But having something that’s more than that, an experience and way to give back to people, especially to other artists — that would be really powerful for us.” She, her sister Erin and I are sitting…
A tale of love complicated — if not thwarted — by prior responsibilities, intractable barriers and the rigid high-society norms that frustrate its Victorian characters’ attempts to live as they so desperately want, The Invisible Woman finds Ralph Fiennes proving as adept behind the camera as he is in front…
Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi solidifies his status as one of cinema’s finest living dramatists with The Past, a superb follow-up to 2011’s Oscar-winning A Separation that again situates audiences amid interpersonal, familial and household crises. Working from a script that incisively plumbs a thicket of logistical and emotional complications, Farhadi’s…
If you’re a person alive in this age, Ralph Fiennes has at some point probably made you hate him. As the Nazi Amon Goeth in 1993’s Schindler’s List, Fiennes embodied one of history’s great evils, somehow making being utterly detestable compelling. In Martin McDonagh’s riotous, under-regarded In Bruges, Fiennes spat…
Russians still make the best movie villains. Since 9-11, Hollywood has been queasy about giving us fictional baddies from Arab countries — the line between cheap stereotypes and real-life religious extremism is too blurry, too delicate. South American drug lords have had their day, and Albanians in bad sweaters just…
“You are the man?” a crook asks Ice Cube as the cop comedy Ride Along opens. “I am the man!” Cube insists. You can’t blame him for being defensive. Now a 44-year-old father of five, Cube is three decades away from the furious teenager who co-founded N.W.A. his senior year…
Despite some reluctance, Wes Craven is a name-brand filmmaker. The phrase “Wes Craven Presents” comes with certain expectations thanks to the financial success of the Scream franchise and The Hills Have Eyes series before that. But what cemented Craven’s reputation is A Nightmare on Elm Street, a deathless cycle of…
In Devil’s Due, co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (V/H/S) and first-time screenwriter Lindsay Devlin offer an uninspired found-footage riff on Roman Polanski’s demon-spawn classic, Rosemary’s Baby (1968). On their Dominican Republic honeymoon, the squeakily innocent Samantha (Allison Miller) and Zach (Zach Gilford) are drugged by a cult who draw…
Entropy. William S. Burroughs. Earth as art. These source materials did more than influence artist Robert Smithson: They opened an unexplored sphere of philosophical understanding regarding the world’s perpetual flux and our role within it. Life’s output — rocks, text, trash — affected the minimalist artist, leading him to reinterpret…
If you’re a family man or woman, it is nearly impossible to see live comedy with your little ones. That’s because the man or woman of the hour-and-a-half-or-so on stage either made his name through boundary-breaking shock and obscenity or wasn’t funny enough on his own and had to turn…
Oh, but who doesn’t love a parade? Especially the kind that brings a city together, lining streets from downtown to Fair Park with cheering children, for a loud and proud event that celebrates the legacy of a man who truly made a difference. The 32nd Annual Martin Luther King Jr…
As much as Dallas and its denizens love the finer things in life, the city keeps coming back to two very American standards: burgers and beer. Every week lately there’s news of a new burger joint opening, growler station opening, specialty beer being tapped or a brewery hosting a blowout…
Each year we at the Dallas Observer like to get a little rowdy. We reach deep into Dallas culture and pull out the trend makers, the game changers and the party starters. We find the most interesting names in fashion, dance, art and music. Then we take over a venue,…
When you look at the cultural fabric of Dallas, you see a fair amount of artistic trailblazing: the DMA, for example, taking museum/community interaction to the next level this year; or gallery owners who have defied odds and set up wonderful outposts and spurred an arts revival. But few artists…
Since its August installation Tony Tasset’s sculpture Eye (2010) has maintained unblinking surveillance over the Joule Hotel’s perimeter traffic. Plucked from the socket of Surrealism, Dali and Bataille by way of ’50s sci-fi, Eye’s merging of high and low art embodies the artist’s egalitarian approach toward both his monumental public…
There are probably fewer groups more enigmatic than the Blue Man Group, or at least as committed to staying in character. You’re never quite sure what they’re trying to convey with their firmly grim-set faces or their wide eyes, but you know it’s provocative, perhaps something about the universal truth…
Some movies are just bad and then some movies are so bad, they’re good … for professional mocking in a public forum. Twilight: New Moon is one of those movies. Shape shifters, sparkling vampires and K. Stew’s complete and total lack of acting?!? Master Pancake is all over it. They’re…
Drafthouse Films recently plucked Ms. 45, a very dark and gory ’80s revenge tale, from falling completely into obscurity by re-releasing it in theaters and on DVD and Blu-ray with a brand-new, fully restored high definition gloss. We can certainly respect the film powerhouse’s effort to honor this underrated classic,…
It’s an old truism: The family that ruptures bad guys’ spleens together, stays together. Sadly, in this modern, cuckoo world, we just forget how important hanging with the sibs and delivering roundhouse kicks to vital organs really are. Take a few minutes Monday night to reflect on the importance of…
