Walking into “My My Misfire,” an installation exhibition curated by thinker/artist/writer and UT Arlington Professor Stephen Lapthisophon, and organized by collaborative Apophenia Underground, was a bitchslap of juxtaposition. Setting the tone is a hand scribbled note taped to the abandoned storefront’s window. It reads: “We find things as they are…
Tune your pianos, plug in your keyboards and practice your scales, kids. Or at the very least, go to the Van Cliburn website and click the giant play button on the Cliburn Radio tab, because it only happens once every four years and it’s quickly approaching. This May 24 through…
It’s the smaller categories that excite me most during the Academy Awards, and the animated shorts have a special place in my heart. The Magnolia is currently showing both the five Oscar contenders — including Disney’s darn-charming contribution “Paperman” shown above — and five great runners-up. (My favorite is a…
If Valentine’s day is about indulgence, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra is doing its part this weekend, offering up a concert chock full of saccharin-sweet schmaltz. There might be a little too much icing on this cake, but sometimes you just gotta run your finger across the plate and lick it…
Glimpse, October’s Aurora-light event that illuminated the Design District, was a nice reminder that art can still be unexpected, thanks to grassroots organizing. Glowing jellyfish sculptures blew in the wind. A performance art piece tiptoed through the Donor Reflecting Pool in front of the Winspear. Experimental sound wranglers, Waterfalls, played…
This weekend, the locally made film The Playroom begins a limited run at Oak Cliff’s historic Texas Theatre. Two familiar faces, John Hawkes and Molly Parker, have central roles in the movie as Martin and Donna Cantwell, a couple who share a drunken evening with a pair of friends while…
“I’m not going to fight with the room,” says Pin Show Executive Producer Julie McCullough. She’s explaining her newly targeted plan for this year’s massive fashion fête, happening on Saturday, February 23, and its exciting departure from the ordinary. “I don’t want to pageant it up.” In 2012, we found…
Your Valentine’s dinner is over you want a nice movie to share with your special someone. You’ve got a bottle of wine to open, a box chocolates to share. You want to relax, but you don’t want to shut your mind off completely. You want something sophisticated, off the beaten…
That Ken Price show is so wonderfully pervy, and Chagall (opening Sunday at the DMA) has a natural sentimentality to it, so we at Mixmaster thought they’d make for good dirty valentines. Here’s a few. Take a screen shot and send one to someone you love and/or want to sleep…
In honor of Valentine’s Day — the Official Holiday of Unmet Expectations — we asked some of our writers to recount their very worst dates. Our hope is that these tales of failure will cushion the blow when whatever you have planned tonight goes horribly awry. Enjoy. ***** Is It…
That footage above was filmed at an O’Reilly Autorama in Dallas back in 2007 and yes, I’m now definitely going. It’s happening all weekend long, so prepare your switches to be flipped. Happy Sexytime Day, y’all! What’s that? You don’t have plans? No sweat. Check out my list of super…
The Dallas Observer is looking for a go-to freelancer to contribute stories of all make, model and size across all of our non-news channels: music, nightlife, food, drinks, arts, culture and the like. The Ideal Candidate (“I.C.”) either is a full-time freelancer or has a “day job” that leaves plenty…
Every Thursday we highlight the best comedy of the coming weekend. Find more comedy events at dallasobserver.com/calendar. All Star Comedy Jam at Verizon Theatre Since this jam has been going strong for four years now, we assume that Shaq is now officially better at putting together comedy shows than making…
Kitchen Dog Theater’s production of Eugène Ionesco’s The Chairs is perfectly absurd. Also absurdly perfect. Change hats. It takes a few minutes, 15 or 20, to get into the rhythm of the thing. At first it’s slow, but for good reasons. The pace gradually picks up, like the assembly line…
Does anyone care about John McClane anymore? That’s not the same as asking if you want to see A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth in this series of films with increasingly outlandish action and increasingly cumbersome titles. The most recent entry — the slick, ridiculous hit, Live Free…
As he’s questioned by a therapist in the opening scene of the film bearing his name, we see Charles Swan III’s subconscious literally spurt out of his head. It’s visualized as an animated collage largely made up of ladies’ long, disembodied legs. It also indicates writer-director Roman Coppola’s approach with…
Abbas Kiarostami is preoccupied with my tape recorder. He wonders if it’s too far away from where he’s sitting. He makes his translator switch from one side of him to another so that the recorder is between them. After a while, clearly still anxious about it, he picks it up…
Before anything else, here’s how dumb things get in A Good Day for Die Hard–Related Media Product, which is being sold as a bang-bang movie sequel so that nobody catches onto its true nature: a black-ops experiment testing the human faculty for discovering coherent patterns in unrelated shards of image…
Child characters endowed with adult intelligence tend to be disappointing puppets through which authors articulate their own views. But allowing a brilliant fictional child her own voice and agency (not to mention age-appropriate behavior) represents this whole other imaginative leap — riskier, but way more interesting and rewarding if actually…
Internet assholes are always yelling about what Lena Dunham doesn’t wear on Girls, but let’s talk about something she does. Bros who think everything should be marketed to them never get tired of pointing out that Dunham’s Hannah Horvath seems to be topless more often than not, a point of…
If you and your significant other are rich, or just bonded over that movie Crash, why not up the adrenaline with an expensive car rental this Valentine’s Day? Exotic Driving Experience has a deal where you can rent one exotic car (Ferrari, Lamborghini, or other vehicles with pasta-like names), and…
Sometimes you want to be direct on Valentine’s Day, and if that’s the plan, go straight to the skin. La Bare, the male dancer revue and window-shopping spot of choice for women who go “Woo-o-ooo!”, is catering its programming to both of you for Valentine’s Day. It’s a Guys and…
